General discussion about Animator for SketchUp
by fredo6 » Mon Aug 17, 2020 2:20 pm
mitch7780 wrote: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
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by mitch7780 » Wed Aug 19, 2020 11:22 am
Hey Fredo,
I'll give it a try. Thank you.
Ben
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by fredo6 » Thu Sep 17, 2020 8:18 pm
New Release: Animator - v2.8a - 17 Sep 20Requirement: LibFredo6 v11.1Minor 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.
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by CMC007 » Mon Sep 21, 2020 12:01 am
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
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by fredo6 » Wed Sep 23, 2020 12:47 pm
CMC007 wrote: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
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by mitch7780 » Fri Sep 25, 2020 3:28 pm
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
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by fredo6 » Fri Sep 25, 2020 9:54 pm
@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.
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by SAJD2000 » Thu Oct 01, 2020 10:27 am
hello can you help me ? I install 2.8 version and animator panel disappered How can i bring it back ? 
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by fredo6 » Thu Oct 01, 2020 11:31 am
SAJD2000 wrote: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.
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by SAJD2000 » Thu Oct 01, 2020 3:38 pm
fredo6 wrote:SAJD2000 wrote: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 
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by SAJD2000 » Fri Oct 02, 2020 3:19 pm
Fredo please help i need animator
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by HuiJax » Fri Oct 16, 2020 5:24 pm
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
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by fredo6 » Sat Oct 17, 2020 6:18 am
HuiJax wrote: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.
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by HuiJax » Tue Oct 20, 2020 8:50 am
Hey Fredo, thx for the Answer. I would like to make Animation like in this Video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5BE0DRABGAShort 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
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by fredo6 » Tue Oct 20, 2020 12:38 pm
HuiJax wrote:Hey Fredo, thx for the Answer. I would like to make Animation like in this Video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5BE0DRABGAShort 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.
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by HuiJax » Tue Oct 20, 2020 2:45 pm
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!
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by lrainero » Tue Nov 17, 2020 8:34 am
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.
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by fredo6 » Tue Nov 17, 2020 6:44 pm
lrainero wrote: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
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by fredo6 » Wed Nov 18, 2020 10:51 am
Danial Ismail wrote: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 = trueCan 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
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by Danial Ismail » Wed Nov 18, 2020 3:33 pm
fredo6 wrote:Danial Ismail wrote: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 = trueCan 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
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by fredo6 » Wed Nov 18, 2020 7:24 pm
Danial Ismail wrote: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.
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by lrainero » Thu Nov 19, 2020 9:56 am
fredo6 wrote:lrainero wrote: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!
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by fredo6 » Fri Nov 20, 2020 9:39 am
New Release: Animator - v2.9a - 19 Nov 20Requirement: LibFredo6 v11.3Major 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.
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by mitch7780 » Tue Dec 01, 2020 3:40 pm
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.
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by fredo6 » Tue Dec 01, 2020 3:57 pm
@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?
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by mitch7780 » Tue Dec 01, 2020 4:20 pm
Just a standard video, no Vray etc. File formats in .mov & mp4
Thanks
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by fredo6 » Tue Dec 01, 2020 6:02 pm
mitch7780 wrote: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?
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by mitch7780 » Wed Dec 02, 2020 11:48 am
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.
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by fredo6 » Wed Jan 06, 2021 9:32 am
New Release: Animator - v3.0a - 06 Jan 21Requirement: LibFredo6 v11.3Maintenance release_______________________________________________________________________________________ See plugin home page of Animator for Download of RBZ from the PluginStore. See Main Post of the Animator thread for more information.
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