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FIGURE 23.16

Key points locate and organize changes in position or properties.

Using the Orientation and Camera Views feature

An important fact about using view and camera key points is that the Orientation and Camera Views feature in the MotionManager is locked by default. This means that you cannot change the view in an animation by accident. To unlock it, right-click the Orientation and Camera Views entry, and deselect the Disable View Key Creation option. The icon changes from a black diamond with a red circle and line to a blue telescope.

If you don't understand why this setting is turned off by default, try working with it turned on for a while as you are learning the software. You may find that, unless you are extraordinarily well organized, you will make many unwanted changes to the view, because you are unconsciously rotating the view to see it better, and forgetting that the change is being recorded. This is a very common mistake among users when creating an animation.

Best Practice

The best way to handle the Orientation and Camera Views feature is to select the Disable View Key Creation option (allow view changes) only when you want to establish the view key points, and then deselect it when you are done.

To start this animation of the view, you need to deselect the Disable View Key Creation option, so that the blue telescope icon appears to the left of the entity in the design tree.

Disabling playback of view keys

This option will become important later when you start making the actual assembly move, but it is mentioned here just for the sake of being complete. You can play back the assembly and disable the view changes. To do this, right-click the Orientation and Camera Views item in the MotionManager, and select Disable Playback of View Keys from the menu. Very often when dealing with assembly motion, it helps to see the assembly from a particular point of view. You can't do that if your animation is always changing the view. Remember to deselect this setting before recording the animation to a file.

Introducing the timebar

The timebar is the vertical gray line in the timeline area that denotes the current time that you are editing in the animation. Refer to Figure 23.1, which identifies the major parts of the MotionManager interface. When you make a change to any element that can be animated, that change is applied at the time denoted by the timebar. To make a key point–driven animation, the workflow usually involves moving the timebar, making a set of changes, moving the timebar, making another set of changes, and so on.

To try this out on an assembly, open the Robot Assembly in the Robot Arm folder on the DVD. You can follow along with the existing motion study or create a new one and experiment on your own. Start by making sure the timebar is set to zero (all the way to the left), and then position the view to start the animation. In this case, display the View Orientation dialog box (press the spacebar) and double-click the view named 1.

Because the Orientation and Camera Views item is disabled, this view change is not recorded. In order to record it, right-click the key point to the right of Orientation and Camera Views, and select Replace Key, as shown in Figure 23.17. This replaces the existing key with the new view orientation.

FIGURE 23.17

Selecting Replace Key to change the view at a view orientation key point

The view should remain static for a couple of seconds when the animation starts; it might be too confusing to start the animation immediately with the view changing. To create this pause, copy the first key point from the 0-second mark to the 2-second mark. It is as easy as it sounds. Click the key point in the same row as the Orientation and Camera Views, and then Ctrl+drag it to the right to the 2-second mark. This causes the first 2 seconds of the view to be static.

Creating key points

Next, move the timebar to the 5-second mark, display the View Orientation dialog box again, activate