Drawing and animating a spring

[dcr222]

I need to animate a spring compressing or stretching.  I need to be able to show the spring decelerating as it compresses or accelerating as it relaxes.  My problem is that I don't see any tutorials on drawing springs in Animate or Illustrator.  I've already drawn springs in SketchUp but I don't see how to important them into animate in a form I can animate.  Thanks in advance for your help.

[Colin Holgate · Accepted solution]

I answered your post in the SketchUp forum, which is that you can export DXF, open those in Illustrator, and copy/paste them into Animate.

Generally speaking Animate is for 2D graphics, so you're going to be looking at a side on view of the spring, it won't really be 3D.

Another possibility is to export as Collada, then make a new 3D layer from that file in Photoshop. You can then scale the Z axis to squish the spring. But, it will make the spring seem thinner, and not just compressed.

[dcr222]

Thanks much Colin.

Do you think I'd be able to tween the images in Animate?  That way I would avoid making the spring seem thinner.

Do you know of any 3d animation programs I can use with a bit less of a learning curve than Maya or Blender? 

[Colin Holgate]

I see the SketchUp conversation progressed. They seem to have covered a lot of options. I'm trying to see if there are spring add ons in Unity, but can't see one yet. There's plenty of physics, but that doesn't involve compressing geometry.

[dcr222]

Thanks Colin. I saw that on the SketchUp forum also.

After much useful discussion I’m going to see what I can do with the SketchUp animation extension (Fredo6). There are various tutorials for that online.

[dcr222]

The physics don’t have to be precise. I only need to convey clear acceleration and deceleration as the spring compresses, stretches, relaxes. This is part of a plan I’ve developed for a new way of explaining chemical thermodynamics that will hopefully be more interesting and understandable but still substantially detailed.