[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.

[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

[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.

[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.

[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)

View From the car

[fredo6]

@Migmat,

1. 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.

2. 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.

[Migmat]

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

And a funny/mini PostPro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHjCyM1yKRE

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!