Assembling Process Animation
Overview/Goal
A water plant has complicated structures. It is difficult to comprehend what components it consists of and how the components assemble together to function as a water cleaning system. To explain effectively about the complex elements, the design team posted visual aids such as figures and diagrams alongside texts on the confluence pages.
The main purpose of creating an assembling process animation of the water plant is to enhance the visual aids. The original images have only single fixed viewpoints although they described detailed information about small parts. With those two-dimension figures, it is hard to imagine how the water plants look like in three-dimension world. In video, unlike in the figures, creators can change the perspectives of camera and simulate the look of the plants in three-dimension. In addition, the animation shows how each component of the plant interacts with one and another in the water cleaning system.
Programs Used
AutoCAD and Autodesk VIZ are interfaced for rendering the animation.
Difficulties in Creating Animations
There are several difficulties in creating animations with AutoCAD and AudeskVIZ.
Complex Structure of Water Plant
As mentioned in Overview/Goal, a water cleaning system is complicated and consists of many elements. For example, the sedimentation tank (one part of the water plant) consists of more than 100 objects. In Autodesk VIZ, to make move-object animation, the original and replaced locations (xyz coordinate) of each object must be specified and recorded. This task is simple, but it is repetitive and takes more than several hours.
Too Many Frames to Render
Autodesk VIZ takes more than 2 hours to render just one and half minute animation showing how the objects assemble together into a sedimentation tank.
Automated Scripts Not Possible
AutoCAD and Autodesk VIZ might not include any commands that allow users to write automated scripts for rendering animations. This being said, each time the design of a water tank is created or updated, a new move-object video must be created from the beginning.
Future Goals
Because this project is in the early stage, there are many tasks to be done. Here are the goals for the future group working on this project.
1. Make videos with zoom-in and multiple perspectives.
The video made in Summer 2009 has one fixed viewpoint and shows the overall assembling process. It might be better to create videos showing more detailed assembling process and different perspectives if necessary.
2. Make walk-through videos.
A walk-through video that traces the water flow within the water plant must be intriguing and show how each component of the water plant functions.
3. Work on other parts as well.
The video created in Summer 2009 shows the assembling process of a sedimentation tank. The videos of flocculator and other parts of the water plant must be created.
4. Find more efficient way of creating animations.
As mentioned above, the major difficulty in creating the assembling video is that rendering animations in Autodesk VIZ and AutoCAD is quite inefficient. The future group in the design team should try to find a more efficient way of creating the animations and, if possible, of writing automated scripts in MtoA file of Mathcad.