Excluding scenes from animation

Skastafari · 30 Aug 2017, 17:50

I am looking for a method to exclude pages from my animation similar to how the "Include in animation" checkbox works from within Sketchup's scene editor. I am generating multiple scenes that cannot be included in my final render, and find the extra step of checking each of those mixed in scenes to exclude them quite tedious. I am having trouble finding an example of how to achieve this in the API documentation. I noticed the parenthesis around scene names in animations and thought perhaps that was the indicator of an excluded scene, and it would be simply...

model = Sketchup.active_model view = model.active_view pages = model.pages #(define operation here e.g. view.camera.perspective = false etc.) status = pages.add "(excluded scene)"

However elegant this would seem, unfortunately it does not work. So I am guessing there is some other method to exclude scenes from the animation.

I had found a thread from Dan Rathbun somewhere dating a couple years back discussing a need for this, but I can't seem to find what the outcome was. If anyone knows, please advise.

TIG · 31 Aug 2017, 11:17

A page's page.name and its page.label are NOT the same IF a scene tab is set to be excluded from a scene-animation - because then parentheses are added round the name when forming the label string.

http://ruby.sketchup.com/Sketchup/Page.html#name-instance_method
http://ruby.sketchup.com/Sketchup/Page.html#label-instance_method

This is a simple way of ensuring that only 'included' scene-tabs' pages get processed...

animated_pages = Sketchup.active_model.pages.find_all{|page| page.name == page.label }

sdmitch · 31 Aug 2017, 14:28

Tig, is there a way to access the "Include in animation" and "Play" from a script?

TIG · 31 Aug 2017, 15:03

@sdmitch said:

Tig, is there a way to access the "Include in animation" and "Play" from a script?
My snippet does this - making 'animated_pages' subset ??
Since a page's page.name is the same as its page.label when it is included in an animation....
I don't think you can actually change the 'label' in the API ?
As far as I know you can't run the animation tool via the API, but of course your can simply step through the collected pages [scene tabs] in turn - using the 'animated_pages' subset, which I already explained how to assemble.
The transitions etc between pages is pre/re-set under various option settings ?
The page.delay time transition_time etc etc...

sdmitch · 31 Aug 2017, 16:28

@tig said:

The transitions etc between pages is pre/re-set under various option settings ?
The page.delay time transition_time etc etc...

If i select a scene in a model, the transition time is applied but, if I select that same scene from a script, there is no transition and no delay unless I use sleep(). Entering the same script statement in the Ruby Console works just like selecting the scene in the model. The closest I have come is setting the view camera to the page.camera and refreshing the view but this bypasses the transition.

Skastafari · 31 Aug 2017, 19:14

Okay, I just learned a lot. So I gather that in order for a page to be excluded from the animation it would need parenthesis to wrap the label string, but when you create a page from the ruby API by default the name IS the label string so that explains why my idea did not work and also why when I uncheck Include in animation the tab name now has 2 sets of parenthesis. If it is true that we can not change the label from the API, then there really is no way I can achieve the function I need as far as I can tell.

I guess that is why Dan had put in this request back in the day:
https://forums.sketchup.com/t/ruby-sketchup-page-use-in-animation-use-in-animation/11020

Thank you for your script and insights Tig. It was helpful to me. I do have a better understanding what is going on now.

Skastafari · 31 Aug 2017, 20:24

I just found this...

Handling "Include in animation" flag in Scenes

I am wondering if there is a way to handle the “Include in animation” flag from the API. I can’t see any related method in Sketchup::Page, so I guess it is not possible at all. Any hint? It would be useful to define whe…

SketchUp Community (forums.sketchup.com)

I guess this is as close as I am going to get to the status of Dan's request.

sdmitch · 31 Aug 2017, 23:32

@skastafari said:

I just found this...

Handling "Include in animation" flag in Scenes

I am wondering if there is a way to handle the “Include in animation” flag from the API. I can’t see any related method in Sketchup::Page, so I guess it is not possible at all. Any hint? It would be useful to define whe…

SketchUp Community (forums.sketchup.com)

I guess this is as close as I am going to get to the status of Dan's request.

Using the page.name==page.label would certainly work. I'm still trying to solve the transition problem. I found this in the API but I have yet to get it to be recognized. Perhaps it has been removed or never implemented.

Dan Rathbun · 6 Sept 2017, 12:26

@sdmitch said:

I'm still trying to solve the transition problem.

When you manually change scenes (and the model does not have specific transition and/or delay properties assigned to individual page objects,) then the model's global animation transition and delay settings are used.

Global settings are via:
Window > Model Info > Animation

Global transition and delay is accessible via the model's options provider objects.

model = Sketchup.active_model
manager = model.options
popts = Sketchup.active_model.options["PageOptions"]
popts.each {|o| puts o }
#=> ShowTransition
#=> TransitionTime
sopts = Sketchup.active_model.options["SlideshowOptions"]
sopts.each {|o| puts o }
#=> LoopSlideshow
#=> SlideTime

A per scene page settings interface is not yet implemented, but I think I myself and others have requested it as a PRO feature request. (I believe it should be a Pro only feature myself.)

You can easily write a script to set per page transition and delay.

I also think some of the better animation extensions have UI interface to set per scene transition and delay. (I think Smustard's does.)

Dan Rathbun · 6 Sept 2017, 13:21

@sdmitch said:

I found this ( view#camera=) in the API but I have yet to get it to be recognized.

See:
(SketchUp Developer forum): Setter #view.camera= Testing with Second Transition Time Argument

@sdmitch said:

Perhaps it has been removed or never implemented.

The API docs are a bit confusing.

The view#camera= method is an overloaded method, which can be used two ways:

with a single Sketchup::Camera object argument
with a single Array argument of: [ Sketchup::Camera, Float ]
(The Float being the transition time.)

If you attempt to pass two arguments, of Sketchup::Camera and Float, the API ignores the second (time) argument and you get behavior #1. (Ie, a silent failure from what you'd expect.)

Dan Rathbun · 8 Dec 2017, 03:17

@skastafari said:

I am looking for a method to exclude pages from my animation similar to how the "Include in animation" checkbox works from within Sketchup's scene editor.
...
I had found a thread from Dan Rathbun somewhere dating a couple years back discussing a need for this, but I can't seem to find what the outcome was. If anyone knows, please advise.

FYI,... Finally, ... the API has been updated for version 2018 and higher ...

... both a query method and a setter method have been added to the Sketchup::Page class.