Animated AR content is one of the powerful ways that Augmented Reality grab attention and excite users. Animations help convey information in ways that static content just comes up short and can expose workings of objects that would otherwise be hidden in traditional media.
Adding animations can bring lots of value; yet many people are intimidated by it. With tools like Misterine’s AR Studio adding animations can be done by anyone. Advanced users can leverage more capabilities or create animations using the external tools with which they are familiar.
Misterine AR Studio supports animated AR content creation in 5 ways to cover the capabilities and requirements of a broad spectrum of users and needs.
1 Animation Generators
Misterine AR Studio has several generators that make it simple to add common animation styles to your AR content. With these generators adding animations is straightforward for anyone even those with no animation experience. You can think of these as the 3D equivalents of PowerPoint’s animations.
Generators available currently:
- Fly In/Out
- Screw In/Out
- Move
- Rotate around local point
- Rotate
- Scale
- Uniform Scale
As an example, the Screw In and Screw Out generator pairs make a very common task for animating AR Manuals easy. Showing a screw/bolt/nut screwing in/out is a compound movement, with the rotation and linear translation components. With the generator this task boils down to simple adjustments of parameters.
2 Keyframe Animations
Anyone who has ever done animation work no matter how amatuer will be familiar with keyframe animations. It is the psuedo standard in the industry. Misterine AR Studio supports keyframe AR animations with a familiar interface.
3 Timelines
Animations that are complex or go for longer periods of time are often easier implemented and even conceptualized as compounds of simpler animations. Misterine AR Studio supports this with our animation timelines. The timeline design is familiar to anyone who has worked with video editing software.
By placing and moving animation clips and generators it is possible to create complex and length animations. A simple example. If we want to show the removal of a series of bolts, the timeline allows us to handle this easily. The initial part is unscrewing the bolt, done with a generator we saw in 1 above. Then a simple movement animation can move the bolt away quicker. Finally, we can make the bolt disappear so it doesn’t get in the way. All these are done with simple generators, but by adjusting them in a timeline we get a more complex behavior.
4 Import via 3D exchange formats
The right tool for animating might be the tool in which your model or even CAD was created. Engineers, modelers, or animators all have the software they are used to using. Even though Misterine AR Studio’s animation tools will feel familiar to them, they aren’t the same and may not support all the same things.
Misterine AR Studio supports import of animations on any of the 3D exchange formats that support animations and that we support – which is most. This means it is easy to have your people just do the animations in their systems and import them ready to go. The only limitations are that some systems will support animating things Misterine AR Platform doesn’t yet support, e.g. texture animations.
5 Animation Assets
Within a single scene it is easy to copy and paste clips and animations to replicate them between objects, for instance for all 4 bolts holding a plate on an object. Misterine AR Studio includes the ability to save Animation Assets that can be shared across projects. This fulfills the needs of animators who have repeated cases where the animations can be used and can be used for prototypes that need only slight customization. This includes not just simple animations, but fully compound animations.
Animations assets can also be merged together with existing animations allow an easy way to create new compound animations.
Conclusion
Making animated AR content doesn’t have to be hard with Misterine AR Studio. With 5 different ways to create animations for your Augmented Reality content, we support different levels of users and abilities to leverage this important tool to make AR more powerful.