Tag Archives: Animation

Dynanimator released: Animating Data Changes in Revit with Dynamo

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You know that feeling? When you have an idea? And you know that if you succeed, you’ll love the outcome? I have that now.

Numeric Parameter

The first time I saw someone animate data changes in a building design environment, I was blown away. I think the people responsible for the slightly embarrassing incident were Stephen Melville and he’s team’s work at Ramboll Computational Design in London. Around the same time I saw Zach Kron’s flying bird wings – a GIF animation made in Revit with Harry Mathison’s Image-O-Matic. That led me to produce a number of similar movie clips, based on Revit’s Conceptual Modeling Environment and Harry’s tool. Later, when I read Michael Kirchner’s research on creating iterative daylighting analysis workflows using Dynamo and Cloud Rendering (Part 1:Changing a Family Instance and Saving an Image), I realized that I could build my own animation workflow with Dynamo.

During Autodesk University 2014 I collaborated with Andreas Dieckmann, Julien Benoit and Ian Siegel on a Dynamo Hackathon project called Dynanimator; a set of technologies in Dynamo that creates image exports per parameter change iteration. Today we have published it. The Package is based on Dynamo version 0.7.5, but should work perfectly on 0.8.

The outcome will be a set of images. I normally create GIF’s in GIMP 2 or MP4 in Windows Movie Maker. Sometimes, when I’m in the mood, I combine multiple MP4’s with selected audio in Camtasia Studio, like I did in my post Animate design iterations in Revit with Dynamo from late in 2014.

p_completeSection 1deflection top

Check out our GitHub repository for additional information about usage, collaboration, samples, etc.: Dynanimator

Last, here’s a short video tutorial showing how I use these nodes:

In the future we want to start combining this technology with both analysis and optimization techniques. Try to visualize an animation that shows how a room gets optimized for daylighting. I think that’s a very interesting way to communicate visually what you are doing as a designer.

Now bring your models alive, and share your animations with the rest of the world!

Animate design iterations in Revit with Dynamo

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I want to animate design iterations in Revit with Dynamo.

Now I can. Thanks to the first ever Annual Dynamo Hackathon, which took place in Las Vegas during this year’s Autodesk University, I am now able to create animations of a whole set of various parameter calculations and variations. Eventually I want to include analytical data, quantities and optimization techniques in this workflow, but for now I have more than enough to learn about the current set of tools.

origo_collage_take2

The idea came to me during breakfast the day after Matt Jezyck announced the Hackathon. I asked my friends Andreas Dieckmann and Julien Benoit what they thought about it, and they immediately got on board. When Andreas and I arrived in Vegas, we hooked up with Ian Siegel, and got to work. In short, we have produced 5 Dynamo Custom Nodes that can animate;

  • Number and Length Parameter iterations
  • Element Transparency
  • Camera movement
  • Element Color Ranges

Check out the very cool showcase video Andreas put together between AU sessions:

There are some limitations to what you can animate currently. Depending on our progress on these limitations, and more specifically Dynamo development, the plan is to release these nodes in the Package Manager early in 2015.

Check out the Dynamo 2014 Hackathon site for more information on the various projects at Autodesk University 2014 Dynamo Hackathon, and the Dynamo Blog Post for final results and voting at 1st Annual Dynamo Hackathon.

Above and below are some use cases that I have tested after AU. Both models are Dark Architects projects, with the above using Ian’s facade alternative on Origo, and the example below changing Adaptive Component parameters on the facade of Lørenfaret Grønn Portal.

LGP_take1(It may take a while for these GIF’s to load. They are rather large.)