[Tutorial] Smooth Animations from Sketchup - WIP

Paul Russam

OK, here goes with my first (EVER) tutorial.

Its not complete yet.
I'm posting it here so I can get comments from your good selves on whether its going in the right direction, readable, understandable etc.

Writing is not one of my strong suits so any hints, pointers etc. would be welcome.

EDIT:
Final tutorial linked here (from later post below)

tinanne

WOOHOO!! Paul, I haven't read it yet, but just wanted you to know how excited I was

Gaieus

Hey Paul,

I have already learnt something (about certain frames not rendering) but you just stopped at the most exciting part (let me not compare this to anything now... )

I think this will be a nice tut (although I don't have Adobe premiere but still a lot of things will most probably be useful in other programs, too).

boofredlay

Thanks Paul.

otb designworks

Thanks Paul for this.

Almost all my finished product involves animations so I am sure I'll learn something here. You must have a lot of patience to export at twice your desired size! A recent export of mine was 9750 frames@29.97 and it took something like 41 hours and that was at 1024 x 768 which was also my finished size! Needless to say, I broke it up into a bunch of smaller exports , but still.

Any reason why you use Tiff instead of PNG? I always thought PNG's gave you lossless exports with a smaller file size than Tiff.

The one thing I fight more than anything else is the dreaded moire. I wonder if you have any hints, short of avoiding moire prone textures, to minimize the flickering weirdness.

Thanks!

tinanne

This is great Paul! I'm starting a test run this weekend.

Krisidious

fantastic Paul... thanks.

otb designworks

There is a remove flicker function in Primiere?! 8O

I have been using quicktime pro and fotomagico for my compositing and it is getting to be time to drop the $800 (ouch) for Premiere. And this remove flicker really works? wow.

Thanks Paul!

not registered yet

wow, I had no idea animation from sketchup could be so intense!!!!!!!! I never even finished reading it. I had a client who wants to show a casket being put into a mosoleum animated.
thanks anyway for your efffort.
skip

poster-Skip

mateo soletic

Thanks Paul.

kenzarch

Thanks Paul.

yaza

way to go

arvmehta

Excellent tutorial , very similar to how are produce animations except for a twist , I don't use Premiere or After Effects but instead a piece of Free software (GNU GPL) called Mencoder . Using a commandline switch like
"d:\programs\mencoder\mencoder.exe" mf://*.jpg -mf fps=12:type=jpg -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=12000 -oac copy -o output.avi -ffourcc XVID

I have compressed about 2500 1200x900 frames to Xvid format in under five minutes . Notice the vbitrate=12000 , Jacking it up really improved the picture quality . You can get Mencoder here .

anglaret

Paul
could you re-establish the link with your tutorial please, I would like to see it
Thanks - Marc

Paul Russam

Umm, I don't seem to be able to get on the su.porta.ca site

I've set you a PM

Gaieus

Hi Marc, Hi Paul,

I hope you have received Coen's board PM about Kelly's server and the transfer of the content into the current SCF server. I hope everything will be available again soon.

Paul Russam

Thanks Guys, thought it was something along those lines.

StarWarsKnower

The tutorial won't work. I click on the link, and it comes up in a new tab, then says 'HTTP Coulc Not Be Found'. Everyone says it is so good, I wan't to see it!

Gaieus

@starwarsknower said:

...Everyone says it is so good, I wan't to see it!

True it is a great tut - be patient, please; the srever change is just being done (as you can read in your PM).

Paul Russam

OK, here's an updated Tut with the first part of the Premiere stuff in it.

kannonbal:
I've always used TIFF's and for some reason never really got used to using PNG's.
I actually had to look and see if Premiere actually imported PNG's and Low and behold it does!! Whether it will import them as 'Numbered Stills' (See the revised tut) is another matter.

As for the "dreaded moire" well that's the next bit I've got to do in the tut!
Here's it quickly:
Select the sequence
From the menu select CLIP/VIDEO OPTIONS/FIELD OPTIONS
Select 'Flicker Removal'
Repeat for every Sequence (Very tedious)
Drag into the time line and export.

EDIT:
Final tutorial linked here (from later post below)