[Plugin] Smoothstep Animation

[Whaat]

Sorry for the delay in releasing this plugin. I've been on holidays and working on other projects. This plugin allows you to smooth out the jerky scene transitions in a SketchUp scene-tab animation. It is not intended for object animation, only native SkechUp scene animation. It cannot be used as-is to export to a rendering engine.

Usage:
1) Copy 'smoothStepAnim.rb' to 'Plugins' folder as usual.
2) Notice two new self-explanatory items under 'Plugins' menu
3) Plugin can export single frames only. The images must be joined into a movie format using other software (eg. VirtualDub)

Issues:
- All scene delays must be set to 0.0 seconds
- likely more lurking...I have not tested very thoroughly. Please post bugs.

Enjoy!

Dale

[remus]

Cheers,another interesting plugin form the great ideas factory (better known as you )

[spence]

Nice! I did a really quick test and it seems to work pretty good. I used Quicktime to create the image sequence.

[princedragoncok]

Been looking forward to this Will give it a test tomorrow. Thank you Whaat

[bianhai]

very good!
thank you , Whaat.

[solo]

Whaat,

Thanks mate, that works great, I may now try GSU animation again, as I stopped using it for the exact reason you felt the need to create this great plugin.

[MALAISE]

Thanks a lot, Whaat. I've just made simple test, pretty well smooth transitions.
MALAISE

[matt77]

thank you so much!!

this has been much needed in SU.


Many,Many Thanks

Matt

[pilou]

What is the file format of images exported?

[matt77]

Either Jpeg or PNG..

[Ben Ritter]

Whaat,

Thank you so very much,

Ben

[jcdb]

How do you set all scene delays to 0.0 seconds?

[spence]

jcdb,

Go to Model Info, under window, and then Animation, scene delay.

[Pixero]

Thanks for a great script.

Would it be possible to add an attribute to all the existing scenes in the model that they are "keyframes" and then add scenes for every frame in the animation with an attibute that they are "inbetweens" and add scene transition times according to your smoothstep script.
The script should then be able to delete all the "inbetweens" if you want to change the animation but leave the "keyframes" intact.
I believe this would make it work with external renderers.
What do you think, is it doable?

[jcdb]

jcdb,

Go to Model Info, under window, and then Animation, scene delay.

Thanks spence

[Whaat]

Thanks for a great script.

Would it be possible to add an attribute to all the existing scenes in the model that they are "keyframes" and then add scenes for every frame in the animation with an attibute that they are "inbetweens" and add scene transition times according to your smoothstep script.
The script should then be able to delete all the "inbetweens" if you want to change the animation but leave the "keyframes" intact.
I believe this would make it work with external renderers.
What do you think, is it doable?

That's a cool idea and definitely doable! I'll do some experimenting.

[Jon]

Thanks again, Whaat!

[RickW]

Thanks for a great script.

Would it be possible to add an attribute to all the existing scenes in the model that they are "keyframes" and then add scenes for every frame in the animation with an attibute that they are "inbetweens" and add scene transition times according to your smoothstep script.
The script should then be able to delete all the "inbetweens" if you want to change the animation but leave the "keyframes" intact.
I believe this would make it work with external renderers.
What do you think, is it doable?

That's a cool idea and definitely doable! I'll do some experimenting.

Unfortunately, there's currently no way to delete pages/scenes in ruby...

[Pixero]

Here's what Todd said at the Google Group:

Sketchup.active_model.entities.erase_entities(page) should work, but
it hangs SketchUp. It's a known and reported bug.


To get around this bug, do this:


First, make the page you want to delete the active page. Then, issue
this from Ruby:


Sketchup.send_action "pageDelete:"

That means it can be done even if its a work around.

If not we could save the model prior to using the script and then saving it after, under another name or with a "_anim" after.
Not the best way but it would still mean we could render a smooth animation.

[erikB]

Thanks from me to Whaat, very much needed script !
greetings erikB

[kwistenbiebel]

Thank you Whaat!
I hope you get the 'to scene tabs' method working, so we can use external render software on the animation.

Great job!

[Matt666]

Sketchup.send_action "pageDelete:"

A confirmation message box opens every attempt to delete a scene...

[Pixero]

Well...lets hope Whaat finds a trick to fool SU to delete the scenes without SU knowing what happened...

Is

Code: Select all

entities.clear!

not working either?

[kwistenbiebel]

Hi Whaat,

Would it be a sh*tload of work for you to have this plugin make default scene tabs after smoothing the animation ? (needed for render engines)
The current method (cameralines.rb,F-Spline bezier,Flightpath (or SU-animate) is kind of tedious.
Your smoothstep animation ruby would be an easier 'out of the box solution' when it can create a scene tab animation.

If it is a lot of work...maybe commercial?

[Whaat]

Hi Whaat,

Would it be a sh*tload of work for you to have this plugin make default scene tabs after smoothing the animation ? (needed for render engines)
The current method (cameralines.rb,F-Spline bezier,Flightpath (or SU-animate) is kind of tedious.
Your smoothstep animation ruby would be an easier 'out of the box solution' when it can create a scene tab animation.

If it is a lot of work...maybe commercial?

I am curious. Which render engines are able to automatically render all scene tabs? I assume you are not manually rendering each scene tab when you are creating these types of animations.

[kwistenbiebel]

Vray and Fryrender can render a scene tab animation.
For instance, if you have 1 scene tab per animation frame, you set the SU transition time to 1 second.
In the Vray/Fry panel, you set 1 fps.
That way, Vray/Fry will render each scene tab automatically when hitting the render button.

I thought Skindigo can do this as well? (confused)

[steelers05]

yeah im with biebel on this one.. that would be great if you could make something like that

[Dan]

Thanks for yet another great plugin, Whaat!
Me too I did a very quick test and all seems to be ok.
I have to ask you a little change to the script, if possible: can you make it to number the exported bitmaps like "name00001.jpg", "name00002.jpg", instead of "name0.jpg", "name1.jpg", etc. to make the conversion to avi program to read them in the right order?

Thanks again!

[Fletch]

I second KB and Steeler's request, Whaat... you still thinking about this?

[zeal]

Thank you for sharing