Day 30 of Learn Fusion 360 in 30 Days for Complete Beginners! – 2023-24 EDITION – Introduction to Autodesk Fusion’s Animation Workspace

Animation Demo File

Use the Balloon Racer demo file to follow along with the animation tutorial: https://a360.co/3BmEjW8

Select the Fusion ‘share link‘ above > select the ‘Open in Fusion’ button > select ‘Open’ when prompted. This will open the demo file in your Autodesk Fusion application. Everything is set up and ready to use with the tutorial.

Key Terminology for Drawing Workspace in Autodesk Fusion

• Storyboard: A timeline structure where you create, organize, and manage animation sequences and camera movements.
• Timeline: The horizontal bar at the bottom of the workspace that tracks the sequence of animated actions, including component movements and camera changes.
• Component: Individual parts of the model that can be animated, including movements such as rotation, translation, or scaling.
• Transform: The operation of moving, rotating, or scaling a component to create animation.
• Camera: The viewpoint for viewing and capturing the animation. Camera movements can also be animated.
• Exploded View: A sequence where parts of the model are spaced apart, showing how components fit together or are assembled.
• Playback Controls: Tools for controlling the preview of the animation, allowing you to play, pause, rewind, or loop the sequence.
• Action: An individual movement or event applied to a component, such as translation, rotation, or fading.
• Camera Animation: The animation of the camera’s position or orientation, allowing dynamic viewpoints to emphasize specific angles or movements in the animation.
• Playhead: The current position on the timeline that indicates where the animation is being previewed.
• Publish: The process of saving the completed animation in a specific video format (e.g., MP4) for playback or sharing.

Transcript

Welcome to Day #30 of Learn Fusion 360 in 30 days!

If you’ve enjoyed this free course and want to support the channel, consider donating to help me continue creating content. And stay tuned—In the coming months, I’ll be launching a ‘Design for 3D Printing’ course to help you take your skills even further!

Fusion’s Animation workspace allows you to animate parts and assemblies with exploded views and more.

Download and open the Balloon Racer demo file using the link below.

As we’ve discussed throughout the 30 days, Components are required to use Joints and many other features in Fusion. The features within the Animation Workspace also require components.

Double-check that all of your 3D bodies are nested in Components. If not, right-click and select “Create components from bodies”.

We can now head to the workspaces dropdown list. Select Animation.

This places us in Fusion’s Animation workspace. Remember the intended use of this workspace is to create relatively simple product animations. It’s not a fully-featured animation software.

The Animation workspace has very few features compared to the Design and Manufacture workspaces.

At the bottom of the Animation workspace is the Animation timeline. Our timeline is made up of storyboards. Each storyboard includes a collection of views and actions along the timeline.

A single storyboard represents a single animation. We can create additional storyboards to create additional animations, all within the same file.

As we use different features, we’ll want to pay close attention to our playhead. When the playhead is on our timeline, the actions are captured and can be edited.

When the playhead is at 0 seconds or in the scratch zone – this empty zone to the left of the timeline – the actions will not be recorded.

Let’s start by creating an exploded view, where the parts move away from each other.

Double-check that your playhead is anywhere in the timeline. If not, go ahead and drag it over.

Start by selecting the assembly in the Browser. You’ll always need to select the components you would like to animate, before activating the feature.

Select “Auto-explode” in the toolbar.

Notice that the ‘Explosion Scale’ slider allows us to refine how far away the parts end up.

We can also turn on “trail lines,” which help identify how components are transformed within an animation.

By default, it will explode all parts at the same time. However, we can change this to sequential, making one part after another.

After selecting the green check mark, we can press the play button at the bottom of the window to play back the animation.

As you’ll see, we can quickly create a basic exploded view.

Perhaps, we instead want the wheels to appear to be put on the axles.

We can achieve this by simply reversing the storyboard. Right-click on the storyboard and select reverse.

When I play the animation, you’ll see the actions are now reversed.

The Auto-Explode feature is limited in what it can do. Oftentimes, you’ll want to manually adjust the actions to further refine the animation.

Let’s right-click on our storyboard and select Copy. We can right-click again on the name, this time selecting “Paste.” This will create a new storyboard with our existing actions.

Take a minute to right-click on the name and rename each storyboard so it’s easier to keep track of.

Notice our Animation Timeline includes individual actions that represent each move. We can drag individual actions around to stagger the order in which each object moves.

We can also extend or shorten the length of each action by dragging the ends.

For more precise editing, you can also double-click to define the exact start and end time of an action.

Take a minute to reposition some of the actions, then playback the animation to check your results.

Don’t worry about the results yet, I just want you to get comfortable adjusting the timeline actions.

When rotating our design with the ViewCube or computer mouse, the view is recorded on the “View” track in our Animation Timeline.

Watch how the view now changes when I play back the animation.

The timeline scrubber can be moved further down in the Animation Timeline to set the distance of our next View.

View actions will also honor the zoom position of your model. For example, we can zoom out to make the model smaller. This will record the zoom without any additional movement as I didn’t adjust the ViewCube.

After each new action, I recommend reviewing the animation and adjusting your actions as needed.

Let’s create a third storyboard where we’ll define a more intentional animation.

Notice we can choose to create a Clean Storyboard or “start from end of previous”.

Let’s choose “Clean” which will leave each component in the location it was created in the Design workspace.

The other option derives the location from the last location in our previous storyboard.

We’re going to create an animation that depicts someone assembling the 3D print, with the parts starting flat on the table.

We can use the Transform Components tool to individually move components to their desired position.

Let’s do two wheels at a time, by shift-clicking the wheels on one side. Once Transform is active, we can drag the rotation slider 90 degrees, so the wheels are parallel to the table.

We’ll also move them 30mm away from the car body, and move them down -3mm, which puts them on the same plane as the car body.

Before selecting OK, ensure your playhead is in the scrubber area, as we don’t want this action to be recorded in our timeline.

If yours does happen to record a view in the timeline, you’ll want to delete the actions and re-do it.

We’ll then repeat this process for the other two wheels. Again, keep an eye on the playhead and make sure it stays within the scrubber area.

We’ll now use Transform to move the two axles away from the car body, past the set of wheels. We’ll also make this -3mm so everything is sitting on the same plane.

Now that everything is lying flat, we can use the “Restore Home” feature. This feature automatically moves the component back to the original location, as defined in the Design workspace.

Let’s shift-click both of the axles and then select Restore Home.

Remember our timeline actions are not recorded if we’re in the scrubber area. Select undo, and let’s first drag the playhead into the timeline.

Use Restore Home again. Notice we get a timeline action for each one.

I’ll drag the ends of the actions, making them both 1 second in length.

If we play back the animation, you’ll find our axles move simultaneously. 

We can stagger the actions in our timeline, making the front axle move first.

Let’s now repeat the Restore Home process for the four wheels. We can shift-click them in the Canvas or the Fusion Browser.

After using Restore Home, each one will record an action in the timeline.

Take a minute to adjust the actions so our front wheels and rear wheels are sequential.

Let’s playback the animation to check what we have so far.

I’d also like this to Zoom in while the wheels are placed on the axles. Remember we can simply zoom in on the model and the action will be recorded in our animation timeline.

Take a few minutes to experiment with the length and position of the actions. You’ll find that a few modifications can change the animation results quite a bit.

Lastly, I’d like to make it appear that the car drives out of view.

We can do this by first changing our orientation to the desired position.

Once complete, we’ll Shift-click all seven components. Then, we’ll use the Transform tool to move them off the screen. Use the dialog input fields to define a precise dimension, as needed.

Double-check that your actions don’t overlap, so the car is assembled before driving away.

I’ll move all seven actions to the right and playback the animation

Once your animation is ready, you can use the Publish feature to save a video of your animation. Note that you can choose to export all storyboards together or the current storyboard. Let’s select current.

Choose the desired video resolution and select OK.

You can then save the MP4 file to your local computer, the cloud, or both.

You’re now ready to animate your designs with Autodesk Fusion!

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I hope you’ve enjoyed this free 30-day course! Comment below on what type of content you’d like to see next.

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