Animated section planes

matteo · 8 Oct 2009, 16:27

[flash=640,480:3ubg5xd0]http://www.youtube.com/v/-pawlxs2PP0&hl=it&fs=1&[/flash:3ubg5xd0]

dyppmo · 8 Oct 2009, 16:41

WOW!!!

That was great!

sepo · 8 Oct 2009, 16:59

I love this. Could you explain the process please.

solo · 8 Oct 2009, 17:38

Excellent stuff, must get awfully confusing setting all that up.
Impressive model also, there is a lot of very fine detailing there.

Durant Hapke · 8 Oct 2009, 18:01

M to the Atteo,

Bravo on ice.

Bring a big chair out back and get set to be served copious amounts of highballs.

Very killer, I Jack bird am all over that action.

Will ponder the stone work while working the stone.

Durant "put me under the stairs" Hapke

matteo · 8 Oct 2009, 18:10

the process is quite simple

animate the section cut effects - here a short explanation: http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=94998
export your animation to any format you like. in this case i exported it as compressed xvid, 720x576 px @ 25fps (standard pal europe)
combine sound, paper texture overlay and transition effects with your favourite video editor. i use ulead media studio pro
upload the final cut to youtube and let it shrink down the quality of your clip

olishea · 8 Oct 2009, 18:22

thats amazing. its melting!!

pilou · 8 Oct 2009, 21:15

Cool Castle video

If you want different directions of the sections plan of different objects in the same time like in this cool video of Falling Water
just use different groups like explain in these another cool tutorial video

Richard · 9 Oct 2009, 00:00

Yeah it almost looks organic!

Darn shame when you watch this, makes you realise how cool it would be to have SU's section plane auto fill closed volumes and also only consider shadow cast from the full model, uneffected by the section.

Nice work mate! (matteo)!

tomislavm · 9 Oct 2009, 06:54

Super!
I like that and I think that animated section plane is one of the best in sketchup!

Gaieus · 9 Oct 2009, 09:05

I really enjoyed this. Fine model, well chosen style and of course, the whole presentation setup!

And Richard is right; would be really cool not to see the "hollows". AFAIK TIG is working on some "super 'SectionCutFace' plugin" that could do this. Oh my, if that came to reality!

matteo · 9 Oct 2009, 10:20

@richard said:

Darn shame when you watch this, makes you realise how cool it would be to have SU's section plane auto fill closed volumes and also only consider shadow cast from the full model, uneffected by the section.

@gaieus said:

And Richard is right; would be really cool not to see the "hollows". AFAIK TIG is working on some "super 'SectionCutFace' plugin" that could do this. Oh my, if that came to reality!

me too!

actually I consider this just a test video, since that section limit.

I also tried to do it with Vue d'Esprit: it would be cool to keep the quality of the title rendering while animating down the section plane. I tried it by subtracting a big parallelepiped from the castle. Sadly, it doesn't work. Vue is not able to recognize the difference between empty and full spaces in the imported model: it's a surface that contains a really complex topological space. The result was something messed up like after a teletransport malfunction.

I had a good time making the some subtraction inside sketchup with Booltools by Dale - this time the subtraction worked quite well: it's incredible how good that plugin works.

Some screenshots and an explanation in italian can be found in my blog - as soon as I can, I'll translate the concept of Section Sphere to SCF too
for a preview just click on the link under my signature: entry 033

Frederik · 9 Oct 2009, 11:12

Excellent stuff, Matteo...
You inspire me to test some ideas I have myself using section cuts and animation...

@solo said:

Impressive model also, there is a lot of very fine detailing there.

Matteo actually made the Belasi castle available for others to render...
You can get it from the [rendering/editing challenge] Belasi castle thread...

Prisoner · 9 Oct 2009, 16:33

Impressive What a wonderful composition. This really is a big inspiration for me.
I'm working with similar backgrounds and overlays... have to log out and do some section cut tests right now

nacholo · 11 Oct 2009, 09:36

Impresionant!
Really original!
Congatullations for you, Matteo
Thanks by show it!

Thanks and gretting

chango70 · 11 Oct 2009, 12:08

That is brilliant! How if anyone can develop an renderer that works with section planes... Droool....

chango70 · 11 Oct 2009, 12:13

I watched it again with sound switched on and the music was also really effective. What is it if you don't mind me asking?

matteo · 11 Oct 2009, 14:19

thank you all for your warm appreciation sepo, solo, durant, olishea, pilou, richard, tomislavm, gaieus, frederik, prisoner, chango70! I didn't expect that

@chango70: the music clip credits are in the end titles - I downloaded it from Jamendo (http://www.jamendo.com/ )and it is released under creative commons.

matteo · 11 Oct 2009, 14:33

If anyone is interested, the castle shell is now on the 3d Warehouse: waiting to be validated by the Google Earth team.

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1

(sketchup.google.com)

since the surrounding forest hides part of the walls, I could not make all textures; then I decided to assign only flat colours to the whole structure.

Gaieus · 11 Oct 2009, 14:40

@matteo said:

...since the surrounding forest hides part of the walls, I could not make all textures; then I decided to assign only flat colours to the whole structure.

I am afraid (and really sorry to predict) that it will be rejected for "incomplete texturing" I'd rather fake those textures by heavy editing the trees out (or create wall textures from the plastering or anything "shot" elsewhere) because it would be a shame if this fine model was rejected - but probably it will be.