Animator and frame processing

LaurentO

Hello fellow Animator users!

First of all I would like to thank you Fredo6 for the amazing work you have put in this extension.
I have discovered Animator a few month ago and after watching the tutorials I could find on Youtube I decided to give it a try.

I used it mostly to make an animated "tour guide" of a house I made. There are only a few objects transitions but a lot of views and camera transitions. Still a few things to change and patch but here you have a pretty close version of what the final one should look like.

Here is the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D4ervZIjC8

Now, here is my problem... It took me 17+ hours to process this video. There were roughly 4200 frames to process... I think it took an average of 17s to process one frame.

Those are my specs:
Sketchup 2020
Animator 3.2a
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080
CPU: Intel Core i3-8350K

Here is a screenshot of my Task Manager while compiling a first version of only 20s of video:

It feels like my CPU is working a lot and my GPU barely....

This is my timeline.

And here are my questions:
- Is this processing time normal ? If not, how can I check where the issue might be ? Is there something I can do ?

- For the camera transitions, I am just inserting a lot of views in the timeline, is this the right way to do it?

Thank you guys for your help!

fredo6

Unfortunately, Animator is dependent on the only API method available to convert a view to an image file. And it is not very fast, and furthermore depends on the complexity of the model, as well as the resolution. This is not related to the cameras you use in the animation.

Unless you need a specific resolution, take the same as the viewport and it should be faster.

I acknowledge this is an issue for long animation, but there is little I can do about it...

Fredo

LaurentO

Alright, no worries, thanks for your reply anyway

If you don't mind, I have a few more questions:

Can I draw a line for the camera to follow like a path?
Can I work with somes layers not showing and only show them for the processing part?

fredo6

@laurento said:

Can I draw a line for the camera to follow like a path?

Camera along path is not (yet) implemented in Animator

@laurento said:

Can I work with some layers not showing and only show them for the processing part?

You can explicitly force visibility of all layers individually in the animation so that it is independent from what you have in the current working environment.

LaurentO

@fredo6 said:

You can explicitly force visibility of all layers individually in the animation so that it is independent from what you have in the current working environment.

Sorry I'm not sure I understand correctly.

Say I have 4 Layers:
1- Walls
2- Windows and doors
3- Objects
4- People

When I set the different views on the timeline I would like to hide layer 3 and 4 so I can work faster. And right before I start compiling I just toggle them on again so I can see everything on the aniamtion.

Did I get it right?
Do I have to do this manually on each 35 views I inserted on the timeline or can I do all 35 in one click ?

I only found this option but I'm not sure what this is really doing...

Thanks again for your time!

fredo6

@laurento said:

I only found this option but I'm not sure what this is really doing...

This option just enable or disable the layers which were active when you captured the view.

In your case, I would suggest you use the Layer Visibility visual effect, which is an element you insert in the time line to turn on or off layers explicitely during the animation, regardless of what was captured with the views.

LaurentO

Thank you Fredo, the Layer Visibility worked perfectly. I can now work faster with some layers toggled OFF and just toggle them ON again right before compiling !