The attached camera allows the animation of rigid bodies in such a way that the selected body appears not to move during the animation and all others move relative to it. The animation with the attached camera is strictly a visualization technique and not a post processing computation.
Note: The attached camera can only be used for rigid bodies in a Rigid Dynamics, Static or Transient Structural analyses, and bodies that have a dimensionally reduced mesh in Explicit Dynamics analyses.
To use the attached camera:
Click the result in the Outline that you want to animate.
Click the attached camera icon
in the animation toolbar to enable the feature. The icon will remain
outlined when enabled.The body picking filter
will be selected by default when the attached camera is active. Pick the
body that you want to attach the camera to (the selected body will turn green). At this point, either you can click the attached camera icon
in the mini toolbar, or right-click
the body and choose Select Body for Attached Camera from the menu. The body will turn pink.Note: These two options will only appear if the selected body is a valid candidate for the attached camera animation.
Reorient the model in the graphics window as you want to see it during the animation.
Play the animation. The selected body (pink) appears fixed. All other bodies move relative to it. Compare below the regular animation (top) and the attached camera animation (bottom).
To unselect the body you attached the camera to, click the selected body and click the attached camera icon
in the mini toolbar, or right-click the body and choose Select Body for Attached Camera from the menu.To deactivate the attached camera, click the icon
again (the outline will disappear when it is
disabled).
Note: Limitations:
When you try to pick a body in a result, the transient highlighting will follow the original geometry. This may not align with the displayed position of the result (which is usually different from the initial timestep and often the position at the last timestep). In order to pick the body aligned with the original geometry, Ansys recommends retrieving the result closer to the initial timestep.
Additionally, you can select a body for the attached camera by clicking Geometry in the Outline while the animation is stopped and picking the body in the Graphics window. Note that you will not see the body turn pink until you click the result in the Outline.
For analyses that are not pure Rigid Dynamics (for example Explicit Dynamics containing bodies with dimensionally reduced mesh and mixed Rigid Dynamics containing flexible bodies) Ansys recommends changing the result Deformation Scale Factor to 1.0 (True Scale).
Once the animation starts playing with the attached camera enabled, the orientation of the camera cannot be modified, that is, Rotate, Pan and Zoom will not work.
If you attach the camera to the same body that is scoped to a result probe, the body will not turn pink; it will keep the color of the result scoping.