[Plugin] Smoothstep Animation

rombout · 14 Dec 2010, 01:11

Hey guyz

I know this is an old thread, but just for you to know...

Was looking for a plugin to animate objects, and I found Properanimation.rb by morisdov
This is a very cool plugin but did not have any way to export, native SU export engine did not support it. There are hughe threads about this issue, other people was considering to make screencapture videos, or get fancy external render engines.

But guess what...?

Smoothstep Animation not only exports smooth camera scenes, it also recognizes all Properanimation.rb animations.....!!!!

So if you are looking for a cool tool to animate objects, try both plugins
Properanimation.rb + SmoothstepAnim.rb

Uploading utube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL6tnTvphAE
Done

but how did you get to export all geometry, cause i thought he said i could only export images???

rickymon · 14 Dec 2010, 01:16

@rombout said:

@rickymon said:

Hey guyz

I know this is an old thread, but just for you to know...

Was looking for a plugin to animate objects, and I found Properanimation.rb by morisdov
This is a very cool plugin but did not have any way to export, native SU export engine did not support it. There are hughe threads about this issue, other people was considering to make screencapture videos, or get fancy external render engines.

But guess what...?

Smoothstep Animation not only exports smooth camera scenes, it also recognizes all Properanimation.rb animations.....!!!!

So if you are looking for a cool tool to animate objects, try both plugins
Properanimation.rb + SmoothstepAnim.rb

Uploading utube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL6tnTvphAE
Done

but how did you get to export all geometry, cause i thought he said i could only export images???

U can make a video out of a sequence of images, twhat I didnt knew is that both plugins were compatibles. So u dont need any fancy external engine to export smooth transitions and object animation. Unless u wanna go photorealistic. }

Jakson · 16 Dec 2010, 20:11

Hi

I made as well some small change to the script, I hope you don't mind.

Added support of saving the Export Property's to the Model.

If you cancel the export dialog or the save dialog the script stops instantly.

And reduced the filenumber padding to 6 numbers.

And my first Animation with Properanimation + SmoothstepAnim http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agCUtjEJssM

smoothStepAnim.rb

derei · 17 Dec 2010, 02:27

Is it a similar plugin to this one http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=33417 ?

vidy · 17 Dec 2010, 02:38

thanks jackson

rickymon · 17 Dec 2010, 03:50

@jakson said:

Hi

I made as well some small change to the script, I hope you don't mind.

Added support of saving the Export Property's to the Model.

If you cancel the export dialog or the save dialog the script stops instantly.

And reduced the filenumber padding to 6 numbers.

And my first Animation with Properanimation + SmoothstepAnim http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agCUtjEJssM

Thanks Jackson, I wish I can learn to do those scripts too
uploaded another test...

take care

luciano.au · 22 Dec 2010, 16:15

GREAT!!!
Best plugin ever!!
Solved all my problems.

Congratulations!!!

DesignChest · 16 Jun 2011, 09:17

Hi

Great plug in . . . one thing. I am wandering what the best program is to stitch together the images for a mac. Imovie is driving me crazy and keeps zooming in and out of each individual frame. Any tips?

Chris Fullmer · 16 Jun 2011, 15:15

Quicktime all the way. It works fast and does a very good job.

BaffaloWing · 6 Jun 2012, 17:06

Thank you very much : )

i think it very work

Sebastien2 · 27 Jun 2012, 17:33

Wow, great!!!

Grice · 3 Oct 2012, 08:12

Whaat, many many thanks for this and the person who replied to my post solving my little artifact problem that the programmers appeared not to be interested in fixing. Great script!

FS · 21 Dec 2012, 09:03

how to install on mac..?

driven · 21 Dec 2012, 23:16

@fs said:

how to install on mac..?

same as any .rb files & theres lots of info on this forum.
download from the first post in this thread, move to 'plugins' folder
if it's hidden you can paste this into 'Ruby Console' under 'Window' menu in Sketchup

`open "/Library/Application Support/Google SketchUp 8/SketchUp/Plugins"`

, then hit return/enter
drag the ruby in and restart SU.
john

Gadgetguru · 21 Jan 2013, 00:44

thanks for the brilliant plugin!!

using Proper Animation, Smoothstep & Adobe Lightroom and getting an excellent video
is there any chance of adding support for exporting TIFF files?

thanks

pritishgajjar · 20 Aug 2013, 08:09

@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?

dear sir ,
i m pritish from india , trying to render animation with vray can you make tutorial or may be some image/video format to explain your thoughts,it will be helpful .
waiting for your replay.
thanks in advance.

regards,
pritish

Grice · 9 Oct 2013, 04:30

I have been using this plugin for a while but have been running into a few problems, particularly on my PC (Mac to lesser extent). When generating frames, sometimes the frame generation can hang for a considerable amount of time. Standard frames will take a minute or two and then there will be a rogue frame that takes 20mins! Sometimes even as much as an hour! This ain't good. Seems to happen more at HD resolutions. It makes video generating times completely unpredictable.

Some sort of feature to universally number frames so that the animation can be stopped/started or "farmed" to other computers without messing up the frame sequence would also be fantastic.

I know this plugin was written a while ago but I am just hoping Whaat that you will relook at it again because it is a very useful script for my line of work...

duanekemp · 8 Jun 2014, 19:57

I see that the flow of additions to this post has slowed down. However, I've just read everything from the very beginning and curious if there is any further development on allowing this to work with rendering soft and plugins.
I have searched SketchUcation, Google and spent too much time looking for an answer to the question that too many are asking. How to make smooth animation from SU scene camera positions. I have seen Rendering programs make smooth camera position transitions but cannot find the plugin that makes this an automatic feature for animation exports from SU. Here is an example of non smooth camera positions and I'm looking for the trick that avoids these choppy positions between camera points. Could this plugin one day help?
I'd like to render animations with Thea and think this is really close to what we are looking for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded%26amp;v=NM978cZSj8c

sally · 9 Jun 2014, 12:18

@chris fullmer said:

Quicktime all the way. It works fast and does a very good job.

Hi Chris, do you mean Quicktime pro? And can you add still photos in between video clips or would you need to import the quicktime edited video into iMovie and do that in there? Thanks, best regards, Sally

randomizer · 17 Jun 2014, 20:31

Hi,

Can it be that exporting animations via write_image is slower than using regular export?
Currently I am writing the connection to RenderPal, our renderfarm manager, and it seems that using this method for exporting is taking much more time.

I observed that when using the the regular export, the 3d ui is completely paused. Maybe this might speed things up? But I was not able to pause it myself. Did not find a ruby function for that.

Hope somebody can enlighten me a bit.

Greetings
Andreas