[Tutorial] Animator Quick Start

fredo6

Layer Visibility

Animator supports two methods to control Layer Visibility

STATE: capture of the visibility state of ALL layers. This can be done via the Visual Effect Layer State, or via a View or Scene Camera
ON-OFF: Specify the visibility state for given layers
Layer on-off is more adapted to super-impose layer visibility changes since you can control layer by layer.

Note that when these visual effects have a duration > 0, they are ignored when the animation time is after.

fredo6

Launching / Stopping the Animation

This video tutorial explains the different ways to start, pause, stop and navigate through the Animation in Editor and Player mode.

Youtube Video

fredo6

Kinematic Constraints

This video tutorial explains the concept of Kinematic Constraints to coordinate the movements of several objects.

It only shows the first 3 introduced with Animator v1.1c:

Same Movement
Rigidity
Global Instance

Youtube Video

fredo6

Visual Extents

This video tutorial explains the concept of Visual Extents which is a visual effect forcing the camera to frame the whole model or a selection of objects. The camera automatically pans and zooms to center the whole model or selection of objects and make sure it is fully visible in the viewport.

Youtube Video

pilou

Spielberg uses Animator for prototyping its movies!

ithil

Hi.
Many thanks for such a wonderful plugin!

I made a translation of this lesson on the Russian language.
SketchUp for the Russian community.

Youtube Video

fredo6

ithil,

Good job. Thank you very much, this is a big contribution.

Fredo

Migmat

PROBLEM GENERATING VIDEO with ffmpg.exe INSKETCHUP 2013 (Works Animator for this versión?)

1- Animator Beta Works OK
2- Install ffmpeg.exe in LibFredo6 (disapear the red text to Find the ffmpeg.exe)
3- Make a simple animation that Works fine in preview
4- Try to generate a video with defaut parameters. Push the button "Test Image" and also work
5- Push the button "Generate Video" and NOTHING HAPPENDS. Sketchup continues inside the animator plugin. I can exit and star again the plugin,but nothing happends.

I instal the two versión of ffmpeg.exe, the last and the 3.2 (more stable).

Thanks in advance

fredo6

@Migmat
Your problem may be independent of FFmpeg.

When you generate the video, do you get the progress dialog box ?

Can you open the Ruby console to see if there is an error displayed.

Fredo

Migmat

Thanks Fredo for your extraordinary plugin.

I answer first and send more data next.

a- When generate Video animation (sketchup2013)I dont get any progress dialog box

b - Te rubi console says this error:

SkETCHUP 2013 RUBI CONSOLE OUTPUT DURING ANIMATOR VIDEO CREATION

ambient init nil nil
ambient init nil nil
Twilight declare nil
:dimY => 806
:beg_time => 0
:date_modified => 1478294026.547
:reverse => nil
:movie_formats => {
:mov => false
:avi => true
:mp4 => true
} (:movie_formats)
:speed_factor => 1.0
:root_dir => "D:/DISEÑO_DIBUJOS_IMAGENES/SKETCHUP_2013/@_ Animaciones/ANIMATOR FREDO/Animator Videos"
:rendering_method => :natural
:movie_name => "Despegue avion"
:filter => {
} (:filter)
:dimX => 1710
:end_time => 2.0
:movie_dir => "AnimatorPRU_1 - 09-Nov-2016 18-22-13"
:dim_mode => "viewport"
:frame_rate => 25
Error: #<Errno::ENOENT: No such file or directory - D:/DISEÑO_DIBUJOS_IMAGENES/SKETCHUP_2013/@_ Animaciones/ANIMATOR FREDO/Animator Videos>
(eval):944:in mkdir' (eval):944:in movie_create_folder'
(eval):863:in movie_top_generate' (eval):1820:in movie_dialog_call_back'
(eval):379:in call' (eval):379:in notify_result'
(eval):442:in on_close' (eval):405:in dialog_create'
(eval):454:in call' (eval):454:in j_onclose'
(eval):197:in create_dialog' (eval):223:in call'
(eval):223:in close' (eval):223:in close'
(eval):453:in close_validate' (eval):1247:in param_dialog_callback'
(eval):574:in call' (eval):574:in j_action'
(eval):501:in j_callback' (eval):491:in j_dispatch'

END OF OUTPUT

Such directory efectively exist.

MORE EXPERIMETS

1- I installa Animator on Sketchup 2014 on the same PC

2- Works perfectly. meke the animation and the final video without problems.

Posible problem: we know that Sketchup 2013 and 2014 have quite differnt folder structure, firsly in the plugin placement.

Could be related with this?

thanks again.

Migmat

This is a sample of my animation job with a very poor elaborated animation plugin.

With your plugin I hope to get better results

(Is the recreation of a traffic accident seen from two viewpoint)

Youtube Video

View From the car

Youtube Video

fredo6

@Migmat,

In Sketchup 2013, there is no satisfactory support for non-ascii diretory or filename. So this may be the explanation. In Sketchup 2014, based on Ruby 2.0, non-ascii is fully supported.
Your video is quite impressive. I don't know which plugin you used, but I would not qualify it of "very poor elaborated animation plugin".

Fredo

pilou

Dead or alive ?

pilou

Dead or alive ? (the motor bike guy)

PS Animator has not a French version ?

Migmat

Thanks Fredo for your acclaration. Now I am using Sketchup 2014.

Fortunately alive!. Thanks again for your care.

You hare good coders but better persons.

Compared with your Animator plugin the used in my video is really poor(frame Animation). The animation that I did is only plenty of tricks, artisan job and posproduction in some videos.

Postproduction i a really important key in most films.

I advice HitFilm. A very unknown and ppwerful software for PostPro.

Migmat

First test of your amazing Animator plugin.

Is only a ten minutes of work animation that shows a minimun part of the power behind Animator.

Youtube Video

Migmat

A Little example of mixing Sketchup with some PostPro of HitFilm.

Youtube Video

And a funny/mini PostPro.
Youtube Video

Fredo Animator plus HitFilm could be very good.

M3one

Hi Fredo,

I've been working on an animation lately and it's almost finished. The last thing I want to do is to generate a video rendered with Twilight Render (free version) but I don't know how to do it. Please could you tell me how?

Thanks!

ntxdave

@m3one said:

Hi Fredo,

I've been working on an animation lately and it's almost finished. The last thing I want to do is to generate a video rendered with Twilight Render (free version) but I don't know how to do it. Please could you tell me how?

Thanks!

I am not Fredo but I can tell you that you must have the Pro version to create a rendered animation with Twilight.

M3one

@ntxdave said:

@m3one said:

Hi Fredo,

I've been working on an animation lately and it's almost finished. The last thing I want to do is to generate a video rendered with Twilight Render (free version) but I don't know how to do it. Please could you tell me how?

Thanks!

I am not Fredo but I can tell you that you must have the Pro version to create a rendered animation with Twilight.

That's a pity

Is there anyway to generate a video clip with a decent render for free?

Thanks for your answer!