Which rubies for better camera movement in animations?
-
Hi all,
I was wondering which rubies are available to have improved camera movement? (animation)
The default Sketchup transitions of the scenes aren't really that cinematic.I know there is some ruby at smustard, but they don't have visual examples or anything to show how it works and what the end result can look like.
Also, I tried to make a camera path with a bezier curve with a very old ruby, but I can't get the animation to pick it up.
Maybe you guys know better ways to do this?
-
The presentation software from Smustard (flightpath 2) is kind of a must have for animation exporting. It gives you a variety of tools.
You can manually adjust each transitions time; you can smooth the timing of transitions over an entire animation sequence; you can draw a line and have the camera follow it and adjust the point of aim to look at a single point you designate, or transition between two points, or look at the next line end point of your path.
Having a camera follow a bezier curve is super easy with flightpath 2. I use this method to mimic being in a car, for example, and you can even set the speed to match a particular MPH.
For smooth, cinematic animations, there is just a period of tweaking and scene updating that I have not been able to avoid. The things I spend a lot of time finetuning are ensuring that there is no clipping going on, or that I am not flying through something, or that the camera moves the way I expected it.
The big thing is to try to make the amount of movement that the camera does for each transition as similar as possible. This gives a nice, smooth, consistent flow to the shot.
Practice and trial and error are necessary and unavoidable, at least in my experience.
Another tip is to do trial exports with no colors or textures at a tiny resolution to dial in the flow without wasting a ton of time exporting. And I always do PNG image sequence exports so, in case of a crash, you don't have to start over.
-
There is also the SU Animate over at the Podium site, but im not sure how effective it is.
-
Thank you both for your answers.
Do these plugins spread the animation over 'scene tabs' like default SU animation?
As a note: I would want to use a render engine (Indigo and/or Vray) which uses the default scene tab animation to export. -
Flight path 2 does use the scenes tabs.
-
What would be great is a script that could collect all scenes in order and make them key frames then dividing the transisions into editable number of frames (10 for basic and 25 for smooth) and somehow work with the render app of choice and batch render in sequence. The exported renders could be in .gif or .avi format by selected choice.
-
@unknownuser said:
you can smooth the timing of transitions over an entire animation sequence;
Can you clarify this? Does this allow 'ease-in' and 'ease-out' of scene tabs?
I was thinking about writing such a plugin last night. However, I'm too busy right now.
-
@whaat said:
Does this allow 'ease-in' and 'ease-out' of scene tabs?
Interpolation is very important IMHO...!!
-
@whaat said:
@unknownuser said:
you can smooth the timing of transitions over an entire animation sequence;
Can you clarify this? Does this allow 'ease-in' and 'ease-out' of scene tabs?
I was thinking about writing such a plugin last night. However, I'm too busy right now.
I don't think it could allow "ease in" and "ease out", if by this you mean that it starts the transition slowly and then speeds up after a set amount of time and visa versa at the end of scene. That would be a great script, though!
I don't know what it does under the hood, but it allows the user to set a motion speed and then applies this across all of the scenes. I have used this to even out the movement of a car along a path, first ensuring that all of my line segments are the same length.
I am sure that Rick could dial you in with the specifics.
-
'Ease in' and 'ease out' actually is something that is easily done on a still image in your compositing software (premiere etc..) . But indeed easier to have straight in your Su animation.
Some other things like speed fluctuations can also be done in Adobe After effects with a graph editor ( x-axis=time; y-axis=speed).
However it can be cool to have it in SU built in.What interests me the most is having a better way of making your camera move in a realistic way.
As Kannonbal mentioned, the Bezier technique is quite difficult to master. (Rhino users complain about the Bezier method in their app)So my suggestion for a camera ruby would be : use it as it works now (setting up some views that get transitions automatically), but enhance it with options to regulate the transitions = a menu with camera 'effects' to choose from.
So for the transition between two scenes you would get to choose options.
For instance: keep target at specific height,fixed camera height, wiggle camera as if you are walking, from slow to rapid and back, etc.....It needs some investigation (cfr. camera motion filters in Adobe after effects ?) which parameters to provide....but I would love a plugin like that.
The thing that bothers me the most in the default transitions in SU, is that sometimes the camera will move under the ground plane, or fly through geometry...
I don't know if there's a way to overcome this by setting options...Another thing would be having a solution for the 'hickups' between the transitions.
A Sketchup animation is not smooth. You can see the different transitions as the animation produces a sudden shock when a new one starts. So some 'global' settings could fix that.
Actually that would be similar to what Solo mentioned.Maybe some of the dinosaur package users on the forum could fill us in on how walk through animation is done for instance in C4D....as that seems to be a popular animation tool. Keyframing would be an option, but maybe that is very complicated to code.
-
@whaat said:
@unknownuser said:
you can smooth the timing of transitions over an entire animation sequence;
Can you clarify this? Does this allow 'ease-in' and 'ease-out' of scene tabs?
I was thinking about writing such a plugin last night. However, I'm too busy right now.
SketchUp have linear interpolation which means the camera have the same speed leaving last scene/keyframe as it has coming to the next. Ease in ease out is slowing in and accelerating and would give the user much more control over camera speed. Lets say you want to give the viewer time to watch some detail you could slow in when the camera came close to it.
@unknownuser said:
The thing that bothers me the most in the default transitions in SU, is that sometimes the camera will move under the ground plane, or fly through geometry...
I don't know if there's a way to overcome this by setting options...Another thing would be having a solution for the 'hickups' between the transitions.
A Sketchup animation is not smooth. You can see the different transitions as the animation produces a sudden shock when a new one starts. So some 'global' settings could fix that.
Actually that would be similar to what Solo mentioned.SketchUps camera is a "two node camera" meaning it has a position for the actual camera and another position for the focus point. While this can be good at some occations it makes it harder to animate a flythrough. A "one node camera" has position and rotation which makes it easier to animate since it doesnt fly away out of course so easily like you describe.
I've posted an idea for a script before that I belive would help making better animations.
I'm not able to make this myself since it would need some webdialogs programming that is beyond my knowledge. The other stuff is not so hard to make I think.
http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=8547&p=51051&hilit=pixero#p51051
I've made a script called js_CameraControl.rb (Here: http://www.pixero.com ) for positioning the camera more like a one node camera as a small start for this.I really, really would love to see someone (Whaat maybe) take a look at this.
-
Kannonball referenced the set of plugins available in PresentationBundle2.
FlightPath(2) doesn't speed up or slow down at the beginning/end of the path, though it woudn't be hard to add. SketchUp does do some of that if there is a page delay (I think).
The SceneTiming plugin allows changes to the transition and delay times of scenes.
The PageTransitionSmoother (needs to be renamed, it came from the days when "Scenes" were called "Pages") will get a user-defined speed and calculate a scene's transition time based on the speed and the distance between scene cameras. Useful if you have set up your scenes manually, and want a constant motion speed between them. It will NOT automatically make all the transitions between scenes "cinematic", it just provides even speed between scene cameras - you need to do due diligence in creating the scenes.
I'm working on (among other things) some improvements for FP2 to better the radial motion effects.
-
Rick,
Would it be possible to show some example animations made with the current flightpath2 (presentation bundle)? Maybe a youtube?
It would make me understand better what it can do. -
I think with all these add ons for SketchUp it is very important to keep the interface as simple (and close to the native SU interface) as possible.
some sort of slider bars would be a nice idea.
I would prefer, if you are able to adjust the interpolation of camera movement and the transition of traveling speed independently (to do fast accelerations in some points). another slider to choose a specific time for each scene would come in handy too (perhaps a check box like "keep traveling speed" could change the scene time automatically, to match the traveling speed with the previous scene, if you wish a continuous flight).
one could even consider to have an additional slider bar for the transition of camera focus (so that the camera either does one fluent movement or keeps its focus on one point and then quickly pans to the next point of focus).
in order to have advanced control of the camera focus it would be very nice to be able to add a scene in-between two others, which is placed halfway on the interpolated camera path (and with halfway interpolated orientation). thus you could simply change your focus point and update the scene, without changing the camera movement at all...
-
Good idea Plot-Paris !
+1 -
+1. An interface like that would rock!
-
+1 on the stellar interface suggestion! That would be fantastic.
-
+1
-
yeah, something like that
Also, to have a more defined speed control, one could implement a speed graph (curve).
That way, the transition between 2 scenes could for instance start slow, gradually increase in speed and end slow (sinusoidal curve). Each speed variation could be setup as a different curve (horizontal line is continuous speed, curve going up is increase of speed, etc...) -
I disagree.
Not that I don't want the functionality in SketchUp, but doing a animation editor in just a small panel is bad in several ways. First that would mean it would have to be coded by Google when ever they deside to do it. Secondly it would be impractical with such a small panel for lets say a animation between 15-20 scenes or more. The sliders would be on top of each other.I've simplified the image I previously posted a link to just to explain if someone didn't understand what I meant with it.
The timeline would be extended dynamicly when changing the animation lenght value.
This means you will always have enough space to see all the keys even if they are on each frame.The black rectangles would be the same as the sliders in the post by Plot-Paris.
Draggable to the left and right to change the timing between scenes/keyframes.
The red rectangle shows the key you are currently editing. Adding new keys would be as simple as ctrl+clicking (Or something like that.)Doing a animation control with Ruby and a web dialog means the community could start making it NOW instead of waiting for whenever Google desides they would like to do it. It would also mean it could be extended with new features so it could start simple and be enhanced with perhaps a spline curve to control speed. I believe also that is doable with a web dialog through java.
My two cents...
Advertisement