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Animate Scenic set items


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Hello all, 

 

This is my first post and I'm not sure if I'm asking the right group. 

 

I work for a scenery design company and we are venturing into the world of Vectorworks. What I'm trying to achieve is to show an animation of how the show will run. I.e cloths flying in and out and set items moving around stage and offstage. Is this possible to do on vectorworks and if so... how? 

 

Hopefully someone can help me. 

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Some very rudimentary movement of items has been achieved using Marrionette nodes and @Alan Woodwell is probably the guy to ask about that. There is a video he made below.

Vectorworks is primarily designed as a 2D/3D drafting and render programme and at this it excels. If you want to create scenic animations then you can export VW models to other software like Cinema4D which can handle this type of work. Good luck. It would be interesting to know what you discover. 

 

Of course if you just want static presentation slides or the ability to model positions of scenery, then VW will handle this with ease and setting up different scenes and positions of objects is easy using classes and saved views with any moving scenery pieces as separate symbols.

Edited by markdd
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@Jay1995Hi, a few ways to do this, if you want to run the full show or seperate parts or scenes you can use create animation in VW.

http://app-help.vectorworks.net/2017/eng/index.htm#t=VW2017_Guide%2FViews%2FCreating_and_Editing_Move_Along_Path_Animations.htm&rhsearch=Animation &rhhlterm=Animation &rhsyns=

by this method you set all the timing for the scene and items can move, rotate, appear, disappear, lights can be turned on and off all automatically by you presettings. Once all is set up you export it as a move and play back.

This I think will be best for looking at the complete show and you can fine tune it.

Marionette is good for changing individual items but so far as I understand can't be done in a timeline like animation. The networks that make up the end result all run at once and so far I have been unable to produce a delayed result. (Stand corrected though)

@Kevin McAllistermay be able to chip in here also as I understand he is into your field of set and stage settings.

HTH

This one shows you a simple one I did.

 

Edited by Alan Woodwell
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5 hours ago, markdd said:

Of course if you just want static presentation slides or the ability to model positions of scenery, then VW will handle this with ease and setting up different scenes and positions of objects is easy using classes and saved views with any moving scenery pieces as separate symbols.

 

As Mark says, VW will easily do this.

 

3 hours ago, Jay1995 said:

Followed the steps on the instruction link you sent but it didn't seem to move the object just the camera? am i doing something wrong according to those instructions or ...?

 

@Alan WoodwellI think Jay is asking how you animated the objects themselves. Did you use classes and saved views, where you positioned the duplicates of the objects at various points along their travel?

 

I have used VW to draw a lot of scenery and to detail positions on static drawings, but I wouldn't try doing animations in Vectorworks. I have done animations in Cinema4D, which is much more suited to that since you can animate position fields for individual objects. Jay, if your primary focus is animations, it may make more sense to look into something like WYSISYG, which is designed for that type of visualization. VW is a great tool for scenic design but its more for static visualization, design development and design/technical drawings. You'll spend more time than its worth trying to make it work for animations.

 

Kevin

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@Kevin McAllisterthe process (you may know this) with animation is to create a symbol of the items you move and then using animation set the distance you want to move, either slide, ocellated, up or down, based on speed or timing including the number of seconds you want the object to animate, when you want it to appear and disappear etc.

its a bit tricky at first until you understand it but it works well.

when you export the movie you may not see things move as you want but when you look at movie all is fine as seen in the attached video.

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4 minutes ago, Alan Woodwell said:

@Kevin McAllisterthe process (you may know this) with animation is to create a symbol of the items you move and then using animation set the distance you want to move, either slide, ocellated, up or down, based on speed or timing including the number of seconds you want the object to animate, when you want it to appear and disappear etc.

its a bit tricky at first until you understand it but it works well.

when you export the movie you may not see things move as you want but when you look at movie all is fine as seen in the attached video.

Thanks Alan. I had no idea you could animate objects directly in VW. I though animation was limited to moving the camera along a path. The documentation you linked to above only seems to describe how to move the camera. Do you know where to find the documentation for moving the objects?

 

KM

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2 hours ago, Alan Woodwell said:

Oh oh um, not at a computer but yes it look like it is. Opps is this one of those Aus/NZ add ons to VW again which ships as part of the program?

http://www.ozcad.com.au/products/animationworks.php

 

 

I believe so, unfortunately.

 

@Jay1995You're best bet is to model and draft in Vectorworks and animate in Cinema4D. It's certainly a steep financial investment, but would achieve the best results with proper training.

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