[Plugin Beta] Animator - v3.8a - 25 Dec 22

[mitch7780]

Hi Fredo6,
Thank you for replying.

I have one example that I have taken a couple of sreenshot's of, please see attached.

You'll notice that some of the icons are missing or only partially there.
When this happens the highlight of objects also doesn't function, i.e no coloured bounding boxes.

Let me know what you think, I'll try my best to give you further examples.

[fredo6]

You'll notice that some of the icons are missing or only partially there.
When this happens the highlight of objects also doesn't function, i.e no coloured bounding boxes.

Could you leave the Ruby console opened when you work with Animator. I suspect the partial display is due to some errors that will show up in the Ruby console when they happen.

Thanks

Fredo

[mitch7780]

Hey Fredo,

I'll give it a try.
Thank you.

Ben

[fredo6]

New Release: Animator - v2.8a - 17 Sep 20

Requirement: LibFredo6 v11.1

Minor release

• Bug fixing
• Extension of validity

_______________________________________________________________________________________

See plugin home page of Animator for Download of RBZ from the PluginStore.

See Main Post of the Animator thread for more information.

[CMC007]

Hi Fredo,

Thanks very much for the ongoing development of this excellent tool!

One feature request I have that I think would go a long way towards ease of integration with other renderers would be the ability for Animator to save individual animation frames to SketchUp scenes - each scene could then be batch rendered (for example by Enscape) without requiring any direct integration.

Is this functionality in your development plans at all? I have also been requesting Enscape to work on integrating their rendering functionality with Animator so hopefully this can happen some day!

Thanks again,
Christian

[fredo6]

One feature request I have that I think would go a long way towards ease of integration with other renderers would be the ability for Animator to save individual animation frames to SketchUp scenes - each scene could then be batch rendered (for example by Enscape) without requiring any direct integration.

There are two problems with this

1) Scenes do not record the position of objects. So this would only be working for camera movements

2) I am not sure SketchUp would be happy with a huge number of scenes. At 25fps, you generate 250 scenes for a clip of 10 seconds....

I can possibly contact Enscape to see if they have an API. I have never done it as I don't have their contact.

Fredo

[mitch7780]

Good afternoon,

I've had an issue with v2.8a today, I generated a video of around 68s and has taken just oven 3.5hrs. When it finished it came up with the message box asking me to save and exit. I did this and when I opened the folder where it had saved to there was only one video at 9s long.

Not too sure what to do now, is there a way to get back to that message window to try and salvage the file?
If I have to generate another I will but would prefer not to have to start the process again if I can.

Any thoughts?

Many thanks

[fredo6]

@mitch7780

Did you generate the video with a renderer?

If so, do you get the same problem when you generate in Natural mode (i.e. no renderer)?

Otherwise, it's difficult to say anything without more information, possibly getting the model.

[SAJD2000]

hello can you help me ?
I install 2.8 version and animator panel disappered
How can i bring it back ?

[fredo6]

I install 2.8 version and animator panel disappered
How can i bring it back ?

Could you check that

• You have Animator in the menu Tools > Fredo6 Collection
• You should also have it in the dialog box View Toolbars... The Animator toolbar may just be set to non visible.

[SAJD2000]

I install 2.8 version and animator panel disappered
How can i bring it back ?

Could you check that

• You have Animator in the menu Tools > Fredo6 Collection
• You should also have it in the dialog box View Toolbars... The Animator toolbar may just be set to non visible.

no i don't have in anywhere, but in extension manager it is install and updated

[SAJD2000]

Fredo please help i need animator

[HuiJax]

Hey Fredo,

is there a shortcut or a other way to skip the animation frame by frame? I want to render each single frame with enscape and put the single frames togehter in Adobe Premiere... but clicking all single frames with the mouse is a little bit stressy would be great if you can help

best regards

[fredo6]

is there a shortcut or a other way to skip the animation frame by frame? I want to render each single frame with enscape and put the single frames togehter in Adobe Premiere... but clicking all single frames with the mouse is a little bit stressy would be great if you can help

Not clear to me. What do you need exactly?

For info, Animator does not support Enscape in the list of renderers.

[HuiJax]

Hey Fredo,

thx for the Answer. I would like to make Animation like in this Video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5BE0DRABGA

Short Summary. He Move each object step by step and capture this movement of the Enscape "Frame Buffer" on a Second Screen. In Adobe Premiere he cut it together and it looks smooth.

I want to the same with the support of Animator. When i play the Animation it goes to fast an the live Render have a bad quality. So i must rest for a second and then move on with the next frame. Like this i can manage the movement of different object simultaneously and coordinate it much better the manuell with hand... i hope i could explain this a bit better and sorry for the bad english...

best regards

[fredo6]

Hey Fredo,

thx for the Answer. I would like to make Animation like in this Video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5BE0DRABGA

Short Summary. He Move each object step by step and capture this movement of the Enscape "Frame Buffer" on a Second Screen. In Adobe Premiere he cut it together and it looks smooth.

I want to the same with the support of Animator. When i play the Animation it goes to fast an the live Render have a bad quality. So i must rest for a second and then move on with the next frame. Like this i can manage the movement of different object simultaneously and coordinate it much better the manuell with hand... i hope i could explain this a bit better and sorry for the bad english...

best regards

You can indeed construct this kind of animation with Animator, as it implies just moving objects.

However, Enscape is not supported by Animator. So, you would have to render it with another rendering software.

Otherwise, the method described in the video is quite astute and you can mimic it.

[HuiJax]

Again, thank you very much for your Answer! Iam a big Fan of your Work an love to use your PlugIn´s!

So the concept of the Animation is clear. I made an animation with Animator. A simple movement of an Object. In the next Step i skip Frame by Frame the Animation and record the live renderig with Enscape and put them together in Premiere. So my question is (and sry for the big explanation) is there an shortkey to skip frame by frame in the Timeline (in Premiere it is a arrow key). If not, it would be Great if there coulde be one in the future Version...

Thank you for your Time and your patience!

[lrainero]

Hey Fredo,

Thank you very much because Animator is helping me a lot in my work.
I have a problem and I don't know if you could help me.
I use Sketchup 20 and V-Ray 4.20.01
When generating mp4 video the process stops without doing anything. Sometimes it stops at frame 10 and sometimes at 30 ... and I can't render the video.
My animation has a duration of 145 seconds and approximately 3,400 frames, with an estimated time of 50 hours. My PC has 16Gb of Ram, a Ryzen 2700x processor and my graphics card is an Nvidia gtx 6Gb.

I don't know if you can help me, but thank you very much anyway.

P.D: Sorry for the text if it is not well understood because I do not speak English and I am using a translator.

[fredo6]

When generating mp4 video the process stops without doing anything. Sometimes it stops at frame 10 and sometimes at 30 ... and I can't render the video.
My animation has a duration of 145 seconds and approximately 3,400 frames, with an estimated time of 50 hours.

I think you push Animator quite far. If I understand, each frame would take over 50 seconds to render. Maybe you can try to simplify to have a faster unitary render.

With VRay 4.2, there is a problem of stability with the API and I would not recommend to engage in such long process.

I am currently investigating VRay 5, which has a cleaner API and may be more reliable.

Fredo

[Danial Ismail]

Thank you for your videos and extension, I have a problem for exporting the animation as a video(all format options have the same problem). I use a Mac and have already installed LibFredo6, Animator and FFMPEG. When exporting the animation as video, i have chosen MP4 but it only renders as PNG images and there is no play button under the MP4 format button in the menu. How can i solve this? Thank you in advance!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MIblLe ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16Njrfx ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cSjdBn ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yu5zEQ ... sp=sharing

[fredo6]

When exporting the animation as video, i have chosen MP4 but it only renders as PNG images and there is no play button under the MP4 format button in the menu.

Could you open the Ruby Console before launching the video generation.

At the end of the process, you should see something like

Command FFmpeg for mp4 = "C:/Google Drive/Ruby/Ruby/AA_SCRIPT_20/ffmpeg.exe" -framerate 25 -i "Image%02d.png" -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -q:v 1 -vf scale=2*trunc(iw/2*3):-2 "Film 1.mp4" 2> FFmpeg_log_mp4.txt
===> Status FFmpeg for mp4 = true

Can you tell me what you see.

Also, could you type (copy paste and return) the following command in the ruby console

[Sketchup.active_model.active_view.vpwidth, Sketchup.active_model.active_view.vpheight]

It should return the viewport dimensions.

Many thanks

Fredo

[Danial Ismail]

When exporting the animation as video, i have chosen MP4 but it only renders as PNG images and there is no play button under the MP4 format button in the menu.

Could you open the Ruby Console before launching the video generation.

At the end of the process, you should see something like

Command FFmpeg for mp4 = "C:/Google Drive/Ruby/Ruby/AA_SCRIPT_20/ffmpeg.exe" -framerate 25 -i "Image%02d.png" -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -q:v 1 -vf scale=2*trunc(iw/2*3):-2 "Film 1.mp4" 2> FFmpeg_log_mp4.txt
===> Status FFmpeg for mp4 = true

Can you tell me what you see.

Also, could you type (copy paste and return) the following command in the ruby console

[Sketchup.active_model.active_view.vpwidth, Sketchup.active_model.active_view.vpheight]

It should return the viewport dimensions.

Many thanks

Fredo

Hi Fredo,

I changed the video output dimensions and it solved the problem! Thanks you for your kind attention to reply my question and trying to help. Keep being awesome.

Best

Danial

[fredo6]

I changed the video output dimensions and it solved the problem!

Definitely, one of the problem is the generation of the video when one or both dimensions of the viewport are odd in pixels. FFmpeg, which stitches the images, requires they are even. I introduced some hack to work around the problem, but apparently this sometimes fails.

[lrainero]

When generating mp4 video the process stops without doing anything. Sometimes it stops at frame 10 and sometimes at 30 ... and I can't render the video.
My animation has a duration of 145 seconds and approximately 3,400 frames, with an estimated time of 50 hours.

I think you push Animator quite far. If I understand, each frame would take over 50 seconds to render. Maybe you can try to simplify to have a faster unitary render.

With VRay 4.2, there is a problem of stability with the API and I would not recommend to engage in such long process.

I am currently investigating VRay 5, which has a cleaner API and may be more reliable.

Fredo

Thank you very much for your answer.

I'm going to try to divide the animation into shorter parts and then put them together with some editing program.
I hope that with vray 5 you can achieve better results in this case, even so I am very happy and grateful with your plugin.

Thank you very much for everything Fredo!

[fredo6]

New Release: Animator - v2.9a - 19 Nov 20

Requirement: LibFredo6 v11.3

Major release

• Support of VRay 5
• Bug fixing
• Extension of validity

_______________________________________________________________________________________

See plugin home page of Animator for Download of RBZ from the PluginStore.

See Main Post of the Animator thread for more information.

[mitch7780]

Hi Fredo6,

I generated two animations this week, after the update to v2.9a, and they both came out perfectly.
However when I send them Via WeTransfer, DropBox etc for others to view they are experiencing errors or corrupted files and the videos become unwatchable. The videos are still absolutely fine on my machines though.

This has only happened since the update, is there anything else I need to do to correct this? Do you know why this could be happening?

Thank you.

[fredo6]

@mitch7780,

Strange. Last update did not touch the video part.

Did you generate with NO rendering or with a rendering software?

What is the format of the video?

[mitch7780]

Just a standard video, no Vray etc.
File formats in .mov & mp4

Thanks

[fredo6]

Just a standard video, no Vray etc.
File formats in .mov & mp4

Thanks

What happens if you download your video posted on DropBox onto your own computer. Would they be corrupted too?

[mitch7780]

I just tried transferring the file, via DropBox, from my PC to my Imac and it downloaded and played fine.
I'm not too sure what's happening when I send the file over to a client. I've been using WeTransfer previously for other animations and it's been no problem.

Your extension is absolutely fantastic by the way, please don't think that this issue has any effect on how I continue to use Animator. It's probably just one of those things but I had to bring it to your attention just in case you had a solution.

One thing I would like to ask is about the sizing or dimension of the viewport before I start processing, is there a rule of thumb for optimal size, i.e 1920 or 1200 etc...

Thanks again.