Kinematic animations in SAP VEA

[Former Member]

Hi All,

First of all thank you for the interesting discussion in this Forum.

Is there a way to create kinematic animations with more than one part moving at the same time in SAP VEA? Something like the hydraulic cylinders in this Video here:

Deep Exploration: Trailer Demonstration - YouTube

or here:

Genie_10 - YouTube

Can these kind of animations be done in SAP VEA, are these imported from a CAD program or just done by trail and error until movements look realistic and smooth?

Thanks in advance!

Regards

Vito

[Former Member]

Hello Adam,

Thanks a lot for your reply. Sorry for my late reply. We've had a Holiday here in Switzerland on Monday. So i just got back in the Office today.

I previously tried to animate excavators, wheel loaders, 6-axis robots etc. and i worked my way up from the parts which are directly located at the main frame towards the bucket. First of all i had to do a lot of re-grouping in secen hierachy. This worked fine so far. I was just curious if there's any other, faster and more accurate way to get there. According to your reply it sounds like there isn't at the moment. As you've mentioned a axis constraint tool would certainly be interesting and help a lot to make things easier.

I found this video that shows how easy axis constraints can be setup in SpaceClaim:

SpaceClaim Four bar Mechanism Motion - YouTube

Would be great if you could implement something similar in VEA as well in the future.

Many thanks again for taking your time answering my question and creating the nice looking excavator arm animation.

Regards

Vito

[Former Member]

Hello Vito,

This sounds like a good topic for a video tutorial.

Animations like this can be done in VEA or imported from dedicated animation systems like Maxx and Maya. They cannot be imported from CAD, however. I find it is generally easy enough to animate it using "Forward Kinematics" in VEA. As many parts as you like can move at one time and the placement of pivots and the scene tree hierarchy are very important to create these types of animations.

Like with all animations in any animation system getting the timing right is part of the "art" for realistic animations and can take some trial and error to get just the right believability. We are also looking at possibilities to making these easier using orientation constraints in the future as one idea.

We have had a few request for an "Inverse Kinematic" animation system where the user could set up all the necessary constraints and then just grab the bucket at the end of the arm and move it and the arm and associated cylinders would bend accordingly. There just haven't been enough use cases for this yet to warrant creating such a tool.

Are you trying to animate something specific? Maybe I can help.

Regards,

Adam

FYI -  VEA is the newest version of Deep Exploration.

[Former Member]

Hello Again Vito,

I downloaded a free model and created this animation in VEA this afternoon as an example of what can be done.

It took about an hour to find a model download it, convert it, rearrange hierarchy, animate it, capture video and post it.

-Regards,

-Adam