Been playing around with AnimationLab again so thought I'd post the results in case anyone hasn't seen one before - this is an old cooker rod thermostat, they haven't been used in domestic gas cookers (in the UK) for over 30 years,  there is also an old Flame failure device which are still in use except that old ones use to contain mercury (not allowed these day I don't think).

Drawing and rendering it in v2016 RedSdk wasn't without incident, with multiple crashes and an undo buffer failure (requiring copy/paste into new file), but got there eventually, rendered in stages and joined together in movie program as total rendering time was over 12 hours.

https://youtu.be/rzfl-YRzKis

## Edit ## replaced to get rid of obvious spelling mistake ## End Edit ##

 

Andy,

that's excellent work, and, a lot of work.
Brilliant!

Regards Tim

Nice animation and detailed work. But 12 hours rendering? Nothing against your work Andy, but I hoped that the new RED engine would perform better, especially since it has the "Use GPU" option now.

Very nice job Andy. Thanks for sharing.

Beautiful work. I like that all the screws are being screwed in instead of just placed. Was the dial developed using your Beginners guide to 3D text article?

Great work Andy
And like John, i really like to see that the screws was screwed in, it make a huge difference, well worth to wait for the rendering.

Torfinn

Thank you all for your kind comments.

Jason.
To be honest I haven't tried the GPU option yet, rendering an animation can be time consuming with the AVI being saved at 25 frames per second, and if there is an average of 30 seconds for AnimationLab to move the parts and re-render, that's 12 1/2 minutes for 1 second of animation, they aren't all this bad, here its made slow because of the screw threads and springs which for me - slow down TC rendering.

John.
Ah, the numbers, I ended up positioning each one manually as for whatever reason whenever I rendered it some of the numbers seemed to disappear in advanced render (though they were fine in draft and quality render), so some numbers are slightly further away from the handle than others in order to get them to render correctly, fortunately it don't look too bad.

Looks great Andy 

GPU on my machine it can be slow and can just hang TC. Newer GPU's will be able to handle it better. Samples above 1 seem to be the cause. It would be good if the GPU mode could override the sample settings in the material...then again it could be just my machine...

Great job! Andy. > thanks for sharing 
The blue flame was a nice touch.
I agree with Darrel, the Gpu option when enabled can cause TC to hang. I find (compared to the other redsdk render styles that it can alter the appearances of all the materials and scene lighting so I use it carefully and as Darrel says, it’s probably not usable with some display adapters.

Andy, that's fantastic.

Henry H

Beautiful work. I like that all the screws are being screwed in instead of just placed. Was the dial developed using your Beginners guide to 3D text article?

I didn't know that article existed. It's wonderfully useful and IMO should be posted in the Users' forum for wider publicity.

Henry H

On Jason reply above "Nice animation and detailed work. But 12 hours rendering? Nothing against your work Andy, but I hoped that the new RED engine would perform better, especially since it has the "Use GPU" option now." Where is the "Use GPU" option.

You can find it here;
RenderStyles\\Raytrace Standard\Render options\Ray trace

Bottom of the page

Torfinn

Thank you all for your kind comments.

Jason.
To be honest I haven't tried the GPU option yet, rendering an animation can be time consuming with the AVI being saved at 25 frames per second, and if there is an average of 30 seconds for AnimationLab to move the parts and re-render, that's 12 1/2 minutes for 1 second of animation, they aren't all this bad, here its made slow because of the screw threads and springs which for me - slow down TC rendering.

John.
Ah, the numbers, I ended up positioning each one manually as for whatever reason whenever I rendered it some of the numbers seemed to disappear in advanced render (though they were fine in draft and quality render), so some numbers are slightly further away from the handle than others in order to get them to render correctly, fortunately it don't look too bad.

Hi Andy,

I had a play with a similar knob. I extruded the numbers and indicator marks all at once (lock in a Height before extruding), tilted the extrusion (to angle on knob face), then added a box (for its flat face and bent the whole thing with the Bend tool. I can now get rid of the box jig by subtracting a sphere that surrounds it, then move the numbers to the knob. Prior to moving, the orange construction circles make setting up the reference point a snap. At the knob, a little up/down tweaking so the numbers are in and out of the knob face. I'll then make copy of both parts (knob & numbers) and place it a certain distance from the original that I can remember easily. In one set I'll 3D subtract the numbers, in the other set I'll 3D Intersect them. I'll move the intersect object back to the first set to fill in the subtraction recesses and change its color. The knob is basically done.

I tried all the render options and everything showed up. I think TC 2015 had a problem like what you're describing. I had to use Custom ACIS settings to clear up artifacts skinning over subtraction recesses. Doing this two-part subtract/intersect method pretty much guarantees that the letters, or whatever, are nice and smooth with the target object; be it flat or curved. I think that covers most of it, except for the Bending.

I had a play with a similar knob.

That's excellent work John,  if ok I'll add your method to the text article once I've finished playing with some of the more 'odd' methods of getting text onto a curved surface, the one attached uses face to face lofting, not accurate but works ok without distorting the letters too much.. 

On Jason reply above "Nice animation and detailed work. But 12 hours rendering? Nothing against your work Andy, but I hoped that the new RED engine would perform better, especially since it has the "Use GPU" option now." Where is the "Use GPU" option.

As Torfinn stated, it is in the REDSDK render manager. It is available only in 'Advanced Render Styles'. You can get to it thru Tools - Pallets- Advanced Render Styles.  Right click on the style to change, go down to 'Edit RedSdk Rendering Style.  Next, under 'Render Options', click 'Raytrace' and select 'Use GPU'.

Note:  The 'Use GPU' option significantly speeds up rendering, but sometimes may be unstable. For example, I use the GPU for GI Fine Tone HDR, and TC crashed. I discovered it was probably due to maxing out the VRAM (2GB) on my video card. When I rendered with GI Fine, I had no problems.

Edit: see my post here about results with 'Use GPU'.  http://forums.turbocad.com/index.php/topic,18652.0.html

Hi Andy, use what you want. I'll PM you later.

Jason, thanks for the picture. My "Ray trace" page was different than yours. I ran "Options / Rendering Styles / Load Rendering Styles…", using the "Default.dat" from "C:\Program Files\IMSIDesign\TCWP2016\RenderStyles" and replaced my outdated RedSDK settings. Now the setting parameters look the same.

Thanks Torfinn and Jason.

A big thanks to all the contributors in Anilab.

Just before I purchase Anilab 5, why does it take so long based on Andy H's youtube video to render at around 12 hours for such a short video?

You might think that's an odd question since I'm going to buy, but it's real simple from my side of the fence. If I was to make a video of my workshop machines then the person who saw that video against some identifiable objects then maybe they can resolve the scale of what I've built. So initially Animation is from my point of view the best method to "sort the wheat from the chaff", that way I don't compromise my designs to those that just eant to copy them.

Now I know you might think this guy's a little paranoid, that's far from the truth, its just protection for all my endeavours to date.

Andy can you please share your Anilab settings?

Andy can you please share your Anilab settings?
also your pc's cpu and memory etc?

Thanks

Aussiebloke

Andy can you please share your Anilab settings?

Andy can you please share your Anilab settings?
also your pc's cpu and memory etc?

Sure no problem, as for the settings. the Animation was saved at resolution 1280 x 720 AVI, 25 frames per second, therefore 90 second video = 2500 frames, actual times for a video can vary widely, for example in the past there have been some superb 'static' non-AnimationLab (just saved by TC as bitmap) images that had taken hours for just a single image, animation is reliant on whatever settings are used by TC for a normal save-as bmp image (curved reflective surfaces take the longest).

As a rough estimate, I'd say render a drawing in normal TC recording the number of seconds it takes, multiply by 1.5, multiply by the number of expected frames x 1.2,  for example,  if a quality render takes 10 seconds x 1.5 (anim needs extra time to render it to disk) x (30 second video at 25 fps) 750 x 1.2 (you will nearly always extend the video as something will be too fast) = 13500 seconds (3.75 hours), a quick normal render of 2 seconds would take only 3/4 of an hour for the same video.

My system is an older (original) intel i7 3.5Ghz, with a Gforce 660, Ram was 24Gb (now only 16 as Ram died), an old Hitachi HD (known to be slower than other makes but pretty reliable - a lot slower than SSD drives)

Hope I haven't put you off 

Andy

Cheers Andy H, and no you haven't put me off at all.

As I move into this new Anilab topic, I'm sure that there's going to be lots if questions and it's good to know that others can help.

Thanks

Aussiebloke