Animator Gallery

fredo6 · 19 Feb 2017, 11:04

Well done. really!

I may be interested by the model at some point in time, because of the hydraulic piston. Actually, this is a good sample case for more sophisticated kinematics constraints.

Fredo

Treadshot A1 · 17 Mar 2017, 15:22

Here's the result of my testing with Animator v1.5b and trial Thea. Animator tested on [SU8Free Win8] and [SU8Free Win10]. Rendering achieved with Thea calling Animator, Thea settings [IR-Presto (AO) Interactive unchecked, 16 samples/px], rendered on [SU8Free Win10].

Model: Data Minion Jaguar by Treadshot A1
Fine print: As per trial version of Thea, Thea rendered video is set to Unlisted, uploaded solely for purpose of reporting results of beta test, and will NOT be used when Data Minion Jaguar is released to public. Natural Rendering video will be used for public release of Data Minion Jaguar, as it does not use Thea.

Natural Rendering (Animator only)

Thea Rendering

Glitches: "Tail" part should rotate starting at 16.5 seconds. No other movements applied to "Tail", no movements referencing "Tail" geometry, "Tail" group is separate from all other components and NOT nested in any other group. Animated correctly with Natural settings; "Tail" unexpectedly moves down then snaps back into place when animated by Thea. *Note: Tail moves 180deg in Natural video, 165deg in Thea as result of trying to fix movement, angle rotated is not an error.

ntxdave · 17 Mar 2017, 15:57

I like them. Obviously not you first animation. Looking forward to your next animation post.

fredo6 · 17 Mar 2017, 19:05

@treadshot a1 said:

Glitches: "Tail" part should rotate starting at 16.5 seconds. No other movements applied to "Tail", no movements referencing "Tail" geometry, "Tail" group is separate from all other components and NOT nested in any other group. Animated correctly with Natural settings; "Tail" unexpectedly moves down then snaps back into place when animated by Thea. *Note: Tail moves 180deg in Natural video, 165deg in Thea as result of trying to fix movement, angle rotated is not an error.

That may be an issue with Thea, as it actually 'watches' the object movements.
Did you get the glitch when rendering with direct method (i.e. from Animator) or reverse method (i.e. from Thea)?

Fredo

PS: nice model and animation!

Treadshot A1 · 18 Mar 2017, 04:54

@fredo6 said:

That may be an issue with Thea, as it actually 'watches' the object movements.
Did you get the glitch when rendering with direct method (i.e. from Animator) or reverse method (i.e. from Thea)?

Fredo

PS: nice model and animation!

The glitch happened when rendering from Thea (I still get Script Errors when rendering from Animator, so reverse from Thea is the way to go so far). Not entirely sure what you mean by 'watches' the movements, though. I ended up trashing the unit movement applied to the tail and creating a new rotation from scratch (hence the change in rotation angle), but that didn't solve the problem.

Treadshot A1 · 20 Mar 2017, 11:56

More testing with Animator v1.5b and trial Thea. I have no idea what Thea is doing, to be honest. At least every group moves back to its intended position right as its first unit movement starts. Also, once a group does have a unit movement applied to it, after that movement, it doesn't move about unexpectedly anymore.

Animator tested on [SU8Free Win8] and [SU8Free Win10]. Rendering achieved with Thea calling Animator, Thea settings [IR-Presto (AO) Interactive unchecked, 16 samples/px], rendered on [SU8Free Win10].

Model: Trinity by Treadshot A1
Fine print: As per trial version of Thea, Thea rendered video is set to Unlisted, uploaded solely for purpose of reporting results of beta test, and will NOT be used when Trinity is released to public. Natural Rendering video will be used for public release of Trinity, as it does not use Thea.

Natural Rendering (Animator only)

Thea Rendering

Glitches: Lots of things move. Not the way they should move, unfortunately.

Notes: Video length doesn't match, because the Thea video was made with Blender, at 24fps, while images were rendered at 25fps. Not a major concern.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Attempted more testing with Thea and Animator v1.5b, with new Animator files native to v1.5b (previous examples used Animator files created in v1.4). I'm not seeing the above glitches, but it's only one animation I've done so far, so I cannot say if the unexpected movements are the result of using old Animator files or not.

Animator tested on [SU8Free Win8] and [SU8Free Win10]. Rendering achieved with Thea calling Animator, Thea settings [IR-Presto (AO) Interactive unchecked, 16 samples/px], rendered on [SU8Free Win10].

Model: Data Minion Eagle by Treadshot A1
Fine print: As per trial version of Thea, Thea rendered video is set to Unlisted, uploaded solely for purpose of reporting results of beta test, and will NOT be used when Data Minion Eagle is released to public. Natural Rendering video will be used for public release of Data Minion Eagle, as it does not use Thea.

Natural Rendering (Animator only)

Thea Rendering

EDIT: I am completely wrong. Files native to v1.5b can still have parts moving randomly. I tried adding an extra section to the animation of Data Minion Eagle above. A few unit movements were affected (a translation of 10mm in x direction is followed by a translation of -10mm in x direction later; for some reason the part ends up slightly shifted in the y direction, which had to be corrected with an additional movement). It looked fine in Animator, but Thea doesn't seem to match it.

I will note that in the process of rendering the animation, either Thea or Animator went haywire; I was put back into Sketchup's interface, but Animator's actions were accessible through Sketchup's Undo (pressing CTRL+Z would show the groups as they were moved in Animator, but actually moved in the sketchup model file). I couldn't get a screenshot of it; I had to close Sketchup and open a backup copy of my model/animation. I have no idea how that happened. The rendered animation below is a second attempt at rendering.

Treadshot A1 · 14 May 2017, 14:00

Found a workaround with Animator and Thea rendering. Used to experience random movements of groups/components when rendering with Thea, which did not happen when rendering video with Animator's Natural rendering option. For instance, if a component rotates at 16.5s, anytime from 0-16.4s the component's position could not be relied upon, but 16.5s and onward the animation works fine (see: Data Minion Jaguar animation, a few posts up from this one). Solution: In Sketchup, place all objects in one large group, then apply an unnoticeable Unit Movement to that group at 0.0s in the timeline. In the test case below, I've used [move along Z-axis 0.1mm].

Test animation, Natural:

Test animation, Thea:

//SU8Free, Win8, Animator v1.5d, Trial Thea, Natural video rendered from Animator, Thea video Rendered using Animation setting in Thea Render window (Thea calls Animator).

Lavanta · 24 May 2017, 14:29

Thank you for posting so many videos on your projects! Really appreciate that. Especially for me as an amateur it's nice to see how other do their stuff

chri · 26 May 2017, 19:53

Thanks Fredo

The Movement Along Path fonction is marvellous and easy to used.
Very great job and major improvement for SKETCHUP animation.

Charlie__V · 28 May 2017, 03:46

Experimenting......maybe an apple on head would entice..........

best regards,
Charlie

Edit: Still experimenting....revised .gif attached

ithil · 11 Sept 2017, 22:13

Hello. This is my test of the escalator animation.

I made a shift to the size of one step. And he turned on the replay.youtube
I tried using animation on the way but there were problems.

jiminy-billy-bob · 12 Sept 2017, 09:22

Neat!

fredo6 · 12 Sept 2017, 17:23

@ithil said:

Hello. This is my test of the escalator animation.

I made a shift to the size of one step. And he turned on the replay.youtube
I tried using animation on the way but there were problems.

Very clever solution for something which is not obvious to animate a priori.

I watched your 'making-of' video. What kind of issues did you encounter?

Fredo

renderiza · 22 Jan 2018, 18:49

Hi,

I am very interested in this Animator Extension!

The following .gif is my first animation done with Animator...

Keep up the great work!

Best Regards,
Renderiza

JQL · 22 Jan 2018, 20:37

Where have you been Renderiza? I'm still using your stylish plugins, specially rename by layer...

Keep up the good work Fredo!

renderiza · 22 Jan 2018, 21:19

@jql said:

Where have you been Renderiza? I'm still using your stylish plugins, specially rename by layer...

Keep up the good work Fredo!

Hi,

Very nice to see you again as well! I've been busy with live but now I get to enjoy SketchUp once more, and I'll update my old, old.....OLD extensions little by little.

Best regards,
Renderiza

MANaboutTOOLS · 26 Nov 2018, 18:03

I used Animator in my latest YouTube video. See the section that starts at 0:17 seconds. It's a Timber Frame Pavilion model that I created in Sketchup and animated with Fredo's Animator plugin on my Mac. I used Final Cut Pro to add titles and to change the speed in some sections and for dissolves/fades in some places. I rendered all the sequences at 60 fps so they would be very smooth before importing into Final Cut where the video output is 24 fps. I rendered and edited everything at 4K resolution. I didn't use any rendering software as I don't think any of them support GPU rendering on a Mac.

ntxdave · 26 Nov 2018, 18:29

Very well done

The quality of the video was very good. There was good use of Animator as well as a good interaction between the drawing and the development of the finished product.

Tallkoala · 21 Jun 2020, 11:59

Here is my first project using animator. Thanks Fredo for making this excellent and easy to use plugin...

ntxdave · 21 Jun 2020, 14:28

The animation is well done. Now you need to use some rendering software to "bring it to life".

Animator supports several rendering software packages.