Discover how to create a sophisticated animation using Navisworks, incorporating section plane tools and camera movements. Learn how to export this animation to a video format, suitable for viewing by individuals who do not have Navisworks.
Key Insights
- The article provides a step-by-step tutorial on creating complex animations with section plane tools in Navisworks, beginning with the building appearing to rise from the ground.
- Instructions are given on how to enhance these animations by moving the camera as well as the section planes, making the animation more dynamic and interesting.
- It also explains in detail how to export the final animation in a video format that can be viewed without the need for Navisworks, making it accessible and convenient for sharing.
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Welcome back to the Navisworks video series. In this video we'll be covering more viewpoint animations, this time including section animation, as well as exporting those animations to some kind of video format. We're going to use the metogate.nwd model, the one that actually has your name attached to it.
This file starts out right where I left off on the section 1 viewpoint, and what we'll be doing is creating an animation with the section plane tools that starts out with the building not even showing on screen, just maybe the slab, and we'll be ending with the entire building built out. And you'll see the section plane move up all the way to the top of the building, looking like the building is coming out of the ground. And we'll be using all the tools that we've already learned.
Let's start with the section 1 viewpoint. We're going to make a copy of this viewpoint by right clicking on it, and then going to add copy, changing the name of that copy to section bottom, and then we will take section 3, right click, and then go to add copy. Call this one section top.
For simplicity's sake, I'm going to move these viewpoints down below all of the other ones so they're easy to access and see. And then we want to just edit these so that our section planes are in the position where we want to see them. So first let's start with section bottom.
We'll go up to the sectioning tools, turn on the gizmo, and we'll see that our section plane shows up. Let's move this down very, very close to the ground. So the ground is still showing, but our slab is only barely showing.
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To save this position, right click on section bottom, and then go to update. Next we'll go to section top, move the gizmo and the section plane above the entire building, right click on section top, and then select update. Excellent.
Now our viewpoints are set up. Let's turn off the gizmo tool just to get it out of the way. Let's run a little preview.
This looks about right. Right click on the save viewpoints panel, and then select add animation. The animation container will name section animation, and then you'll want to move your viewpoints into that section animation container.
Make sure that the order is section bottom on top, section top on bottom, because we want it to start here and end here. Now let's run a quick preview on our section animation. Go up to the animation tab.
Looks like our section animation is active, and it looks like our duration is a little short. It's one second, so let's see if we can change that. Let's right click on the section animation, and then edit, and let's change the duration to, let's say, nine seconds.
And then once you have your duration set to nine seconds, just select your section animation and hit play. We'll see that our duration is a lot more likable than one second. So before we export this, there's a way to make this animation a little more interesting, and that is by making the camera animated as well as the section planes.
I'm going to start with the section bottom, and I'll just navigate away from where the viewpoint was and set it to somewhere like that. Right click on the section bottom, and then select update. Now keep in mind that you can actually edit these viewpoints even though they're within an animation container.
Everything in here is live. Let's do a little preview section animation, hit play, and see Navisworks assigned probably a long duration to my animation once again. Yes, it did.
I'm going to move this back to nine seconds and try it one more time. There we go. Cool.
Now once we're satisfied with the preview of our animation, we can export this animation to a file format that somebody without Navisworks can use. Up in the animation panel, animation tab rather, the export panel, you'll find the export animation tool. Let's go through this dialog box piece by piece.
The source is current animation. We want to make sure that our animation that we want to export is current. The renderer is talking about what visual quality or level of detail you want to show in your model.
We have a couple of choices. There's viewport, which is exactly what we're seeing in front of us in the view. Or there's Autodesk, which is I believe mental ray, and it'll make a much nicer looking export if you have all of your lighting and materials set up.
But if you don't, it'll just take you a very long time and it won't look as good as viewport. In output, we have some options. We can export this as a series of JPEGs that make up a video.
They don't actually stitch them together to make the video, but it exports a number of images. We can export a number of PNG images or bitmap images, but the only real video format that we can use is Windows AVI. Let's select Windows AVI and let's go into the options of Windows AVI.
With video compression, we have some choices. We can compress this video with a number of these codecs. You can probably keep it easy on yourself and go to full frames uncompressed.
It's going to make an extremely large video, but it will export the video very quickly. The next section, size, will allow you to set a resolution for your video. And the type, it says explicit.
That means that we can set both the width and height. We can use the aspect of what I have on screen, which allows you to set either a width or height and the aspect remains the same. Or you can use the entire resolution of the view, which is the actual resolution that this scene is set to.
I'm going to use aspect ratio. Just keep in mind that the larger the resolution here, the better your video quality, except the more space it's going to take up and the longer it's going to take to render. So I'm going to set this to 512.
See, my height sets automatically to keep the same ratio that is shown in my scene. And here's your frames per second or fields per second. By default, it's set to 6. I'm going to set mine to 15.
The higher this is, the smoother your video will be. And then anti-aliasing will actually increase the amount of time it takes to render your project, but it will smooth all the edges. Let's leave that at none for now.
And I hit OK. It'll ask you where you want to save it. And let's save it in Lesson 1. It's giving you an automatic file name of Medigate Your Name, sectionanimation.avi. Once your video is done, I've cheated a little bit and skipped ahead.
You can open it with your favorite media player. And then once you hit play, you'll see your exported video. And this video can be sent via FTP or, if it's small enough, emailed to somebody.
But they do not need Navisworks to view your work. So that concludes the section animation tutorial as well as the exporting viewpoints animations. I look forward to covering the animator tool in a future video.
Hope you enjoyed this one, and I will see you in the next. Thanks!