Animation Cycle Problem

[jercook@comcast.net]

In an attempt to animate a storage battery, I have a positive and negative plate seperated and 5 groups of electrons in a vertical column. My intention is to have the first group migtrate from the positive to negative plate and stop, marking the negative charges on the plate as the animation proceeds.

Then, the 2nd group of electrons appear on the positive plate at frame 5040 and migrate to the the negative plate at frame 5400. I turn off visibility, and on frame 5402 turn visibility on and move electrons to the positive plate. It is set to cycle from 5402 to 5040, the cycle arrow indicates this, and it cycles fine as the animation proceeds.

My problem appears when I try to migrate the 3rd group, offset about 5 seconds from the first. At 5160 I turn on visibility with 3rd group starting on positive plate. at 5520 I set group to positive plate and migration works ok. then at 5520 I turn of visibility of group so next movement is hidden, go to 5522, move group back to positive plate for next cycle. I set to cycle back to 5160, similar for group 2 that worked, and instead of arrow indicate cycle back to that point, there is a very short red arrow pointng left so for some reason, cycle isn't set up. the arrow seems to indicate a span back a few frames insted of the 362 frames I am trying to set for this group of electrons.

This is my first animation project and struggleing to figure out what is wrong (and different from the movement of the 2nd group). I'm using animation pro 9.5 and getting ready to upgrade to 10 in a week or two. Any suggestions or help will really be appreciated.

Jerry

[slowtiger]

Seems you're doing it corretcly, so without looking into the file I can't give any advice.

But some general tips:
- 5000 frames is quite heavy for a project. Usually you do each short scene in a separate project, render the videos, and assemble them with the sound in a video editor.
- Don't ever upgrade in the middle of a project! Just ... don't.

[jercook@comcast.net]

Thanks for the suggestions. Maybe I'll try scaling it down and see if that helps. And thanks for the warning about not upgrading. I was hoping to finish this before the upgrade and now I will make it a point. Jerry