Scene (Page) animation of Section Cuts

marksup

I wish to automate the generation and presentation of Section Cut animation via Scenes.
Creating the Scenes, each with its own active Section Plane, was straightforward.

However, I am not sure if it then possible to automatically animate these Scenes.
I have tried to employ a PagesObserver, and searched the Sketchup.send_action options, each to no avail...

Is it possible to determine and/or set the Display Section Cuts option?
Is it possible to determine and/or deactivate Display Section Planes?
How can a set of Scenes then be automatically sequentially displayed (including the transition animation), or alternatively how can the Scene + Play Animation (or View + Animation + Play) function be invoked?

Any ideas, anyone?!

TIG

Sketchup.active_model.rendering_options.to_a.sort [["BackgroundColor", #<Sketchup::Color:0xaf66560>], ["BandColor", #<Sketchup::Color:0xaf66518>], ["ConstructionColor", #<Sketchup::Color:0xaf664d0>], ["DepthQueWidth", 4], ["DisplayColorByLayer", false], ["DisplayDims", true], ["DisplayFog", false], ["DisplayInstanceAxes", false], ["DisplaySectionPlanes", false], ["DisplaySketchAxes", true], ["DisplayText", true], ["DisplayWatermarks", true], ["DrawDepthQue", false], ["DrawGround", false], ["DrawHidden", false], ["DrawHorizon", true], ["DrawLineEnds", true], ["DrawProfilesOnly", false], ["DrawSilhouettes", true], ["DrawUnderground", true], ["EdgeColorMode", 1], ["EdgeDisplayMode", 1], ["EdgeType", 0], ["ExtendLines", true], ["FaceBackColor", #<Sketchup::Color:0xaf66080>], ["FaceColorMode", 0], ["FaceFrontColor", #<Sketchup::Color:0xaf66008>], ["FogColor", #<Sketchup::Color:0xaf65f90>], ["FogEndDist", -1.0], ["FogStartDist", -1.0], ["FogUseBkColor", true], ["ForegroundColor", #<Sketchup::Color:0xaf65e70>], ["GroundColor", #<Sketchup::Color:0xaf65e28>], ["GroundTransparency", 50], ["HideConstructionGeometry", false], ["HighlightColor", #<Sketchup::Color:0xaf65d80>], ["HorizonColor", #<Sketchup::Color:0xaf65d38>], ["InactiveFade", 0.25], ["InactiveHidden", false], ["InstanceFade", 0.5], ["InstanceHidden", false], ["JitterEdges", false], ["LineEndWidth", 7], ["LineExtension", 2], ["LockedColor", #<Sketchup::Color:0xaf65b70>], ["MaterialTransparency", true], ["ModelTransparency", false], ["RenderMode", 2], ["SectionActiveColor", #<Sketchup::Color:0xaf65a98>], ["SectionCutWidth", 3], ["SectionDefaultCutColor", #<Sketchup::Color:0xaf65a20>], ["SectionInactiveColor", #<Sketchup::Color:0xaf659d8>], ["ShowViewName", true], ["SilhouetteWidth", 2], ["SkyColor", #<Sketchup::Color:0xaf65930>], ["Texture", true], ["TransparencySort", 0]]
The "DisplaySectionPlanes" can be set true/false
Sketchup.active_model.rendering_options["DisplaySectionPlanes"]=true
etc...
However... there are other "options" too...
Sketchup.active_model.options.to_a.each{|o| p o.name} "PageOptions" "UnitsOptions" "SlideshowOptions" "NamedOptions" "PrintOptions"
These include relevant ones, like:
Sketchup.active_model.options["PageOptions"].sort [["ShowTransition", true], ["TransitionTime", 2.0]]
and
Sketchup.active_model.options["SlideshowOptions"].sort [["LoopSlideshow", true], ["SlideTime", 1.0]]

The model.pages [and 'page] also allows you to set a page current, individual page properties etc... these are probably what you need in tandem...

http://www.sketchup.com/intl/en/developer/docs/ourdoc/pages

marksup

Hi TIG,

Thanks - hidden in rendering_options is indeed the simple answer to displaying (or not) Section Planes.

But critically Display of Section Cuts is missing, and if not active, any Section Plane animation is invisible!

Also, still no API method of activating Scene Animation, i.e. any way of sequentially displaying multiple Scenes.

And incidentally, there appears to be no option to decide Scene/Page 'Include in animation'

marksup

PS - I'm also struggling to create a 'Reset' Scene which deactivates an active Section Cut Plane if one exists. It can be done interactively, but is it possible in Ruby?!

TIG

There are only a few API SectionPlane methods.
In v2014 there is SectionPlane.active to set a given section plane active, you need to iterate its container's entities to find it.
http://www.sketchup.com/intl/en/developer/docs/ourdoc/sectionplane

If a Scene tab is saved/updated its SectionPlane state will saved with it.
When you change between the Scene-tabs the section-cut will animate...

Since each section-cut state is linked to a Scene-tab 'page', then setting the next page in pages as the current page will animate to that next SectionPlane.

A page has many options... http://www.sketchup.com/intl/en/developer/docs/ourdoc/page
These control all aspects of what you 'see' like shadows and section-cuts...
So you CAN set section-cuts on/off with...
http://www.sketchup.com/intl/en/developer/docs/ourdoc/page#use_section_planes=
which allows you to set the page's SectionPlane visibility on/off [.use_section_planes? to get true/false].

It's well worth taking some time to explore the API guide - even it is sometimes scant or error prone...

marksup

Thanks again for your response, sadly I have in fact been perusing the API guide daily for over 5 years! - thus this query regarding basic but apparently missing function.

My understanding is that .use_section_planes does NOT intrinsically decide if a Section Cut is active or not, it merely decides to remember, or not, any active Section Cut at the time the Scene was saved or last updated. Thus my queries (e.g. how to switch on Section Cut display, and how to create a Scene with .use_section_planes = true referencing no active Section Plane) remain.

I guess any existing Cutting Planes could be stored, deleted, the 'Reset Scene' created, and then the Cutting Planes recreated, but this would not exactly be elegant - and might upset any existing Scenes which referenced the Cutting Planes.

I'm still hoping that some obscure API methodology will offer a solution to some extent!

TIG

You can use page.update to re-save a page with modified settings.
The .use_section_planes determines whether or not the page [scene] shows the active section cut.
As explained earlier, in v2014 you can set the active section-plane.
If the model has several pages each with their own section-plane how about this ?
Your code adds an attribute to the section-plane which is the page.name
Now [in v2014 at least] you can ensure that that a page has its section-plane set current, and that the page uses section-planes ?
For speed you can initially assemble an array of all section-planes in the model/definitions and inspect those in your attribute search...

Earlier you also asked about how to test if a page is in an animation.
The page.name==page.label is true if it is, BUT is false if not - because then the label is the name within () - so it is a simple way to filter out non-animated scenes...
E.G.
animated_pages = model.pages.find_all{|page| page.name==page.label }
Now 'animated_pages' is just the pages that are animated...

marksup

I have figured out how to create a 'Reset' Scene - which will always display without any active Section Cuts...

scene = Sketchup.active_model.pages["Reset"]
if not scene
temporary_plane = Sketchup.active_model.entities.add_section_plane([0, 0, 0], [0, 0, -1]) # Not activated
scene = current_model.pages.add("Reset")
#scene.use_section_planes = true # Unnecessary since defaults to true
Sketchup.active_model.entities.erase_entities(temporary_plane)
else
scene.update(63) # Update All except for Section Planes
end

Regarding 'Include in Animation' - the requirement would be to SET the value (for use by the standard View + Animation + Play function)

marksup

Correction! (a Scene is only interested in active Section Planes)...

temporary_plane = current_model.entities.add_section_plane([0, 0, 9999], [0, 0, -1]).activate

TIG

You can 'get' & 'set' [with = ] page.name
BUT you can only 'get' the page.label
By default the page.name==page.label and so it's in the animated set...

Sorry, but the API is lacking page.label= or similar...
Of course, the Animation class can be used filtering out () labels, BUT you can't change a page.label in code