Animation - Transform Components causes components to jump off-screen

[lindsaywilson88]

Hello,

I have a simple project containing two components which are slotted together, and I'm trying to animate them to show the assembly. I am trying to use Transform Components to both move and rotate one of the components to a different position. During the preview, the new position of the component is shown correctly. However, once I click OK, the component jumps some distance off-screen into a totally unrelated position. I have tried this several times, and also recreated the same design in a new project with no success.

I'd be very grateful for any help on this. I've done a screen capture of the problem, available as a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkSWagjKKQg

Here is my project on A360: http://a360.co/2h0WyWu

Lindsay Wilson

[Beyondforce]

Hi @lindsaywilson88,

Something isn't right! If I just move one component to the right, then no problem. But the moment I change the angle, then the component goes haywire!

Maybe @jeff_strater or one of his colleagues will be able to help.

Cheers / Ben
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[James.Youmatz]

Hi @lindsaywilson88,

Welcome to the Fusion Community!

So, I have a feeling this might be a bug, but there is a simple workaround! If you go ahead and create a new Storyboard in the animation environment, I do not seem to have these issues. It seems that first storyboard is in a wonky state (official term )

I'll check in with the dev team and see if this is a known issue or not. Can you or @Beyondforce confirm that this workaround worked for you as well?

Thanks,

[Beyondforce]

Hi @James.Youmatz,

Thanks for your feedback. Your solution does help, but when trying to position the component, it doesn't want stay where I want it. Maybe it's me doing something wrong or not, not quite sure!

[lindsaywilson88]

Hi @James.Youmatz, @Beyondforce,

Thanks for the replies!

I can confirm that creating a new storyboard does indeed solve the problem but only for the first transform command. If I transform, restore home, then try to transform again, it does the same strange behaviour (doesn't jump off-screen, but still goes to a weird position). Here's a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KajEXhSFlc

More worryingly, if I try to do a second transform after the first (successful) transform, it also goes weird. Here's a video of a new storyboard, first successful transform, then a second wonky transform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y6QWECVHQ8

I should also mention I have the "play head" in the scratch area on the timeline - I'm just wanting to transform the components to get ready for the start of the animation, I'm not actually creating keyframes. Don't know if that has any effect on things.

Hope this helps!

Best regards,

Lindsay

[James.Youmatz]

Hi all,

Still investigating. I think this may be a deeper issue. It sounds very similar to this thread here. I will keep digging however.

[lindsaywilson88]

Hi @James.Youmatz,

Thanks for the follow-up, I'm impressed by how quickly everyone has responded 😉 Yes, I saw that other thread as well but I didn't really
see a solution described on it.

Been playing a bit more - as far as I can tell, it's only when you use a rotation command that things go funny. Simple translations can
be used in lots of different combinations, and I haven't seen them behaving oddly. Don't know if that might point to a cause....

Cheers,

Lindsay

[neil.liu]

Hi @lindsaywilson88 and @Beyondforce,

In order to create your actions step by step you have to change the time in animation timeline pane for each action, otherwise since all of your actions are created in the same time period, the software will try to record all of the actions and merge them together, which would make the result unpredictable. 

I recorded a video for your reference:

Thanks, 

Neil Liu

[lindsaywilson88]

Hi @neil.liu and @Beyondforce,

Thanks for the reply. I understand about setting the playhead to different times on the timeline and

performing the transform commands, but what I'm trying to do (by keeping the playhead in the scratch zone)

is to set up the components for the animation. For example, in this particular project, I want the two halves

of the stand laid out flat, side-by-side, and then they're moved/rotated and slotted together in the animation.

I'm afraid it still doesn't explain why, if I do "Restore Home" and then try another transform, it goes screwy. I

would've thought that "Restore Home" would remove all past transformations applied to the component.

Hope that makes sense!

Best regards,

Lindsay

[neil.liu]

Hi @lindsaywilson88,

Thanks for your information. Now I understand your expectation. I think your requirement is good and I will check with stakeholders to see if we would be able to adopt this in Animation.

For now there would be two ways to workaround this situation in your project:

1. Create a separate new storyboard. Create several actions (with different time) to make the two halves of the stand laid out flat, side-by-side. Then create a new storyboard with option "start from end of previous". Then you can create your move/rotate actions. In this case the components will be laid out correctly in scratch zone.

2. Create actions with different time to make the two halves of the stand laid out flat like what you want. The workflow would look like what i mentioned in the video in the previous thread. In this case we will not initialize the transformations for those components in the scratch zone. 

As for "Restore Home", yes, it will create a new restore action, instead of removing all previous actions on the specified component. This would be very useful to create disassemble/assemble actions for an assembly. 

Thanks,

Neil

[lindsaywilson88]

Hi @neil.liu,

Many thanks for the info - it looks like I've misunderstood the function of "Restore Home". That would definitely explain the
strange behaviour when I was trying to do everything with the playhead in the scratch zone. So, is the scratch zone primarily

for "non movement" changes like visibility or appearance?

The technique of using two separate storyboards works well. I actually just discovered the "Reverse" command, so I can essentially
explode the part first, reverse the storyboard, then that looks like it's assembling instead. If I then delete all actions in the reversed
sequence, the components now start off side-by-side in the scratch area.

It would be useful though to have some sort of "pre arrange" feature in the scratch zone where it doesn't record all the intermediate
actions, just the final position. Not sure how feasible that would be - perhaps something like the button that toggles the camera
recording on & off?

Thanks again for your help!

Cheers,

Lindsay

[neil.liu]

Hi @lindsaywilson88,

The original design for scratch zone is to set the initial transformation, visibility and camera information for a component, so we only allow to create one move/rotate action for it in the scratch zone. Though it looks we can create several visibility/camera actions for a component in the scratch zone, in fact only the last action will be remained for a component. For move/rotate actions, we cannot replace the previous actions with the last one since the rotation axis would be changed in the subsequent actions. 

We enhanced the design according to the issue you encountered and it would be released in January 2017 update. After that your scenario should be supported.  

Thanks again for reporting the issue. 

-Neil

[lindsaywilson88]

Hi @neil.liu,

Many thanks for taking this on board, I really appreciate it. I've been impressed by the responsiveness of the support team on here,
definitely one of the marks of a good product and company!

Cheers,

Lindsay