Animation Resources

Below is a comprehensive collection of animation tutorials in SolidWorks, Autodesk Inventor, NX and Blender. Animations help to visualize your concepts by providing a professional quality rendering of your components or system. These have been particularly effective during the presentations to convey the ideas in a very short time.

Animation Tutorials for SolidWorks

1. SolidWorks Help for Motion Studies: Webpage
2. Basic Animation: Tutorial
3. Animation with Cams: Tutorial 1, Tutorial 2
4. Hydraulic Press Assembly with Virtual Spring: Tutorial
5. Assembly Animation: Tutorial 1, Tutorial 2
6. Changing View Orientation and using Spot Light: Tutorial
7. Animating a Spring: Tutorial 1, Tutorial 2, Tutorial 3
8. Walk through: Tutorial
9. Animating a Water Flow: Tutorial
10. Belt Conveyor: Tutorial
11. Four-Bar Mechanism: Tutorial
12. Rotating Disc, Four-Bar Mechanism and Roller on a Ramp: Tutorial

Animation Tutorials for Autodesk Inventor

1. Dynamic Simulation: Tutorial 1, Tutorial 2, Tutorial 3
2. Component Animation: Tutorial
3. Assembly Animation: Tutorial 1, Tutorial 2
4. Animating with Constraints: Tutorial
5. Assembly Animation and Inventor Studio Basics: Tutorial
6. Animating Gears: Tutorial
7. Animating Sliders: Tutorial
8. Animating Cam and Follower System: Tutorial

Animation Tutorials for NX

1. NX Help for Motion Simulation:
   1. Open NX
   2. Create a new file
   3. Go to Start and Select motion simulation
   4. Go to Help and Select on context, the help file will open in an internet browser
   5. Allow blocked content, click on the contents button (on the left of the screen)
   6. You will get the NX product help for motion simulation
2. Motion Simulation of Gears: Tutorial
3. Motion Simulation of Rack and Pinion: Tutorial
4. Motion Simulation of Piston and Crank Shaft Assembly: Tutorial

Animation Tutorials for Blender

Blender is an open-source modelling and animation tool which offers a professional quality rendering system available by free download.

1. Blender Cookie, offers a free series of introductory videos for getting started with Blender as well as more advanced material: Webpage Introductory Videos


2. Introductory tutorials
   1. Downloading and Installing
   2. Interface and Navigation
   3. Modelling
   4. Materials
   5. Animation
   6. Rendering
   7. Lighting


3. Tutorials for specific techniques
   1. Animating a Gear Train
   2. Tip: Cleaning-Up Imported Models
   3. Rigging a Piston
   4. Tip: Animation Curves
   5. Tip: Camera Fly Mode Tool
   6. Tip: Rendering an Infinite Ground Plane
   7. Tip: Downloading Test Builds
   8. Tip: Learning 3 Point Lighting


4. BlenderNation.com
   The Blender news site, BlenderNation contains lots of resources and the latest information relating to blender. Check out the Tutorials section for lots of various demonstrations of how to do just about anything in Blender.


5. Other Resources
   1. Material Archive (Check out Linked Libraries first)
   2. CG Textures (requires free registration)
   3. Wikibook: Noob to Pro
   4. Education & Help (Blender website)
   5. Blender Manual

In case you have any questions or need help with your analysis, contact your project coordinator(s)