Hello @Patel_Taylor ,
Thanks for reporting this issue.
We are not able to reproduce the same error on our end. In our tests, the background geometry from a project created in v6 is stable after updating to Anima 7.
Perhaps the problem happened not because of the software update but due to removing the “background model” node when you updated your scene with a new version of your background geometry. As the original background offset was saved there, it was lost when you removed it.
Let me explain in more detail how the background offset applied to the collision backgrounds in Anima work.
By default, we apply an offset to the geometry background imported that is based on where the centroid of all the mesh vertex is. The reason behind this is that CAD files sometimes have scene origins that are very far away from the actual position of the main geometry that you want to work with. Working at such a great distance from the origin may introduce stability issues in the animation engine we are using in Anima. This is a common limitation when working on high-performance environments like the one we use for the Anima viewport, and it happens due to precision errors in the position data that can be managed in realtime. You can’t have both, so CAD software (AutoCAD, Revit) prioritizes precision while visualization 3D software (3dsMax, Cinema4D, Unreal Engine) prioritizes performance.
To avoid this limitation, we reposition the mesh on every collision background import process so it ends up always close to the Anima scene origin. Then we store that origin offset, and we finally apply the inverse offset during the import of the Anima content back into the DCC application. This is not something new, it has always been this way in all Anima versions since the beginning, and should not have any impact on your workflow as long as you don’t remove that background node after the initial import.
So, the key idea to understand how the collision background offset works in Anima is that it is stored in the node “Background Model” from your scene.
You can find this node on the Anima node tree, in the scene you are working on. As long as that node is not removed, the offset will be kept the same, and any modified geometry you bring into your background will keep its relative position coherent. At the same time, if that “Background Model” node is removed, whenever a new Background is dropped into the scene, a new offset is created and adapted to that particular geometry.
Keeping this in mind, you can choose depending on your needs. If you need to keep updating a geometry background over time, then you can export multiple versions of that geometry in different FBX, and all of them will match the coordinates perfectly as long as you don’t remove the “Background Model” node and just drop those backgrounds one over the other.
When using 3dsMax or Cinema4D, the recommended workflow for backgrounds is using the Alive synchronization feature. This should deal with the offset issue automatically in most cases. More info about it here:
If you already removed the background node from your scene, a quick way to manually fix the problem would be by selecting the “Background Model” node and reposition it manually inside the Anima viewport so it matches the position of your previous background. Then save the scene in Anima to sync with your 3D app, and from then on everything should work fine in further background updates (as long as you keep the same background node).
