Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

Hello all,

Does anyone know if its possible to animate a bend feature using Inventor studio? Ive seen other posts where someone suggests the bend in a simulation, but I need a animated bend feature in Inventor Studio for a rendered video.

Any Ideas or help would be great, Thanks in advance!

[#2]

Yes, it is possible, you just have to animate the parameter that controls the bend values.

Once you find the parameter that does this, check the export button in the parameters box, and inside Studio use the parameter favorites command to bring this in for animation.

[#3]

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Mark_Flayler wrote:

Yes, it is possible, you just have to animate the parameter that controls the bend values.

Once you find the parameter that does this, check the export button in the parameters box, and inside Studio use the parameter favorites command to bring this in for animation.

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Thank you for the quick reply that was great to hear its possible, Anychance you know how to find the bend parameters? Im using inventor 2012, if you mean the acual parameters used in creating the bend feature I cannot see them in Inventor studio, any ideas? Thanks again!

[#4 · Accepted solution]

Inside the normal modeling environment go to the FX in your quick access toolbar (top left of the screen)  You should find your parameters in there.  Once you find the one that needs flexing, click the Export Parameter column and then inside Studio you can use Parameter Favorites and Animate Parameters to do your animation.

[#5]

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Mark_Flayler wrote:

Inside the normal modeling environment go to the FX in your quick access toolbar (top left of the screen)  You should find your parameters in there.  Once you find the one that needs flexing, click the Export Parameter column and then inside Studio you can use Parameter Favorites and Animate Parameters to do your animation.

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I was able to do exactly what you said and now my rope can curl (bend) and swing at the same time, Thank you very much I have been searching all day for a way to do this, Thank you very much you have been much needed help!

[#6]

Whoa, Donnie, you're going to tease us with your success and not post it...

I for one would love to see the results. Sounds very interesting.

Cheers,

Bill Bogan

[#7]

I took all the information I learned through this post and another and was able to create a nice rope swing and curl effect, its still in need of a lot of work though. The curl worked out great with the "bend" feature and exporting the feature in the fx parameter and animating it in inventor through enabling the bend in the favorite parameters while inside inventor studio.The bend feature has to be added to the .ipt file that makes the rope itself. There is one problem with the bend feature during animation because bends seem to only work from 1-90 degrees, you can't make a bend 0.0 degrees like you could with the angle constraint. I had to make another bend feature that went 1-90 the other direction. Thats where the problem comes from, you can have both bend features enabled and both UN-suppressed in the .ipt file, the problem is making both bends work together and look like a flawless sway. For the swing I animated an angle constraint on the ring that holds the rope to the shaft. It helps make everything flow together and looks more like, the rope on a ring on a shaft (for lack of better wording.)\

In the first video "unfinished rope swing" the bend feature is animated from 1-90 over 1/2 a second and then 1-90 over 1/2 a second the other way, here's the problem, you can see the pause in the middle where one bend has to stop and the other bend has to start, it does not look good.

In the second "unfinished rope swing 2" video the same degrees for the bend, 1-90 one way and then 1-90 the other way but each over 1/4 of a second, which really ended up as .3 of a second on the animator timeline. I think the only problem here is now the rope swings to fast.

I think the solution here would be to find a common ground on the using the angle constraint to animate a swing so that when the first bend feature ends the angle is still moving , maybe it will clear up the dead space in between the bend features. Im going to keep working on it using Inventor.

I don't know anything about 3ds Max but would this be much easier using that instead of Inventor studio? Im gonna look into that to.

[#8]

I took all the information I learned through this post and another and was able to create a nice rope swing and curl effect, its still in need of a lot of work though. The curl worked out great with the "bend" feature and exporting the feature in the fx parameter and animating it in inventor through enabling the bend in the favorite parameters while inside inventor studio.The bend feature has to be added to the .ipt file that makes the rope itself. There is one problem with the bend feature during animation because bends seem to only work from 1-90 degrees, you can't make a bend 0.0 degrees like you could with the angle constraint. I had to make another bend feature that went 1-90 the other direction. Thats where the problem comes from, you can have both bend features enabled and both UN-suppressed in the .ipt file, the problem is making both bends work together and look like a flawless sway. For the swing I animated an angle constraint on the ring that holds the rope to the shaft. It helps make everything flow together and looks more like, the rope on a ring on a shaft (for lack of better wording.)\

In the first video "unfinished rope swing" the bend feature is animated from 1-90 over 1/2 a second and then 1-90 over 1/2 a second the other way, here's the problem, you can see the pause in the middle where one bend has to stop and the other bend has to start, it does not look good.

In the second "unfinished rope swing 2" video the same degrees for the bend, 1-90 one way and then 1-90 the other way but each over 1/4 of a second, which really ended up as .3 of a second on the animator timeline. I think the only problem here is now the rope swings to fast.

I think the solution here would be to find a common ground on the using the angle constraint to animate a swing so that when the first bend feature ends the angle is still moving , maybe it will clear up the dead space in between the bend features. Im going to keep working on it using Inventor.

I don't know anything about 3ds Max but would this be much easier using that instead of Inventor studio? Im gonna look into that to.

[#9]

Donnie,

For each animation action in Inventor studio you can control the acceleration into and out of the constraint.

Edit one of the animation actions for the rope and then go to the acceleration tab on the dialog box. Use a setting that allows you to specify the acceleration/deceleration.

Just a thought on how you might control it.

Nice work!!

-Bill

[#10]

when I do this, I'm unable to click on the sideways arrow to animate parameters.

What do I do?

I did favorite parameters and check marked it

[#11]

Im gonna take some screen shots for you so you can see how its done.