Smooth, automated camera motion animation in Onshape

jeremy_paradie

Hello,

I am wondering how the smooth camera effect was created in the animation on the main Onshape website https://www.onshape.com/ See the gif below and attached for reference. 
I am looking to create a similar animation with my own assembly, but I can't seem to find any information about how to do it.

Thanks,
Jeremy


 

owen_sparks

I may be wrong but I'd guess that is a screen capture of someone manipulating the standard assembly viewing area using a 3Dconnexion mouse whilst also animating a mate.  (The allows you to zoom, pan and rotate simultaneously.)

Cheers, Owen S.

NeilCooke

@owen_sparks guilty as charged. 

owen_sparks

Very smooth Mr. Cooke   Might be low compression on that right hand cylinder though

jeremy_paradie

Thanks, a 3d mouse makes a lot of sense. 

I've been animating a walking robot of sorts in Onshape using a stop motion technique - adjusting joint angles slightly within the assembly and then relying on named views to set the camera back to a consistent location. I am using mouse macros to take care of camera resetting and screenshot generation. I asked the question originally because I was hoping that there might be a way to automate changing the camera location slightly as part of my macro process to get that smooth zoom, pan and rotate animation. The arrow keys do something similar to what I am looking for but they move the camera far too much. Any ideas on how to achieve what I am looking to do? The best I can come up with is rotating all the parts within the assembly slightly relative to the origin in each frame, and leaving the camera in place, giving the illusion that the camera is moving, but I'm not convinced that the lighting will cooperate with the illusion. 

Thanks for any ideas!

miguel_sanchez340

An Arduino Leonardo or a Teensy comes to mind too, as they can be set to emulate a USB keyboard and mouse so you can create a custom set of keystrokes and mouse movements to achieve a similar result (it may be a bit more involved and time-consuming than the 3D mouse though :-)

tim_hess427

@jeremy_paradie - can your macro emulate mouse click+drag actions? If so, perhaps you could use that to pan and rotate. 

I've also played around with a steam controller a bit - https://store.steampowered.com/app/353370/Steam_Controller/ . It's highly customize-able, but again, is just emulating mouse and keyboard inputs.