Make a liquid-animation?

[Fubbo]

Hi, I have made an animation of a hydraulic pump in Inventor Studio (see youtube link).
When I fade the cylinder I would like to add som kind of liquid-animation that comes in from the connection cover and down agains the pistons to symbolize the oilflow. What is the best way to do this?

I use Inventor 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFazTJ2Yx0U Edited by: Fubbo on Mar 5, 2010 2:40 PM

[JDMather]

Nice Work.

I think Mark Flaylor did something on animating a liquid. Search here http://au.autodesk.com in the on-line classes link 2008 and 2009 for Mark Flaylor.

If I am incorrect he will probably be along to send you to the correct tutorial.

[Fubbo]

Thanks, it is just a beginning but I think it will look quite nice in the end 🙂

I found this one: http://au.autodesk.com/?nd=class&session_id=2754 and about 63min in he demonstrate some "liquid". Basically it is just parts that he animate the parameters of so it looks fluid. It is not what I had in mind and I'm not sure how to make it work in a asssebly with multipe parts.

[mflayler2 · Accepted solution]

Here is a link to the video directly. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGoa9ah68Qs&feature=channel

While this isn't a out of the box solution (as in it takes some trickery), it is a great way to get your point accross without having to go to 3Ds Max to create this sort of thing.

Essentially what I did was first create my piping system (which you have)
Then I in my piping run I have about 9 (yes 9) reference components
In each of the reference components I have used the Copy Object command to copy in the pipe geometry. (make sure you get just the inner wall face)
Then I create two workplanes (one stationary and the other referencing the first WP offset from it), For the Elbows I used an angled WP.
I define this offset value with a parameter (make sure you name it and click the Export button as well)
I then use the Sculpt command on the copied pipe geometry with the WP to create the liquid.

Now that the setup is done, in Studio you use Animate Fades and Animate Parameters to create your result.
Have all the reference components at 0 Opacity at the beginning of the animation with instantaneous Fade.
Fade them in as need be and use Animate Parameters (with your parameters from each part) to control the liquid filling the pipe. With about 24-30 fps you will see the fluid flow rather well, just adjust your time amount for rate of flow.

The biggest drawback to this is that is is hard to change your system without recreating the process for a new part so make sure you have your design in the final stages before this piece of markeing happens.

In some of my other fluid examples, I used this same methodology. A nice added bonus to this is the bonus of finding how much fluid can fill an irregular void such as this coffee pot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev6ODuBqTEc&feature=channel

[mflayler2]

Nice video by the way, perhaps if I saw the assembly and layout of the components I could give some better advice on how to accomplish what you have done in your design. If you want to reach me directly you can at mflayleratranddotcom.

If it is complicated enough it may have to pass to 3Ds Max or Maya in order to do what you are looking for.

[Fubbo]

Hey Mark, thanks for answering!

Actually this it is my first animation/video ever and I never stop being amazed of what things you can do with Inventor. I will try to make it work after the weekend and I might send you an email if I don't figure it out.

btw. what is this 3Ds Max thing you are talking about?

(sorry for my poor english, I'am just a young swedish student)

[Fubbo]

One more thing, is it possible to animate the color of a part? I think it would look nice if the color of the "oil" fades from blue into red in the cylinder when it goes from suction to pressure.

[JDMather]

>One more thing, is it possible to animate the color of a part?

Two parts. Red parts fades out, blue part fades in. Will have to consider and try some clever tricks to proceed.

[mflayler2]

Two occurances of the same reference part in the assembly. One red, one blue. Use Animate Fades and Animate Parameters to do this trick.

Hint: Use Place at Component Origin to line them both up perfectly. When you Animate the Parameter, both will changed sine it is the same component.

Video to follow.

[mflayler2]

Short 10 second video attached.

[kliverance]

I'm sorry to bring back up a thread thats 7 years old but I'm trying to do exactly this and I just don't have enough autodesk knowledge to suss out his step by step directions and I'm hoping someone can break it down a bit more for me, I've been searching for this exact animation type for months and stumbled upon this and trying to duplicate it is proving harder than I thought

[lis_wang]

Dear Mark

Could you please email me the tutorial to lis_wang@hotmail.com? I want to learn how to do that.

Thanks

[BrownCoat40]

   Alright, so I figured out how to do it. I don't have a video tutorial of how to do it yet (thanks to me working on proprietary stuff), but I'll go through how I animated flow starting and going through a pipe, ending with the pipe empty. All this in a bit more detail than Mark_Flayer, who made all those lovely videos that tease that it can be done, but offered inadequate public explanation on how it's done. FYI, this is in Inventor 2015, but base functionality should be similar.

      The video guy’s explanation had wonderful detail on his flavor of modeling, but not enough detail on what to do in order to get an assembly’s parts to actually have animated parameters. To remedy that, I spelled it out in detail below. As a summary:   Make a reference component for the “flow volume” part. Inside the part, use parameters to define “flow”. Make sure said parameters have the “Export” box checked in the “Manage Parameters” menu. In the assembly, in Studio, add the parameters to “animation favorites”. Animate the parameters in conjunction with fades, much like you would for any animation feature. If you have any questions, let me know!

How I did it, in detail:

1. Have your base assembly already made how you want it. Have the assembly open. In the assembly tab, click “Create.”
2. In the "Create In-Place Component" menu, there should be a "Default BOM Structure" dropdown menu, select "Reference" to create a part that references the assembly.
3. Create your part, using user parameters. Video guy used the sculpt command between two work planes, one defined by parameters. I first created the whole part, then I created two user parameters (one for each end of the fluid flow). Create the parameters by going to Parameters, located in Manage, click "Add Numeric", and make sure to click the "Export Parameter" checkbox that's an option for each parameter. Then I used those parameters to define cuts that subtract the start/end from the whole. If I had done it his way, I would’ve created two mobile planes, each defined by user parameters. Regardless of how you create the flow, make sure it's parameter driven inside the part, and make sure the part parameters that will be animated have the "export parameter" checkbox checked. 
4. Go back to the assembly. You now should have your base assembly and an animation/fill part. Go into Inventor Studio. In the Render menu, there should be an icon that says “Parameter Favorites”. In the model tree menu that comes up, select your animation/fill part. There should be the parameters you selected to export. Check the boxes to add them to your “Favorites”.
5. In your Animate menu, click on “Parameters” and the animate parameters menu pops up. To select your parameter, go to the assembly’s model tree, and below “Lighting” and “Cameras”, there’s “Animation Favorites”. Expand that and select the parameter you wish to animate. Alternatively open the “Animation Favorites” in the model tree, right click, “animate parameters”. Animate this just as you would any other animation in inventor.
6. As the guy with the videos mentioned, you will probably need to combine this with fades to achieve the correct effect. Inventor doesn’t like zero width cuts, extrusions, or anythings, so there will always be a visible portion of your flow, even if it’s just a sliver .01” thick. Use the “Animate Fade” at the instant your flow starts/ends to show or hide your flow element.

. 

[mflayler2]

Good detail, thanks for getting that out, everyone that pm'd me I sent more information on this because it was usually different for every user design need. I had an entire AU paper on animation in general, but I never attached it directly due to attachment limitations 7 years ago. This question only pops up for me once every other year or so, so I never needed to pull out a full tutorial on it.

The video guy.

[lis_wang]

Thank you very much. It is so detail.

[surajn007.sn]

Hey after 9 whole years, is there any other way to do this fluid animation or should I try the way you have mentioned.

BTW, using Inventor 2019

Thanks in advance.

[S_May · Accepted solution]

'Get the current offset between center of mass and pivot point in horizontal plane
'and assign that value to the relevant parameter.
CoGX = iProperties.CenterOfGravity.x

'Pass the offset value to excel (divide by 1000 to give meters)
GoExcel.CellValue("3rd Party:Embedding 1", "Sheet1", "C2") = CoGX / 1000

'Get the current volume of the metal and assign it to the AluVol parameter.
AluVol = iProperties.Volume/1000 '(in cm^3)

'Create variable to hold the density of the current material
materialDensity = ThisDoc.Document.ComponentDefinition.Material.Density '(g/cm^3)

'Calculate the mass of the metal in kg
AluMass = (AluVol * materialDensity)/1000 ' (in kg)

'Pass the mass to Excel
GoExcel.CellValue("3rd Party:Embedding 1", "Sheet1", "A2") = AluMass

'The following lines have been commented out. They were included as a crude form
'of data-logging so that the movement of the center-of-mass could be graphed in Excel.
	'GoExcel.CellValue("3rd Party:Embedding 1", "Sheet1", "E" & Index) = TipAngle
	'GoExcel.CellValue("3rd Party:Embedding 1", "Sheet1", "F" & Index) = AluMass
	'Index = Index + 1

'Update the document immediately to see changes as a smooth animation.
InventorVb.DocumentUpdate()

[surajn007.sn]

Thanks, a lot mate really appreciate the quick reply. But what I meant was I have created an assembly including heat exchanger and some pipings I wanted to show like one line to show cold water going in and coming out hot and another line hot water going in and coming out cold. 

[geralddsmith12]

Inventor Professional 2023 user here. Long time modeler, first time animator. Customer request to show the flow of liquids/gas through the piping/tubing of a unit. Is there any new options available to show flow through T&P or are we still stuck with using the parameters and defining the paths as described in this thread? Picture attached of the unit that I want to show flow. Since I am mainly trying to show the flow in the tubing of this particular design, will I be able to use the sketches that the pipe sweep makes for tubing to define my flow path? If no new options, would you guys mind sending me a tutorial? @mflayler2 @BrownCoat40 @Fubbo