Who uses it and who loves it? I just got my hands on Inventor 11 Professional (student license) and all I can say is “WOW!” SolidWorks watch out. Autodesk is slowly but surely taking over (at least imho)! Inventor Studio is such a welcome addition to Inventor. It is very easy to use and to someone who isn’t really experienced in computer animation, it seems quite powerful. I’m willing to bet you could even do your whole FRC animation entry in it (if the rules permit, do they?). Anyway, if you haven’t tried it, you should. I’d recommend following the tutorial first as to not confuse yourself by exploring on your own.
My only gripe is that it seems to take somewhat of an eternity to render (P4 2.4GHZ HT 1.5 gigs RAM) but I don’t usually render too many things so I don’t have a lot to compare it to.
Studio in 10 has been nothing but bug ridden and difficult to use. A class used it in one assignment and that was enough to convice the instructors not to bother again. In addition to crashing every other render, none of the preset lighting schemes look quite good enough prerender and always seem washed out after the render. We now resort to screen shots cropped in Paint.
I really hope 11 took care of all that. I’ve dabbled with Solidwork’s equivalent features, and I wasn’t thrilled with that either. Lighting was a bit nicer and not nearly as buggy, but I still never saw anything that looked better to me then just a plain old screen shot.
o my goodness. I 100% agree. i have not however had the ability to use version 11 yet, but your right. They are relatively simple, and i was able to make an incredible animation in one sitting after never seeing using it previously. It has like 7 or 8 tools that are extremely simlple. The only thing that i am planning to spend more time on are the camera angles, which im sure were improved upon in version 11. The renderings, your right, take an extremely long time, but it is expected because thats the way things are, even for 3ds max. i believe there are ways to speed up the renderings though. Anyone know any ways to do this?
Yeah, I think it took something like 15 minutes for me to render 3 seconds (46 frames) at the middle quality and the lowest resolution. But it was worth it in the end. Here’s the short animation I did http://team696.org/images/arbor_press_animated.avi This is pretty darn good but at a larger resolution and the highest quality it just looks super!
I played around with a bullet and the clip of schmeisser i made and a lotus. The lotus took forever though because my computer can barely handle the assembly as it is. And then there was the engine of it. I forgot to mention that rotating can be annoying, at least in version ten. Whenever i try to rotate an object perhaps twice in a duration of 3 seconds on an axis, it moves more like an oil rig going back and fourth rather than complete rotation. Maybe im just doing this wrong, but if you have any suggestions im listening. Let me go get that book…
I only have 10 to use, but one night I was playing around and switched into Studio. I figured it out in 30-60 minutes. I made 2 animations in it to present the operation of our robot and holonomic drive for a scholarship presentation. The controls were easy, and the rendering was actually quite nice. However, it takes my video processor forever to render. One question, what additions have been made to Studio in 11 as opposed to 10?
I’ve only had the opportunity to use 8 and 10. Since 8 lacks Inventor Studio, I was glad when I saw I could animate with 10. I thought IS with 10 was easy to use and figure out. If they improved it for 11, I’m thrilled.
Im not on my own computer right now, but i recall correctly you can select the rigidness of the curves in renderings while selecting the size, ligthing, etc. There should be another tab, and if you change it to rigid it should (dont take my word for it) drastically change the amount of time required to render.
Personally, I think Inventor Studio brings the Inventor line way ahead of Solidworks. It is possible (and quite simple, with a little practice) to do an entire FIRST level animation on Inventor Studio.
As for the Rendering time, I notice that the engine in Inventor 11 is slightly faster than that of 10. However, Studio in 11 is still slower than 3ds. I beilieve this will be fixed in 12, and the engine will be brought up to equal speed.