[Plugin Beta] Animator - v4.3d - 17 Mar 25

Danial Ismail · 18 Nov 2020, 14:33

@danial ismail said:

When exporting the animation as video, i have chosen MP4 but it only renders as PNG images and there is no play button under the MP4 format button in the menu.

Could you open the Ruby Console before launching the video generation.

At the end of the process, you should see something like

Command FFmpeg for mp4 = "C:/Google Drive/Ruby/Ruby/AA_SCRIPT_20/ffmpeg.exe" -framerate 25 -i "Image%02d.png" -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -q:v 1 -vf scale=2*trunc(iw/2*3):-2 "Film 1.mp4" 2> FFmpeg_log_mp4.txt ===> Status FFmpeg for mp4 = true

Can you tell me what you see.

Also, could you type (copy paste and return) the following command in the ruby console

[Sketchup.active_model.active_view.vpwidth, Sketchup.active_model.active_view.vpheight]

It should return the viewport dimensions.

Many thanks

Fredo

Hi Fredo,

I changed the video output dimensions and it solved the problem! Thanks you for your kind attention to reply my question and trying to help. Keep being awesome.

Best

Danial

fredo6 · 18 Nov 2020, 18:24

@danial ismail said:

I changed the video output dimensions and it solved the problem!

Definitely, one of the problem is the generation of the video when one or both dimensions of the viewport are odd in pixels. FFmpeg, which stitches the images, requires they are even. I introduced some hack to work around the problem, but apparently this sometimes fails.

lrainero · 19 Nov 2020, 08:56

@fredo6 said:

@lrainero said:

When generating mp4 video the process stops without doing anything. Sometimes it stops at frame 10 and sometimes at 30 ... and I can't render the video.
My animation has a duration of 145 seconds and approximately 3,400 frames, with an estimated time of 50 hours.

I think you push Animator quite far. If I understand, each frame would take over 50 seconds to render. Maybe you can try to simplify to have a faster unitary render.

With VRay 4.2, there is a problem of stability with the API and I would not recommend to engage in such long process.

I am currently investigating VRay 5, which has a cleaner API and may be more reliable.

Fredo

Thank you very much for your answer.

I'm going to try to divide the animation into shorter parts and then put them together with some editing program.
I hope that with vray 5 you can achieve better results in this case, even so I am very happy and grateful with your plugin.

Thank you very much for everything Fredo!

fredo6 · 20 Nov 2020, 08:39

New Release: Animator - v2.9a - 19 Nov 20

Requirement: LibFredo6 v11.3

Major release

Support of VRay 5
Bug fixing
Extension of validity

See plugin home page of Animator for Download of RBZ from the PluginStore.

See Main Post of the Animator thread for more information.

mitch7780 · 1 Dec 2020, 14:40

Hi Fredo6,

I generated two animations this week, after the update to v2.9a, and they both came out perfectly.
However when I send them Via WeTransfer, DropBox etc for others to view they are experiencing errors or corrupted files and the videos become unwatchable. The videos are still absolutely fine on my machines though.

This has only happened since the update, is there anything else I need to do to correct this? Do you know why this could be happening?

Thank you.

fredo6 · 1 Dec 2020, 14:57

@mitch7780,

Strange. Last update did not touch the video part.

Did you generate with NO rendering or with a rendering software?

What is the format of the video?

mitch7780 · 1 Dec 2020, 15:20

Just a standard video, no Vray etc.
File formats in .mov & mp4

Thanks

fredo6 · 1 Dec 2020, 17:02

@mitch7780 said:

Just a standard video, no Vray etc.
File formats in .mov & mp4

Thanks

What happens if you download your video posted on DropBox onto your own computer. Would they be corrupted too?

mitch7780 · 2 Dec 2020, 10:48

I just tried transferring the file, via DropBox, from my PC to my Imac and it downloaded and played fine.
I'm not too sure what's happening when I send the file over to a client. I've been using WeTransfer previously for other animations and it's been no problem.

Your extension is absolutely fantastic by the way, please don't think that this issue has any effect on how I continue to use Animator. It's probably just one of those things but I had to bring it to your attention just in case you had a solution.

One thing I would like to ask is about the sizing or dimension of the viewport before I start processing, is there a rule of thumb for optimal size, i.e 1920 or 1200 etc...

Thanks again.

fredo6 · 6 Jan 2021, 08:32

New Release: Animator - v3.0a - 06 Jan 21

Requirement: LibFredo6 v11.3

Maintenance release

Extension of validity

See plugin home page of Animator for Download of RBZ from the PluginStore.

See Main Post of the Animator thread for more information.

fredo6 · 17 Jan 2021, 11:06

New Release: Animator - v3.1a - 17 Jan 21

Requirement: LibFredo6 v11.5

Major release

Introduction of Camera Around, allowing the creation a camera travelling around a set of objects
Bug fixing
Cosmetic and technical adjustments

Here is a short presentation on Camera Around:

See plugin home page of Animator for Download of RBZ from the PluginStore.

See Main Post of the Animator thread for more information.

JClements · 17 Jan 2021, 18:09

A great way to begin the new year**!** THANK YOU.

Really nice features and interface/easy-to-understand controls.

Should satisfy long awaited needs. The demo is well explained.

Could Scenes be generated? Export to movie formats or images (jpg, gif, etc.)?

fredo6 · 17 Jan 2021, 21:47

@jclements said:

Could Scenes be generated? Export to movie formats or images (jpg, gif, etc.)?

What do you mean 'generated'?

JClements · 18 Jan 2021, 00:50

Have scenes created at specified intervals along the camera path (eg., at 10% intervals or intervals at a specified distance).

fredo6 · 28 Jan 2021, 07:39

New Release: Animator - v3.2a - 28 Jan 21

Requirement: LibFredo6 v11.5

Maintenance release

Extension of validity

See plugin home page of Animator for Download of RBZ from the PluginStore.

See Main Post of the Animator thread for more information.

tomasz · 4 Feb 2021, 10:51

Great to see the beta. It is good timing since we prepare a new release too.
I always appreciate how detailed and well thought your feature implementations are!

fredo6 · 22 Feb 2021, 10:56

New Release: Animator - v3.3a - 22 Feb 21

Requirement: LibFredo6 v11.5

Maintenance release

Fixed a major bug for Camera Tracker introduced in v3.3a. Unfortunately, you will have to remove camera tracker sequences created with v3.3a and recreate new ones.

See plugin home page of Animator for Download of RBZ from the PluginStore.

See Main Post of the Animator thread for more information.

axetect · 23 Feb 2021, 06:21

Hello, first of all I would like to thank you for creating such ingenius tool, now I would like to ask if there is any way to make it render at cloud, it would be a game changer for me as a low spec pc user. Thanks

fredo6 · 23 Feb 2021, 17:03

@axetect said:

I would like to ask if there is any way to make it render at cloud, it would be a game changer for me as a low spec pc user. Thanks

Unfortunately, this is not under control from Animator. It could be done by the rendering software if it interfaces to Animator (via a dedicated API). In a next release, I will try to improve the rendering time for VRay 5, because there are new features.

Fredo

TonyAU · 23 Feb 2021, 23:29

Thanks Fredo, amazing work.

Just one thing, will you be re-implementing the aspect ratio buttons.
I miss just hitting 16:9 and changing one value..
Bit lazy I know..

Cheers.

Tony
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