[Plugin Beta] Animator - v2.8a - 17 Sep 20

[tomaszdrgas]

"Fog" doesn't change smoothly between cameras, like "shadows" and "field of view" does. It just jumps to next style's value.

"date" for shadows. If I have to cameras based on sceens with two different dates (june and october), it causes jumping creasy shadows. not often people would use that but that little thing to fix.

As well when adding camera based on sceen, using styles, layers visibility and shadows connected to camera could be by default turned on (seems good to me).

When using camera captured from current view, options for using shadows, layers and styles attached to camera are not greyed out.. Is it becuse you can attach them? When I clicked shadows on, than it stopped the animation at the end of duration of previous camera.. so seems like it lucked of informations.. OOKK that was becouse I didn't turn on shadows on when capturing the camera.. When I chose the camera and recaptured with new shadows it worked.. though would be good it there was something in memory even if I don't turned it on..

There is nice smoothing of the path between the possitions of ongoing cameras. So the path of camera is a nice curve. (with bezzier) But speed is stil interpolated only between two consecutive cameras so there is no smooth change of sppeed in the point of camera's placement.. this one could be "eased" too... I was hoping for that ..

Tomasz

[tomaszdrgas]

To Fredo6 - Just very curious.. Are you a man or an institution.. Somehow can not fit it in my small head that someone having regular job, does all that work with plugins for free as a hobby in free time.. It seems not an easy thing to write it and you do a LOT..

Big thanks... for all..

[fredo6]

"Fog" doesn't change smoothly between cameras, like "shadows" and "field of view" does. It just jumps to next style's value.

Fog is not supported (yet) in Animator. So it does not do any interpolation

"date" for shadows. If I have to cameras based on sceens with two different dates (june and october), it causes jumping creasy shadows. not often people would use that but that little thing to fix.

Animator interpolates between the two dates. So, between June and October, you'll get many nights and days! What I think should be a nice add-on is to keep the day-time of the first day specified, and shows how the shadow becomes on the other days. I'll introduce this in a next version.

As well when adding camera based on sceen, using styles, layers visibility and shadows connected to camera could be by default turned on (seems good to me).
When using camera captured from current view, options for using shadows, layers and styles attached to camera are not greyed out.. Is it becuse you can attach them? When I clicked shadows on, than it stopped the animation at the end of duration of previous camera.. so seems like it lucked of informations.. OOKK that was becouse I didn't turn on shadows on when capturing the camera.. When I chose the camera and recaptured with new shadows it worked.. though would be good it there was something in memory even if I don't turned it on..

Views (and Scene) sequences are always captured with all style elements. However, the style can be enabled or disabled for the elements in the timeline. I could not make my mind about the default (currrently style is Off). I guess some users would use views just for the camera positioning and treat styles independently, via visual effects.

There is nice smoothing of the path between the possitions of ongoing cameras. So the path of camera is a nice curve. (with bezzier) But speed is stil interpolated only between two consecutive cameras so there is no smooth change of sppeed in the point of camera's placement.. this one could be "eased" too... I was hoping for that ..

I plan to introduce a Travelling camera, where there is a control over the speed of camera (constant or eased or dependent on curvature of the path).

Fredo

[fredo6]

To Fredo6 - Just very curious.. Are you a man or an institution.. Somehow can not fit it in my small head that someone having regular job, does all that work with plugins for free as a hobby in free time.. It seems not an easy thing to write it and you do a LOT..

Big thanks... for all..

I am alone, and does not even have lot of free time. So progress is slow!..., considering I wrote my plugins over 10 years now.

Fredo

[tomaszdrgas]

So I opened the same file today and animation again stopped on the end of duration of sceen camera before the "capture view" camera with attached shadow.. I thought maybe I haven't saved something yesterday. So I recaptured the view with changed shadow, saved inside animator and after going out of it.. Don't remember on which save I had notification " C file 5 exception ...bla bla bla" These are only worlds I remember. I didn't knew whats that about.. sKetchup was still working all looked fine..
I opened new file to again reopen my test animation and then I found test.skp is gone.. I saved twice so I could just use skb without problems but that was strange.. And happened second time this week just before I didn't connect it with another test file missing.. I'll show you the message if it happens again..

test2 MP4.skp

[fredo6]

Tomasz,

There is a small bug in the interpolation of shadows. Something weird, since apparently a shadow may not have a time defined (shadow["ShadowTime_time_t"] is nil).
I fixed it and will republished.

I doubt however that this can provoke a "C File5 exception", but it creates a problem in the animation of view.

Also, Animator just saves the animation data in the model, but cannot erase the skp file itself.

Fredo

PS: I noticed that you also lost the spinning of the wheels. I re-established it in the attached skp.

[tomaszdrgas]

I was looking for a way to remove some objects from the movement and adding others without deleting and creating another movement.. though I was uneable to do so.. probably some luck of click somewhere.. I haven't noticed it in tutorial..
I could go into edition of movement and select some but green arrow with dot for saving changes would stay greyed out.. When I deselected all (using arrow with x sign provided in animator) and selected what I wanted then green was green but all stopped spinning. I was going to look for that myself not to bother pros with such a littlies.. but I tried and no more ideas..
And the wheels spin opposite way than the arrow shows even though angle is possitive. When I change to negative (-795) they spin opposite direction but arrow aswell changed to opposite so it is always pointing wrong..

I'm actually childish proud of myself that I have actually foud a bag.. I mean you did, but... I helped..

I don't know who did it, but the file did dissapear. And in place of it was another file 1.skb . With same (about) time of creation like the time of dissapearing. And with date for a day ealier when simillar thing happend I have 0.skb file. So deffiniatelly something strange.

Tomasz

For a guy with no much time you answer with a light speed.. hollidays?

[fredo6]

Tomasz

Here is the model with all wheels spinning correctly.
I also enclosed the movement (Transalation and spinnings) into a clip, so you can reuse it in the animation, changing the distance and direction (via dimming factor).

tomasz - test2 MP4.skp

Film 1.mov

In a next version, I'll do something to make the cloning of elements and sequences easier to manage.

For the question of 1.skp, I guess this is not related directly to Animator. If you look at Forum, you'll see that this happens in various situations.

Fredo

[tomaszdrgas]

Sorry for trouble but I know how to meke the spin.. in corect speed.. What I ment was..

I have made rotate movement for 4 wheels. So 2 of them were moving opposite direction cos they were scaled *-1. I wanted without deliting movement itself remove two wheels from it.. Couldn't do it so..

Only way I know is deliting the movement for 4 wheels and meke new one for 2 wheels on one side and another for other side.
Editing values - Works. Editing selection - Don't know if possible.

Thanks again..

[jgb]

Fredo6, a favor please.

I just discovered your animation plugin, and went through this thread (quickly). It's installed but I have not yet played with it.

In the lead thread there is your usual documentation section and I well understand you have not (yet?) produced a .PDF guide. Instead you have references to 3 tutorials.

Could you please convert those references into clickable links?

Thanks
jgb

[fredo6]

Could you please convert those references into clickable links?

Just fixed the link (polluted by an old bug in the forum, adding http: in URL).

Note that many videos are based on an older version of the GUI, but I guess you'll find your way with the updated GUI.

Fredo

[jgb]

Thank you.
This old dog has difficulty learning new tricks.
I've tried many SU based animators over the years starting with SketchyPhysics (almost got the hang of it). Others left me wanting, others way too complex or plain unusable. I need a simple animator without the physics complications, so I hope, based on the quality and functions of your stuff, most of which I use daily (Curviloft in particular), this rendition of an SU animator will do the trick.

[fredo6]

New Release: Animator - v1.7c - 16 Aug 17

Requirement: LibFredo6 v7.7c

Minor release
- bug fixing
- First support of VRay (v3.40.04) for rendering of animations


See main post for RBZ files

[tomaszdrgas]

I guess easiest would be interpolating date and hour seperately.

[fredo6]

I guess easiest would be interpolating date and hour seperately.

Definitely.

If the two dates are separated by less than 24 hours, then interpolate the dates

Otherwise, interpolate the days, but keeping the same hour.

Fredo

[vailly]

Nice job again Fredo6.
Is it possible to animate the "sun" to see the shadow of a building moving from early in the morning through the night?
Thanks,
François

[fredo6]

Is it possible to animate the "sun" to see the shadow of a building moving from early in the morning through the night?

This is possible with the Visual Effect "Shadow"

In the timeline,
- put a first one with the date/time of early morning
- put a second one with the date/time of late evening at the end (based on your video duration)

Shadow is a visual effect. So it can be combined with object and camera movements and with other visual effects (zoom, etc...).

Note that if the two date/time are separated with more than 24h, then you'll get a Season shadow animation. This is how you can simulate the shadow across several days, months or years.

Fredo

[fredo6]

New Release: Animator - v1.8a - 02 Nov 17

Requirement: LibFredo6 v7.9a

Minor release
- bug fixing
- First batch of Performance improvement for large models


See main post for RBZ files

[Mike598601]

Hey Fredo, you are genius I love animator
I tried rendering a clip in Twilight V2 pro, only 2 second duration (51 frames) - 30 hours in it had rendered 14 clips, so I decided to purchase V-Ray and upgraded LibFredo6 to 7.9 and animator to 1.8 as it says Vray is supported. Tried to render the same animation and it only took 1.5 hours - an amazing improvement!! I saw every frame rendering, However, the resulting movie, both MP4 and MOV were both only 1 frame long - Have I missed something? Can you advise me please?

Keep up the brilliant work!!!

[fredo6]

I tried rendering a clip in Twilight V2 pro, only 2 second duration (51 frames) - 30 hours in it had rendered 14 clips, so I decided to purchase V-Ray and upgraded LibFredo6 to 7.9 and animator to 1.8 as it says Vray is supported. Tried to render the same animation and it only took 1.5 hours - an amazing improvement!! I saw every frame rendering, However, the resulting movie, both MP4 and MOV were both only 1 frame long - Have I missed something? Can you advise me please?

For animation, I don't think you need super-rendering. If you have only 51 frames, with a rendering of 10 s, you should keep it under 10 minutes, whether Twilight or VRay.

Could you post or PM your model, so that I see how it renders with Vray and Twilight.

Fredo

[mast1987]

First: Big Thanks to FREDO for this Genius plugin.

Theres just 1 Thing I got a Problem with: Camera Fade out.

If I use more than 2 views/cameras the Animation stops at the second view/camera and doesnt fade to the third one.

what did I wrong?

[fredo6]

If I use more than 2 views/cameras the Animation stops at the second view/camera and doesnt fade to the third one.

what did I wrong?

Could you please post or PM your model so that I have a look.
Maybe you simply disable fadeout for the second camera.

Fredo

[mast1987]

ok I got a solution:

when i set the camera Position with the eye tool it doesnt works.
when I set it with the Orbit and Hand tool it works fine.....

thanks for the quick answer btw

[fredo6]

Glad to see it works.

Still, I don't see why you have a difference, since Animator does not really care HOW you set a view: it just capture the camera when it is set.

Fredo

[fredo6]

New Release: Animator - v1.8b - 19 Nov 17

Requirement: LibFredo6 v8.0b

Maintenance release
- bug fixing
- Handling of cases where scenes which are part of an animation are deleted in Sketchup.
- improvement in circular camera interpolation (fadeout) if you also install LibFredo6 8.0b

_____________________________________________________________________________

See main post for RBZ files

[Mike598601]

Just upgraded VRay to 3.6 but it no longer appears in the 'Render with' options in animator - is this version of Vray supported by animator in SU 2018?

[fredo6]

Is Vray 3.6 installed in SU2018?

I will investigate on my side

Fredo

[solo]

Go home Thea, you're drunk!

Why is Thea acting like a drunk uncle? see the animation in SU, this is what I want to render in Thea:

right.gif

However, when I choose to render the animation I get this:

wrong.gif

Is there a way to fix this? reset Thea in some way?

[ntxdave]

I am assuming that when you went to create the animation using the Animator plugin you clicked the Thea button. I have not seen anything like that happen but I have not used Animator for a while

[solo]

I am assuming that when you went to create the animation using the Animator plugin you clicked the Thea button. I have not seen anything like that happen but I have not used Animator for a while

If I did not press the Thea button then it would not have rendered with Thea, I did what I always do, use Thea animation with the Animator plugin selected.

Besides Thea, does Animator support other renderers? may be time to move on.