some help creating an animation please

[phorest]

Welcome to the CADTutor forum phorest. Coming here is like stepping in quicksand. Pretty soon your up to your neck in it and you end up wondering where the day went.

Go ahead and ask your questions that's what we're here for.

Thanks, well, the question is (I don't know should this be in some sort of help section) but i have a model of a Retaining Wall, reinforcements included that i designed in AutoCAD and modeled in sketchup, and its pretty much finished now. Ive rendered the little animation that i saved with sketchup (rendering took hours for a 9 second clip), but what i want to do is to animate it in a way that you can see the step by step method of how retaining walls are made, like the placing of reinforcements and the pouring of concrete etc, showing what gets done it what order, etc. I have 3dsmax (yet to get familiar with it!) Theres an example here on youtube of the general idea, would really appreciate it if someone could give some advice, thanks!

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=KKQiwM_zx7k

[Strix]

I've moved your question to the right section for the right people to see it phorest :thumbsup:

try to keep threads 'on topic' and give them a good descriptive title so that the right people will see them, and they can be easily searched through afterwards :)

[Cad64]

Sorry, but I don't get into animation much. I just don't have the patience for it. But if you Google 3DS Max Animation (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=3ds+max+animation&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=) you will get dozens of results.

[spittle]

Find the little box in the bottom right in the 3DS Max interface. Right click it, and it will give you a list of things you can animate, including materials. This will enable you to animate the transparency of materials if required. Do a tutorial that ships with Max for general animation stuff.
It's not that difficult once you find your way around. Just keep checking your animation cause I found I kept screwing it up when I first started.

[rgarjr]

Sorry, but I don't get into animation much. I just don't have the patience for it. But if you Google 3DS Max Animation (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=3ds+max+animation&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=) you will get dozens of results.

Is doing animation really that involved? Here I thought modeling with polygons was tedious.

[Cad64]

Nah, I guess it's not really all that involved, I just find rigging and animating to be more technical and less fun. I would much rather design a car than have to build it and make it run. But that's just my opinion. I'm sure there are lots of people out there who love animating their creations. I'm just not one of them. :P

[spittle]

I'm certainly no expert an animation but for showing a process I would imagine you could do it by showing before and after each stage. this could be done using transparency to a certain degree and fading in certain components as they are installed. Bending rebar would be easy too.

If you wanted to show the concrete actually pouring then I rekon that could be tough.