COMPUTER AIDED ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
 Workshop 14 Notes, Week of November 14 , 2016

Animation

Within this set of workshop notes are several examples of animation in Grasshopper. Rhino's plugin Bongo provides more tools for settting object keyframing in combination with Parent - Child object top down hierarchies. For these additional methods in Bongo see the getting started tutorials on the rhino3d web site: 

These notes reflect the first part of the workshop which was done with Grasshopper. For the second part of the workshop,  the animation techniques in Rhino Render, the tutorial notes  available online by McNeel are comprehensive.

1.Create objects in Rhino:

1.1 Create "Rectangular Plane: corner to corner surface" from the "Surface Creation" palette (second row, first icon) on the default layer, and then on layers 1, 2, and 3, add a box, sphere and truncated cone as in previous tutorials.

basic setup of objects

1.2 Add a point at the center of the base of the box on layer 1.

Add point to base of box.

2. Create an animation in Grasshopper:

2.1   Open grasshopper, and from the Parameters tab add a pt component to the convass window, rename it "centerPt" , and link it to point at the the center of the box.

parameter for pt

2.1  Select the "tab" for "Geometry" and then under the table  select the generic "Geometry" component and link it to the cube in Rhino.

geom component

2.2 SImilarly select a second "Geometry" component and link it to both the  sphere and cone using the "Set Multiple Geometries" option.

line geo component to sphere and cone

2.3  Go to the upper left hand corner of the "Input" area, and add three floating point numerical sliders within Grasshopper that range in value from 0.0 to 720 and set the value of each to 0.0.

three number sliders

2.4 Go to the "Vector" tab, add a "Vector XYZ" component fomr the lower left hand corner of the "Vector" area, and connect the sliders to the input ports.

add vector component

2.5 In the "Params" tab, Add a number slider with the value of "30", and then  to "Math" tab, add a divide "A/B" component,  divide the "Z component by 30, and direct it's output to replace the "Vec" (vector)  "Z" input port.

replace z component

2.6. Go to the "Transform" tab, and from the "Euclidian" area, add a two "Move" components, one for each of the two Geo components. Take the "V" output port of the "Vec" comonent and link it to both of the "T" input ports of the move components.

add move components

2.7  Adjust the value of the numerical slider "A" to move the objects in the air.

adjust "A" slider

2.8 Right-click on the word "Move" for the "Move" component for the box, and turn off the "Preview"option such that the transformed cube isn't visible.

turn off move preview

2.9 Go to the "Transform" tab and "Euclidian" area and add a "Rotate3D" component to the right of the "Move" component for the cube.

add rotate xyz componet

2.10 Connect the output port "G" to the input port "G" of the Rot3D component. Connect the output port of the "centerPt" component to the input port "C" of the "Rot3D" componnent, Connet the output port of the division component "A/B" to the input port "A" of the "Rot3D" component. Change the value of the numerical slider "A" and note how the cube rotates about the axis created by the "centerPt" point as it also moves up and down along the z-axis.

rotate and translate the cube

2.11 Create a folder named "ani1" on the desktop.  Right click on the numerical slider "A" and select the option "Animate".

right click on number slider "A"

2.12 In the "Animation Contorls" dialog box that follows, browse to and select the "Ani1" folder on the desktop, set the file name prefix to "lift" (e.g.," lift_{0:00000}.bmp", set the resolution to 640 x 360 pixels, and set the frame count to 120. Zoom out so that most of the animation is visible in the preview window.

animation controls

2.13  Select the "OK" button, and not the two text fields in the Rhino command prompt area. In the first text field select the "ani1" folder on the computer's desktop. In the second text field set the of run animatio to yes, and then select the "enter" or "return" key on the computer's keyboard.  The individual frames witin the animation are place in the "ani1" folder:

animation folder

2.14 Open Apple's Quicktime Pro, go to "File" open image sequence, select the first frame, set the frame rate at 30 frames per secton, and click "OK". Note that Quicktime Pro is presented loaded on all computers within the School of Architecture. However, other video editing programs (e.g., iMovieHD, Final Cut Pro, and Adobe Premiere) can also be used to compile the frames of the animation into a completed movie file.


2.15 Within Quicktime Pro, play back the animation using the right pointing play arrow. To save the file, go to the "file/save" menu,  use the "Self-contained" option,  and save the file to a Quicktime movie file format "test.mov".  Note that Quicktime is also applicable to compiling frames completed animation techniques possible through Rhino Render.