Please excuse the hurriedly drawn pipework and motion path, but I thought this example might give you something to work with. Basically it consists of a series of filled circles that follow each other on a freeform motion path and then repeat when each circle reaches the end.
The beginning and end of the pipe run have a small rectangle on the top layer that obscures the circles so that they aren't visible until they start to move and can't be seen jumping back to the start once they reach the end.
By adjusting the colour of the circles relative to the colour of the pipe, you could make them only just visible so that they don't stand out too much, but just enough to show the flow.
In order to ensure that the motion paths and circles are correctly aligned, all you have to do is to create the first one and then copy and paste it to create the remainder. Finally, select all of the circles and align then by centres, both horizontally and vertically so that they sit exactly on top of one another.
The reason why I chose a circle is because it looks the same from any angle and so it doesn't need to be rotated to appear correctly aligned with its direction of flow through the pipe.
Hope this helps, but if you have any further queries, just get back to me here.
Hi Ned, thank you for putting this together and taking the time to write such a detailed description. Your solution certainly looks smooth. I will try it for my next project which includes LOTS of pipe flows.
One other variation you could consider is to use smaller circles so that they look like small bubbles flowing through the pipes rather than them being the same diameter as the pipe.
Also, if you have a lot of pipework, which perhaps has different flowrates in it, you could adjust the duration of the motion paths to have some flow faster than others.
Have fun; it sounds like you will be an expert at drawing freeform motion paths by the end of your next project !! :-)
Hi Ned, thank you for continuing to think of my problem. The smaller
bubbles sound great, I look forward to giving it a try in a few months when
my current project wraps up.
Another project coming up has LOTS of cables with electrical flows, Once
again the gradient colour change was perfect but I have to work with the
functionality provided by Storyline (it's still a great tool to work
with).
Bubbles won't quite fit this one but I will certainly be playing with the
shapes otherwise I will have to resort to boring arrows :((
A couple of extras to give you some ideas for your electrical cable project.
The first one is simply an adaptation of the previous example, using very small green circles to represent the flow. For the second example, I have used a row of small green arrows, with a rectangle the same colour as the cable that moves along a motion path over the top of the arrows, to give the impression that they are flashing.
5 Replies
Hi Sylvia,
Please excuse the hurriedly drawn pipework and motion path, but I thought this example might give you something to work with. Basically it consists of a series of filled circles that follow each other on a freeform motion path and then repeat when each circle reaches the end.
The beginning and end of the pipe run have a small rectangle on the top layer that obscures the circles so that they aren't visible until they start to move and can't be seen jumping back to the start once they reach the end.
By adjusting the colour of the circles relative to the colour of the pipe, you could make them only just visible so that they don't stand out too much, but just enough to show the flow.
In order to ensure that the motion paths and circles are correctly aligned, all you have to do is to create the first one and then copy and paste it to create the remainder. Finally, select all of the circles and align then by centres, both horizontally and vertically so that they sit exactly on top of one another.
The reason why I chose a circle is because it looks the same from any angle and so it doesn't need to be rotated to appear correctly aligned with its direction of flow through the pipe.
Hope this helps, but if you have any further queries, just get back to me here.
Hi Ned, thank you for putting this together and taking the time to write such a detailed description. Your solution certainly looks smooth. I will try it for my next project which includes LOTS of pipe flows.
Hi Sylvia,
One other variation you could consider is to use smaller circles so that they look like small bubbles flowing through the pipes rather than them being the same diameter as the pipe.
Also, if you have a lot of pipework, which perhaps has different flowrates in it, you could adjust the duration of the motion paths to have some flow faster than others.
Have fun; it sounds like you will be an expert at drawing freeform motion paths by the end of your next project !! :-)
Hi Ned, thank you for continuing to think of my problem. The smaller
bubbles sound great, I look forward to giving it a try in a few months when
my current project wraps up.
Another project coming up has LOTS of cables with electrical flows, Once
again the gradient colour change was perfect but I have to work with the
functionality provided by Storyline (it's still a great tool to work
with).
Bubbles won't quite fit this one but I will certainly be playing with the
shapes otherwise I will have to resort to boring arrows :((
Hi Sylvia,
A couple of extras to give you some ideas for your electrical cable project.
The first one is simply an adaptation of the previous example, using very small green circles to represent the flow. For the second example, I have used a row of small green arrows, with a rectangle the same colour as the cable that moves along a motion path over the top of the arrows, to give the impression that they are flashing.
Hope this gives you some inspiration. :-)