Chapter 33: Animating with MotionManager
Animating view changes
Animating view changes is a simple task in the MotionManager, and once you learn it, you will be
able to apply what you learn to making parts and mechanisms in an assembly move in much the
same way.Again, start with the robot assembly. First clear the timeline of any key points. One way to do this
is to simply choose File ➪ Reload to discard all changes, or you can right-click in the timeline area,
choose Select All, and press Delete. Then set it to a Front view. An easy way to do this is to press
the spacebar on the keyboard and double-click the Front view.Orientation and Camera Views
The Orientation and Camera Views item in the MotionManager design tree is locked by default.
You cannot manually change the view for the key point when this item is locked. To unlock it,
right-click the Orientation and Camera Views entry, and deselect the Disable View Creation
option. The icon changes from a black diamond with a red circle and line to a blue telescope.The purpose of disabling the creation of new views is so you don’t accidentally rotate the view and
thus change the animation. I can tell you from experience that this is one of the most common
mistakes I make when creating an animation.Best Practice
The best way to handle the Orientation and Camera Views option is to select it (allow view changes) only
when you want to establish the view key points, then deselect it when you are done. n
To start this animation of the view, you need to deselect the Disable View Creation option, so that
the blue telescope appears to the left of the entity in the design tree.Introducing the time bar
The time bar is the vertical gray line in the timeline area that denotes the current time that you are
editing in the animation. When you make a change to any element that can be animated, that
change is applied at the time denoted by the time bar. To make a key-point driven animation, the
workflow usually involves moving the time bar, making a set of changes, moving the time bar,
making another set of changes, and so on. I do the same thing here to demonstrate how it works.I start by making sure the time bar is set to zero (all the way to the left), and then positioning the
view I want to start the animation with. In this case, bring up the View Orientation dialog box
(spacebar) and double-click the view named 1.I want the view to remain static for a couple of seconds when the animation starts. It might be too
confusing to start the animation immediately with the view changing. To create this hesitation, I
copy the first key point from the 0-second mark to the 2-second mark. It is as easy as it sounds.
Click the key point in the same row as the Orientation and Camera Views, and then Ctrl+drag it to
the right to the 2-second mark. This causes the first 2 seconds of the view to be static.