How to add animation to a still model

[Chapre]

Hello, I'm new in vizard, I have a wheelchair model that I can move easily in the 3d world, the only problem is that the wheels don't spin. I'm using 3D studio max 2011, could someone give me a quick tutorial on how to add that spinning animation to the wheelchair model, please!

[Jeff]

If the wheels are sub-parts of the wheelchair then you can get a handle to and spin them in Vizard. The following article describes how to get handles to sub-objects and rotate them around their local origin:

http://kb.worldviz.com/articles/1157

[Chapre]

Thanks Jeff for this tutorial!
I noticed that the format used was ".IVE" as it got "GEODE" node included.
- How would we spin the wheel if the file format was ".3DS"?
- Can we include that spinning animation in the same file (wheelchair.IVE) and then when we load the file in vizard, to spin the wheel we just write:
>>>wheel= viz.add('wheelchair.IVE')
>>>wheel.state(x)

[Jeff]

The extension .ive is the compiled form of the OSG format. We have an OSG exporter for Max available on our downloads page.

The easiest way to control the animation of spinning wheels would be to use the method described in the tutorial above.

Otherwise, you could create the animation in Max and export to OSG format. To play/stop it in Vizard you would need to use the module provided in the following thread:

http://forum.worldviz.com/showthread.php?t=2709

[Chapre]

Thanks!
Very helpfull