New Custom Feature: Animate

NeilCooke

Onshape's Animate feature can only animate one mate at a time. Adding gear relations between mates can make animations more interesting, but if you need an animation showing a sequence of events, then there is no easy way to achieve this other than using the amazing (but manual) technique developed by @john_mcclary

This custom feature expands on John's method and adds a level of automation. Below is a tutorial video showing all the steps to animate a UR Cobot, from building the animation timeline to adding the relevant gear relations in the assembly. Apologies for the length of the video, but it does go into a lot of detail. Please leave any comments or suggestions below.

Animate - Custom Feature: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/8afc165187d023c4d83554ff

https://onshape.wistia.com/medias/05cp9kvlxv?embedType=async&seo=true&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=1280

ben_partouch

This is amazing. So creative and manipulative in the good sense of the word.

But at the end this is very not OS to me.. It's a lot of work for something that clearly needs to be much more automated and native in it's own studio.

Looks like you guys are almost there anyway 😉.

Thanks for sharing this!

S1mon

I have to agree with @ben_partouch , this is both amazing and clearly needs to be a real piece of functionality. This is much better than nothing, but anyone doing animation is going to want to be able to drag break points around on a timeline much more graphically. It's nice to be able to control things in real physical values (e.g. m/s and m^2/s), but visually controlling things is often preferred. Being able to drag the assembly directly and record a position and then have Onshape animate between those positions would be a much more typical approach.

I'm also surprised that the ease-in ease-out is only rounded for linear motion. It's probably good enough for basic animation, but if you look at 3D animation tools or motion graphic tools, there are typically a large number of ease-in/out options.

MichaelPascoe

Thanks for this feature Neil! Looks like you put a lot of work into it.

billyzelsnack

This is insane. Both definitions. I love/hate it so much.

EvanReese

Neil, this is really amazing! Your features are always so thorough. Clever how you're making the first feature UI look different from subsequent ones.

jan_bouwman

https://youtu.be/Llsd4rxHDV8?si=djGlGUxA-zNuD7nq

wow… this is great!

I do a lot of animation (manually) like the ones above, and I think this FS will save me lots of time!
Thank you

NeilCooke

@jan_bouwman although I wrote this for a customer, your original post inspired me to get this done!

MDesign

Wow! speechless. That's amazing. Bravo!!

jan_bouwman

@NeilCooke

Nice to know.. You’re welcome 😀

MichaelPascoe

Btw, the voice clone is getting better! Doesn't feel like the real Neil, but it is pretty good.

NeilCooke

@MichaelPascoe haha actually that is me, but it was done in a rush.

MichaelPascoe

What!?? 🤣

The clipping threw me for a loop. I would have bet and lost money on that.

EvanReese

@jan_bouwman That animation is in Onshape?! 🤯 great job

jelte_steur814

Beautiful application of FS.

STEG

Wow! What a great feature! 👏

Also the kind of thing that makes me feel dumb by the way… 🤪

jan_bouwman

@EvanReese yes, these animations are all in Onshape and run ‘real time’. No video editing other than some trimming. :-)

Great fun to make, however time consuming.