A few questions regarding animations

jhiker · December 07, 2020, 03:58:51 AM

I am practising some animations and have a few questions. I'm using KS V10.
1 Why does the translation wizard always default to a 'Y' value = 1 - why not 0 as X & Z?
2 When selecting parts to translate is it possible to 'Ctrl-click' to add a selection of parts in the scene tree to be moved or do you have to first set up a 'group' to do this?
3 When I click on the green 'blocks' in the animation timeline in order to edit them they invariably move a bit left or right - is there any way to prevent this?
4 When keying in values for x,y, & z in the animation wizard the x/y/z co-ordinates symbol is very often hidden and I forget which way I want to move - any way to make this temporarily visible or show it on the wizard where you put the values in?
5 See pic - how do I move the ferrule thing out along it's own axis - there doesn't seem to be a way to choose the correct local/part axis?
many thanks.

Eric Summers · December 07, 2020, 07:56:37 AM

Ditto on 1-4. I hadn't even thought about #4, but having the move gizmo shown would be super helpful.

For #5, does Original Local not give you the desired axis movement?

designgestalt · December 08, 2020, 03:53:21 AM

hello jhiker,

trying to answer some of your questions:

#2: I do quite a lot of animations and I would not know of a way to select the parts in the scene tree (unfortunately! it would be a great help!)
so, yes, you have to put those parts in a group, which comes with the downfall, that some labels might get moved, when you change the hirachy (why that is the case is beyond me, but this is ever so since I started working with Keyshot...)
or you can add the animation to one part, than copy a linked animation and apply it to the next part! That way, there will only be one animation in the animation window, with which you can control all other animation ("one to rule them all..."

)
What´s tricky about this is, there is only a very subtle hint in the animation icon in the scene tree, which shows this is a linked animation, but there is no indication, which one is the parent animation (at least I didn´t find it yet). In more complex animations, this can be a pain ...

#3: click on the names in the first window of the animation window, not on the blocks ! I can only recommend to have a good (naming-) structure and bundle your animations, to easier find what you are looking for, because I agree, it would be much handier to simply click on the block...

#4: not sure, if this is any help, but do you have the coordinate legend showing? (Hotkey "Z"). This will at least give a hint on where you are in the 3D space... not much of a help maybe ...

#5: honestly, I think this is a bug (or I am to dumb to figure this out for years now...!!), as I very often have the same problem ! I assume this depends on the CAD data you imported, as some data simply does not import the local pivot point in a correct manner. I import most of my data from Alias and there it hardly ever works...The only way I figured out so far is to create a "helper" geometry in KS, which I try to align by eyeballing as close as possible and use this pivot point or axis.
Not the best solution, but it works the best! You can make the KS geometry invisible afterwards.
I assume that in assemblies the information of the single parts gets lost somewhere on the way. Each indivudual part still has a pivot point and you can still see the according axis in KS, but KS doesn´t seem to recognize this anymore.

all that I can add...

cheers
designgestalt

andy.engelkemier · December 08, 2020, 07:46:06 AM

#5 is a pain point for me, because from Rhino there is no way to bring in an axis like that. So if you want to be able to position that correctly, you have to do some extra work. You can either create an additional object (I don't recommend creating objects IN Keyshot because I've noticed the often causes a crash....but of course it doesn't a second time so there's nothing to report I guess, but the fact that it happens makes me feel like I just shouldn't use the native keyshot objects) at zero. Move and rotate that object to match your current object. You'll probably have to measure the location in your native software. Be sure and place that object in your tree before you do anything, then add the object you want to move with a local axis Into that object's group. Now you'll animate that object instead as it's parent. Keyshot is also Super annoying and doesn't let you do that AND have the object as hidden, so you'll just have to keep it visible. If you are able to plan for it, make it so that object will be inside your other object. But you can also apply an emissive material, make it black just in case with a value of zero, and turn off all the checkboxes. For whatever reason that Also makes it Not selectable in the viewport. So be sure and name things clearly!

Alternatively, you can just have your object itself at zero when you import. Then move it to where it needs to go, and animate it directly, no parent involved.

DriesV · December 08, 2020, 10:39:24 AM

Quote from: andy.engelkemier on December 08, 2020, 07:46:06 AM
#5 is a pain point for me, because from Rhino there is no way to bring in an axis like that...

For Rhino models, you can give your objects a local origin and axes, if you create them as blocks in Rhino.

Dries

andy.engelkemier · December 08, 2020, 12:53:45 PM

Oh, does that work again in KS10? Because it stopped working in KS9 at some point. I believe I even addressed that with Luxion, but got nothing back.

DriesV · December 09, 2020, 06:24:36 AM

Quote from: andy.engelkemier on December 08, 2020, 12:53:45 PM
Oh, does that work again in KS10? Because it stopped working in KS9 at some point. I believe I even addressed that with Luxion, but got nothing back.

I just checked, and it seems to work fine in the final release version of KeyShot 9 as well (9.3.14). It's possible we made some fixes along the way in the KeyShot 9 life cycle, but I can't immediately trace that back.

Dries

designgestalt · December 09, 2020, 06:28:40 AM

hello Dries,
do you also know of a possibilty how to get Alias files to work?

cheers
designgestalt

DriesV · December 09, 2020, 06:32:37 AM

Unfortunately I do not.
These surface modelers don't typically support much in the way of local origins.

Dries

andy.engelkemier · December 09, 2020, 07:12:55 AM

Quoteit seems to work fine in the final release version of KeyShot 9

Well shoot. It does. It sure would have been nice to know when it was fixed.
Thanks for letting me know. I have a project coming up and I will Definitely make use of that.

jhiker · December 10, 2020, 01:26:45 AM

Quote from: Eric Summers on December 07, 2020, 07:56:37 AM
Ditto on 1-4. I hadn't even thought about #4, but having the move gizmo shown would be super helpful.

For #5, does Original Local not give you the desired axis movement?

I DID get it to move in the right direction after selecting 'origin local' and choosing the 'Z' direction. There were no visual clues as to which WAS the z direction 'Z' either in the real time window or the geometry window, it was trial and error. I was hoping the coloured X/Y/Z co-ordinate indicator might spin round or something. Prior to passing the model through to KS I added an axis through the ferrule in the CAD model - I don't know whether this helped or whether KS picked up on an implied local axis on the cylindrical part of the ferrule.

Nobody seems to know why the translate window defaults to a Y value of 1 - doesn't anybody from Keyshot know?

DriesV · December 10, 2020, 03:31:34 AM

Quote from: jhiker on December 10, 2020, 01:26:45 AM
Nobody seems to know why the translate window defaults to a Y value of 1 - doesn't anybody from Keyshot know?

I think the only reasonable explanation is that in KeyShot, Y is up. So with the default Global axis orientation, this will pull things up. The default value of 1 is fixed and therefore a compromise. So for a scene with meter as Scene Unit, the default movement is 1 meter. For a millimeter scene, the movement is 1 millimeter. Etc.

Dries