Hi

It's been a while since I have been here.....Went off and learned blender and UV's and Shaders and Materials and so on.  I'm currently working on moving assets into Unreal to start building my own games (while learning Unreal).

I've come back to IClone6 to create my animations because I thought I was familiar with it. Last year I got this working, but I don't have the original file any more. IClone6 is messing with my degrees of rotation this time, so what I put in doesn't stay there.

In key framing my propeller, I have the propeller straight up so that it is rotating in the Y axis.  
I set 10 Key Frames with the following values:
20, 40, 60, 80, 100, 120, 140, 160, 180, 200.

When I scrub back through the Key Frames, I get:
20, 40, 60, 80, 80, 60, 40, 20, 0, 340

It seems to me that last year I went from 0 to 360 and then from 360 to zero to get the prop going in reverse.

There have been a few updates since I last did this, but I'm wondering if there is something I've missed on a fundamental level.  I found some 5 and 6 year old posts on propellers, but they don't seem to have what I am hitting.

Any suggestions or tutorials appreciated.

Thanks
Tim

There are surely times when it is good to be stubborn.  Knowing when is the gift of experience.

When I animate rotation, I set key frames for 0, 120, and 240 degrees, and then one at a bit less than 360, depending on the number of frames in the cycle. For example, if a full rotation takes 60 frames, I will set a key frame at frame 60 with a rotation of 360 - 60/360 = 354. the next frame (61) will then have a rotation of "0'. 

In that sense iClone 6 works the same as earlier versions. I do believe though that you need to define a full 360-degree rotation, although there is no need for a lot of key frames (assuming a regular motion).

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animagic

Thank you very much!  That's exactly what I needed to know.  I set up a single disk and it's perfect.

There must be something up in my model that I don't understand.  I'm starting with x=0 and z=0, with all of my rotation on y.

My x and z are flipping between exactly 0 or exactly 180, both at the same time.  When I change them both to 0, they flip to 180 on the next frame.  If I set that frame to x=0 and x=0, they flip to 180 on the next frame.

I looked at the pivot point in Iclone and it has X and Z both = 180.  I edited that to be 0 in both cases, but it doesn't stop the x and z flipping.

I'm going to go back to 3Dexchange and make sure that all of my pivot points are pointing the same way and then I will re-import the model and try it again.

Thanks for the help

Tim

There are surely times when it is good to be stubborn.  Knowing when is the gift of experience.

This 0/180 issue has been in iClone for a long time. Peter (RL) once explained that it doesn't matter, but I forgot his explanation...

I just noticed an error in my formula: the last frame should be at 360 - 360/60 for a 60-frame cycle.

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Hi animagic

Thanks for the quick response!  I appreciate the updated formula.

I'm not convinced that the flipping doesn't matter.  When it flips, it changes the value that I have placed in Y.  Perhaps if I don't reset x and z, the animation will play properly, but.....It makes things very confusing.  I'm doing this to copy the animation out of iClone into Unreal.  Will it not cause me grief there?

I'll play along quietly, but I don't think it should be happening and I would certainly feel much better if it wasn't.

Thanks

Tim

There are surely times when it is good to be stubborn.  Knowing when is the gift of experience.

Hi animagic and hopefully others who attempt to do this.

It is something in my model, but it is not related to pivot points.  I made sure that all of mine are aligned in the same orientation.

To move on...  I created a disc and Attached my propeller assembly to that disk.  I will hide the disc inside the geometry for the propeller assembly.  The rotation is now consistently staying within the Z axis as it is the disc that I am rotating and not the propeller assembly.  The steps (degrees) suggested by animagic are perfect, and nothing in any axis is flipping or changing.

With this workaround, I consider the matter resolved.

Thanks
TimV

There are surely times when it is good to be stubborn.  Knowing when is the gift of experience.

About time your company actually fixed this issue! Its only been like 10 years or however long your product has been running.
Its a disgustingly out of date method to get an even rotation of an object.
Jeez will you ever fix it??? How hard can it be ?? erm .. A SIMPLE  ROTATE THIS OBJECT by N degrees in whatever axis.
Instead of having to tweak some workaround stupid methodology WHY NOT ATTEMPT TO FIX IT. It has confused EVERY SINGLE USER! erm sorry CUSTOMER!

Another option is to animate in Blender. You attach a certain part, like a propeller or a car tire, to an empty and simple animate the empty via keyframe in the timeline. Export via FBX and simply import back in with animation.

This greatly helps with helicopter propellers, because Blender has a better transition curve when it comes to animating; it's much smoother. It's a bit more work in the end, but I think it pays off. I've done this method in past work.







.

iClone Certified Director and makes miserable Westerns.

Especially when there several pretty easy ways to accomplish it using RL's "rotation helper", physics constraints and forces, and good old key framing.