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Orbit animation (useless)


Kazemester

Question

Now with the new VW2020 version I try to make an orbit animation (which was so easy to do in the earlier versions---i don't know why you devs always have to change stuff that work), but whatever I try it just does not work. I try to make an Ortogonal projection fly around my pointcloud, but it always shows a "flat" orbit around with the cameras pointing straight.

If i untick that box than i can set the keyframes 1 by 1 by selecting the cameras and pitch them (which does NOT work in 3D of course....in 3D it only rotates on the xy plane....) on frontal views. And the result is...

Am i stupidly doing something wrong or it should work but it is bugged? (It is SP3 now...)

Thanks for the help.

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I agree with Kazemester

I was not able to find a way to create an Orbit animation flying from above the ground and looking for example 30 degrees down.

There is not a way to define the inclination for the camera - you can just change the camera in each keyframe with a mouse click, but the result is really erratic.

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The process for Orbit Animation has been modified for 2020. (I also had a hard time with it at first). It used to be that I would create an object in the desired center of rotation, then set the animation to orbit around that object. Now, in 2020, I do this: start out with a RW Camera View at the desired distance, height and perspective; Select the entire floor (or create a 3d object that covers the entire floor area you wish to view) then go to Model>Create Animation>Create Orbit Path. In the next dialog choose 360º and Around Selection. Give it a minute or so and you'll see that a new object has been created (an "Animation Path"). It's a Camera attached to a path (nurbs object I think). When you choose Play from the preview options you will notice the camera moves around the path (like a drone shot or dolly shot, sort of) but that the view does not change (FWIW, this part is bad programming as it doesn't really give you a preview). In order to actually see the result, run a short and low frame rate animation. Although there are some odd things in the new process, the cool thing is that you can actually select the Animation Path object and move it up/down; add vertices to it to make it conform to a user chosen path; etc.

 

Once you get an acceptable result in a lo-res, low frame rate sample, then you can create a higher res version...

 

I think I got it all in the explanation, but let me know if there are followup questions.

 

P

 

OH PS, to the Original Question: try using a perspective instead of an orthogonal view. You can move the camera (Animation Path ) up and change the angle of view.

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It still does not work for me...whatever i do i can only pitch the camera from deafult views (front, side...etc.). I usually make a 3d locus and i try to select the cameras one by one and pitch them (target the locus). It is a pain in the a**. (Therefore i still have 2019 installed and do orbit animations there...Two steps forward, i step backward.)

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I'm having the same issue with the new orbit animation tool as Kazemester. It's an absolute mess compared to the 2019 tool. I design furniture and I used to be able to produce an animation using the view of a camera object set at the viewer height looking down at an object (viewer at 1500 mm off floor and looking at at point 600 mm off the floor).

I couldn't get CipesDesign's workaround to work either.

Are there any VW developers out there that can explain how to achieve the result I'm looking for? I know I can move the orbit path and scale it to make it larger than the one that is randomly created by VW, but why can't I select a "look to point" for the whole animation? It seems the "look to point" has to be manually adjusted for every keyframe (and that's not intuitive either) - why?

Not that I'm expecting any real response to my post, but please fix this asap. I also will be keeping the 2019 version to achieve this type of animation with a reasonable workflow. If things that aren't broken keep getting "fixed" I'm questioning why I'm upgrading every year? 

Attached an orbit animation with keyframes adjusted manually. As there is no way to snap to a look to point, you get vertical bounces. Not very professional! 

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6 minutes ago, CipesDesign said:

 

But just in case. FWIW, my method (above ) is not really a workaround, it is just the way the procedure is (re) designed in VW's 2020.

 

Please make a video how to make a simple orbit animation of a cube in Isometric ("looking down 45degrees") view. As simple as it was in 2019. Thank you.

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40 minutes ago, CipesDesign said:

I assume you have seen (and followed) this: http://app-help.vectorworks.net/2020/eng/index.htm#t=VW2020_Guide%2FCameraViews%2FCreating_an_orbit_animation.htm&rhsearch=animation&rhhlterm=animation&rhsyns=

 

But just in case. FWIW, my method (above ) is not really a workaround, it is just the way the procedure is (re) designed in VW's 2020.

Yes I did see that - VW help is usually my first port of call - but it doesn't really answer the question. K

 

41 minutes ago, Kazemester said:

Please make a video how to make a simple orbit animation of a cube in Isometric ("looking down 45degrees") view. As simple as it was in 2019. Thank you.

Exactly. Thanks for boiling it down Kazemester

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Hello all

I try to reiterate the problem. Probably here we all know how to use Vectorworks.

The matter here is the fact that when you create an orbit animation, there is not a way to define the inclination for the camera - you can just change the camera in each keyframe with a mouse click, but the result is erratic. When you create the orbit, of after that, there is no control on the inclination and you could adjust it only with the mouse in each keyframe, but you cannot have the same exact angle, so the result is really ugly.

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Here it is quick video tutorial from one of our Engineers:
 

"So while the animation is on a different working plane/active layer plane, the user can still select objects from a different design layer. The camera in the animation will still point to the center of the selected object."

 

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49 minutes ago, JuanP said:

Here it is quick video tutorial from one of our Engineers:
 

"So while the animation is on a different working plane/active layer plane, the user can still select objects from a different design layer. The camera in the animation will still point to the center of the selected object."

Thanks Juan,

That's really helpful and I was able to replicate it. So the key points are:

1) Set up a new "animation" layer, with the working plane set at the required viewer height and activate it.

2) Turn "Layer Option" in the "View" menu to "Show/Snap/Modify Others"

3) While "Animation" layer is still active, select an object to centre the view on.

4) Select "Create Orbit Path" from the "Model" menu

5) In the "Orbit Options" Palette select "Active Layer Plane" as the centre of rotation and un-check the "Orthogonal Projection" so you can preview and edit the animation once it is created.

Any chance this might make it's way into the help files or tutorials online, because it seems to be key point that has not been made anywhere else from what I can see?

 

Thanks again.

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2 hours ago, kklik said:

Any chance this might make it's way into the help files or tutorials online,

Yes, we already talked to our techpubs team and there will be an update to our online help. Thanks for bringing this up!

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Absolutely. The UX designers must have been asleep when this change was implemented, but at least there is a logical workaround now. Let's hope that it gets changed back to the original workflow in a future update - not holding my breath though.😶

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This is the backside of having yearly "updates". I wish there was at least a 2 year dev process when a new release is launched... But we have new releases every year just when the "older" version starts to work...after SP 5 -6...and we have to start all over again every September... sigh.

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1 hour ago, Kazemester said:

This is the backside of having yearly "updates". I wish there was at least a 2 year dev process when a new release is launched... But we have new releases every year just when the "older" version starts to work...after SP 5 -6...and we have to start all over again every September... sigh.

Yes and some will say, simply wait until each version matures before switching to it , but what's frustrating is that just when a version starts to work... attention then moves to the next one, and any remaining problems with the 'old' one go unfixed.

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On 5/13/2020 at 10:29 AM, line-weight said:

Yes and some will say, simply wait until each version matures before switching to it , but what's frustrating is that just when a version starts to work... attention then moves to the next one, and any remaining problems with the 'old' one go unfixed.

Yup...capitalism at its best.

 

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Just tried this in VW2021.

 

The UI is as horrible as this thread had prepared me for, however I was at least able to quite quickly produce "something" following the instructions on this thread, which I can see have been sort-of added to VW2021 help documentation but the details remain pretty scant.

 

https://app-help.vectorworks.net/2021/eng/index.htm#t=VW2021_Guide%2FCameraViews%2FCreating_an_orbit_animation.htm

 

Here's what I understand (I think)

 

1. The camera looks towards the (centre of the?) object you have selected when you do the "create orbit path" command

 

2. The circular orbit path is centred (in plan) on the object you have selected when you do the "create orbit path" command

 

3. The circular orbit path is created at a Z height determined by the active layer plane elevation, the working plane elevation, or the selected object's elevation, depending on which option you choose in the dialogue.

 

Firstly a question:

 

Do I have any control over the diameter of that circular path? In other words how close the camera is to the object I'm rotating around?

I can manually scale the path to be a larger or smaller circle, but this then breaks the connection between the camera tilt and the object I'm looking at, so it is no longer looking in the direction of what it's rotating around - it's looking at a point directly above or below it.

 

Secondly an observation

 

I think the information in the documentation is wrong (and consequently very confusing)

Specifically this:

 

535385076_Screenshot2022-03-01at18_58_46.jpg.2794ccf83df250821fcb187699ae4c6d.jpg

 

If I select active layer plane, 0X, 0Y, 0Z is not the centre of rotation. This only sets the Z value of the centre of rotation. The X and Y values of the centre of rotation are determined by the object I have selected.

 

Similarly, the dialogue box is misleading:

 

439532646_Screenshot2022-03-01at19_05_25.jpg.358b8b8d242cfad3e0529e976ed961ce.jpg

 

It shouldn't say "rotate about center of", it should say "elevation of orbit path determined by" or similar.

 

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Also: it doesn't actually seem to create a true circular path for the camera, so the resulting orbit motion lurches around.

 

This example used the cylinder as the target object. I did not do anything to the path created by the command. If the camera was pointing at the centre of the cylinder and the path was a perfect circle, there wouldn't be any evident motion in the cylinder at all. But look what the animation produces.

 

I've attached the VWX file as well, in case someone can point out that I have done something wrong.

 

 

 

 

 

orbit_test.vwx

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Well, some hours fiddling around yesterday and today has given me some idea about what things are not working properly with animation paths - it's not limited to orbit paths.

 

For example, much of the lurching motion seems to be related to intermediate keyframes because you can get a pretty smooth motion (including eg camera rotation) if you make a path which only has a start and a finish keyframe. But this limits you to paths where you don't want the camera to rotate any more than 180 degrees during its course.

 

Also, it does not correctly calculate transitions in camera "pitch" between one keyframe and the next. As soon as you have a camera pitch that is not zero (ie it's not looking exactly horizontally) there are problems. If I set a start and end keyframe, both with a pitch of -10degrees then you might expect that the camera would carry out its entire journey between those keyframes with a pitch of -10 degrees. It doesn't though; for some reason it drops down well below -10 degrees and then comes back up again. I'm sure there is some reason this is happening, something to do with the maths of the "look" direction, and I'm sure if anyone cared enough it could be fixed.

 

I would be happy to do more investigation if there were the slightest indication that anyone at VW was interested in fixing this tool, but the indications aren't great and I suspect that it's just another thing abandoned in a semi-functional state. It's really not fit for purpose as part of a "professional" package. The things I can produce with it that I wouldn't be ashamed to show to a client are very limited.

 

I'll stick with what I do now - screen recordings of me doing a live fly-around of an OpenGL version of the model. This is not great, but less bad than the alternative.

 

I don't think it's possible to produce a professional looking building walkthrough with the animation tool - someone prove me wrong.

Edited by line-weight
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I remember when animations were 'revamped' a few versions ago and hyped up in marketing videos. But when it came to creating my own animations I found it all very cumbersome and even frustrating. Once I managed to get the tools to work as intended I didn't think the results looked all that great. Sadly Vectorworks is just not made for animations...

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On 3/2/2022 at 5:35 PM, Andy Broomell said:

I remember when animations were 'revamped' a few versions ago and hyped up in marketing videos. But when it came to creating my own animations I found it all very cumbersome and even frustrating. Once I managed to get the tools to work as intended I didn't think the results looked all that great. Sadly Vectorworks is just not made for animations...

What do you tend to use for animations instead (if anything)?

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On 3/4/2022 at 10:57 AM, line-weight said:

What do you tend to use for animations instead (if anything)?

I bought a 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse Compact and i use it to move the camera smoothly around. Simply i just create a shaded render and i record the video with quicktime - screen recording. 😄

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