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    [Plugin] Smoothstep Animation

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    • W Offline
      Whaat
      last edited by

      @pixero said:

      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.

      SketchUp Plugins for Professionals

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      • J Offline
        Jon
        last edited by

        Thanks again, Whaat!

        Jon
        KT Team member

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        • R Offline
          RickW
          last edited by

          @whaat said:

          @pixero said:

          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... 😞

          RickW
          [www.smustard.com](http://www.smustard.com)

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          • PixeroP Offline
            Pixero
            last edited by

            Here's what Todd said at the Google Group:

            @unknownuser said:

            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.

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            • erikBE Offline
              erikB
              last edited by

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

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              • K Offline
                kwistenbiebel
                last edited by

                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! 👍

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                • M Offline
                  Matt666
                  last edited by

                  @pixero said:

                  Sketchup.send_action "pageDelete:"

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

                  Frenglish at its best !
                  My scripts

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                  • PixeroP Offline
                    Pixero
                    last edited by

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

                    Is

                    entities.clear!
                    

                    not working either?

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                    • K Offline
                      kwistenbiebel
                      last edited by

                      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?

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                      • W Offline
                        Whaat
                        last edited by

                        @kwistenbiebel said:

                        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.

                        SketchUp Plugins for Professionals

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                        • K Offline
                          kwistenbiebel
                          last edited by

                          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)

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                          • S Offline
                            steelers05
                            last edited by

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

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                            • D Offline
                              Dan
                              last edited by

                              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!

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                              • F Offline
                                Fletch
                                last edited by

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

                                Fletch
                                Twilight Render Cross-platform Plugin for SketchUp on PC or Mac

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                                • Z Offline
                                  zeal
                                  last edited by

                                  Thank you for sharing 😍

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • K Offline
                                    kwistenbiebel
                                    last edited by

                                    @whaat said:

                                    @kwistenbiebel said:

                                    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.

                                    I needed to add that in a lot of cases an animation spread over X scene tabs according to X animation frames (1 scene tab per animation frame) can be an advantage.

                                    For instance, when you have 'face me' components. Both Vray and current Skindigo won't render the face me components correctly (they will not face the camera), unless the animation consists of as many scenes as there are animation frames.

                                    I think if someone of the ruby masters would be able to make a decent and easy to use smooth animation plugin like that, we don't need to learn the dinosaurs apps to get some decent PR animations.

                                    Currently I use the combo of rubies described above and it works , but it is too tedious to do in a daily workflow.

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                                    • K Offline
                                      kwistenbiebel
                                      last edited by

                                      @fletch said:

                                      SU2KT lets you export animations via scene tabs, and can include or exclude face-mes depending on your desired outcome.

                                      Yes, I hear positive things about a Kerkythea animation workflow.

                                      It is good though to have a freedom of choice on render engines when it comes to animation, so a built in smooth scene tab animation in Sketchup would be cool.
                                      Since Google doesn't seem to have a go at it (animation is untouched in 3 versions), the ruby masters might be are our only option here.

                                      Whaats Smoothstep plugin is a good start, but it doesn't play with the render engines yet.

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                                      • PixeroP Offline
                                        Pixero
                                        last edited by

                                        I still thinks my idea in my post on page one in this thread is both doable and would be the best way of using keyframes and inbetweens in SketchUps current animation implementation. That way you could go back to only the keyframes if you want to edit the animation and still get a scene per frame for rendering the animation.

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                                        • F Offline
                                          Fletch
                                          last edited by

                                          @kb said:

                                          Both Vray and current Skindigo won't render the face me components correctly

                                          SU2KT lets you export animations via scene tabs, and can include or exclude face-mes depending on your desired outcome.

                                          Fletch
                                          Twilight Render Cross-platform Plugin for SketchUp on PC or Mac

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                                          • facerF Offline
                                            facer
                                            last edited by

                                            Help Note for use of:
                                            smoothStepAnim.rb - 0904_05apr_jpeg to avi
                                            Working with image sequences - using VirtualDub to convert jpeg images to avi.

                                            Following on from Whaat's usage notes item #3:
                                            smoothStepAnim.rb
                                            by Whaat on Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:18 am
                                            Usage:
                                            3) Plugin can export single frames only. The images must be joined into a movie format using other software (eg. VirtualDub)

                                            VirtualDub
                                            http://www.virtualdub.org/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=34
                                            Working with image sequences

                                            Time to actually post something for users and not just developers.

                                            To reading a series of numbered images as a video stream
                                            use File > Open video file... and select the first image. VirtualDub will automatically step the filename and find any sequentially numbered frames after the starting file. You can open BMPs and TARGA files this way. Starting with VirtualDub 1.6.0, you can also sequential JPEGs and single files. In 1.6.2, you can also open non-interlaced PNG. Once the sequence has loaded, use Video > Frame Rate to set the correct frame rate for the sequence.

                                            To exporting a video segment as a sequence of numbered images
                                            on disk in VirtualDub, use File > Save Image Sequence. What you may not know is that nearly all of the regular video processing modes are still enabled in this mode. This includes video format, frame rate decimation/conversion, filtering, etc. modes. In particular, if you only want to write out every fifth frame in the video, simply set frame rate decimation to "every 5" and you will only get 1/5th of the frames. Similarly, if you are writing out BMPs, you probably want to use no video compression and a normal video format such as 24-bit RGB. (That VirtualDub allows you to write out something silly like MPEG-4 compressed "BMPs" is actually a misfeature that I need to fix.) For the most part, though, what you see in the preview is what will get written out to disk as images.

                                            Side note:
                                            It isn't well known, but VirtualDub uses the exact same pipeline for all of its rendering operations. That includes AVI, WAV, and image sequence output, as well as... preview. The primary differences are whether certain outputs are disabled and whether the frame limiter is enabled. I spent a long time ago optimizing the pipeline to overlap I/O and CPU utilization and reduce synchronization overhead for better real-time preview; when you save to disk, the limiter is kicked out and you get the benefits of that work in faster rendering.
                                            20 comments | Dec 30, 2004 at 20:05 | default

                                            Additional topic - jpeg images to avi - questions
                                            can be viewed at:
                                            http://www.virtualdub.org/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=34
                                            pmolson posted 2007 Jun 15 00:14
                                            "photo slide show" (converts jpg frames to avi)

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