Excellent as always!

@nlipovac said in Piano with Rayscaper:

@ntxdave This is an online generator, I made a few for when I do UV mapping.
https://uvchecker.vinzi.xyz/

You made that?

@Rich-O-Brien Very nice texturing and render!

Hey, Rayscaper users!

Another release!

Rayscaper 0.9.36 Beta is available in the SketchUcation store. More fixes and improvements. As always, I recommend upgrading to the latest version.

What Changed? Improvements Auto Focus Add autofocus for DOF to the perspective camera. With autofocus, Rayscaper will automatically use the distance to the center 3D point in the rendered image as the focus distance (if possible).

3cd9f77d-b130-4f96-8680-144c9aebbba6-image.png

Make the depth-of-field (DOF) blurriness easier to control. The range goes from 0 to 1, but if you need more blur for
your scene, you can punch in a higher value directly in the slider text box (CTRL + click). Make the depth-of-field blurriness slider logarithmic. This gives more control for low blur values. Bug Fixes Fix the normal map strength control. Fix a crash when exporting the scene to an archive.
Spotlights with a falloff of zero would not render on the CPU. This release fixes that. Help me build the community 👍

I'm on Twitter (X) now: https://twitter.com/Rayscaper3d/ - Please follow the @Rayscaper3d that will help me grow the community and spread the word about Rayscaper! 🙏

If you like Rayscaper, please share your renders (final or work-in-progress, it doesn't matter)! This is super motivating and will help me showcase its capabilities to new users.

Happy Rendering!

@pixelcruncher thank you very much

Is this related to SUbD? If so go to...

https://evilsoftwareempire.com/subd

Hi Rich; thanks for your hint. But it does not run like your suggest. The triangles cannot be moved. At least on my surface. They light up red yes; but cannot be moved. I suspect I have somewhere else unintentionally changed a parameter in the main settings. Because I have already created several animations with clips that do not have such a timeline bar because the length of the clip is selected via the "duration" function.

![on this picture you can see within the main timeline the clip called "erste palette"](/uploads/imported_attachments/oGPS_1.PNG "on this picture you can see within the main timeline the clip called "erste palette"")

![here you can see the opened clip "erste palette" there is not this white line with the triangles](/uploads/imported_attachments/HenH_2.PNG "here you can see the opened clip "erste palette" there is not this white line with the triangles")

@quillpro said in FFmpeg: Instructions for download and Install:

It does not appear in the Control Panel nor does it ask for permission. I was able to fix the issue by using the macOS terminal to make FFmpeg executable.

shell ~ % ls -lU /Applications/ffmpeg -rw-rw-r--@ 1 username staff 78461292 Aug 31 2020 /Applications/ffmpeg shell ~ % chmod u=rwx /Applications/ffmpeg shell ~ % ls -lU /Applications/ffmpeg -rwxrw-r--@ 1 username staff 78461292 Aug 31 2020 /Applications/ffmpeg

The Generation of Video interface is still buggy but it does now generate the video files.

Hi all, New user but have been enjoying the helpful information found here!

I too have been having a couple struggles getting the great ANIMATOR app from Fredo6 to generate a video file on my MacBook Pro. I did see that in the automatically generated folder "Animator Videos" a sting of individual images but also a .txt file that stated "permission denied". I thought it sounded like I should try the solution from quillpro to let the Mac OS open and run the file. I think quillpro is most likely better at command line instructions than me - but I couldn't get his Command Lines to work for me.

What I found online and did the trick for me was the following:

To change permissions in Terminal, do the following:
Type this command followed by a space: chmod 755.
Drag the file "ffmpeg" into the Terminal window.
Press Return.

Permissions for the file or folder will be changed to read, write, and execute.

When I did this, the icon for ffmpeg changed from a white piece of paper with the top right corner folded over to a black colored icon with the words "exec" in green written on it.

I haven't tried all the different available formats but it made a .mov file that played in QuickTime with no problems.

Hopefully this helps someone!

@pawelludwa said:

Can I save each frame as a scene in Sketchup ?
How to take each frame seperately to actually create scenes from them ?

This is not possible with the current version of Animator.
Anyway, it would create potentially hundreds of scenes.

Hi there!

When dealing with kinematics, it's very useful to be able to graphically manage speeds instead of positions (slope of positions law)
I see that a lot of non-linear laws are availables during a movement, but as far I understand, it's only useful between 2 keyframes.
When dealing with more keyframes within a same general movement, I didn't manage to have some smooth transitions...

Here is a simple case:
Let's say we want to animate a car, constant speed (100km/h) between KF#1 and KF#2.
Then it decelerates between KF#2 and KF#3 so that it reaches another constant speed (50km/h) from KF#3 up to KF#4.
I didn't manage smooth transitions without generating some weird stuff...
Is there some kind of tricks using available non-linear laws?

Thanks!

@rich o brien said:

I spend some time looking at those .animator file to see if we can implement them into animated browser embeds.

Also I was hoping those files could some be imported into larger scenes to animation to objects.

The .animator file is purely technical, in case something happen to the model.

I was thinking also to have an animation specification file, that would be easier to build and in clear language to specify an animation by the sequences and time line (like "Object1 3.0 4.2 Rotate 90 (1, 0, 0)" for a rotation of 90 degrees around the X axi, starting at 3s and for a duration of 4.2s, applied to Object1.

Not sure however if this would be useful and what we could do with it. Somehow, there is a concept of parametric composed animation, which could probably be make more generic with this approach.

Fredo

Hello Fredo,
Thank you again for the plugin. Regarding the output of images / render: I am currently working on a very heavy project with complex elements. I found a way to work around the restrictions on exporting directly with Vray, although very time consuming: I group all the moving parts, then copy paste each position (through the positioner) into a new file. I end up with a lot of scenes, one for each frame and the non moving parts are on a different layer. I litteraly can see the animation as going through each scene. Obviously, at this point, the animation is ''locked''.
The major advantage with that is that I can use GPU render, can use render elements on V-Ray etc...
My question is: would it be possible to automate that process, create an option to export all the moving parts in different scene. I understand it can create hundreds if not thousands of scenes but it would be so helpful.
I can imagine there would be a technical limit (like, exporting 200 scenes max). Then it would require to create multiple files (one for scenes 001 to 200, then 201 to 400 etc), but in theory, such an option would be fantastic.
Thank you!

As a matter of fact, our eyes (mind) works differently from photos or computers. i.e light attenuation is based on inverse square ratio, but when one adjusts them in this way will find it more like what a camera captures and not what our eyes captures. So I've experienced that it will give a better result if adjust the attenuation as "inverse". the result will be more smooth and less contrast ,a better solution for interiors. and do not neglect some fake lighting using rectangular lights, here and there ... 😉.

http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=58560, first of all I must thank for kind feedback and confess that due to the fact thaat my book covers V-Ray V2x version it would be great if I had the chance to prepare a book on V3x version of V-Ray as it is more user friendly...
As the change rates are so fast that it seems I must wait for V4x...

@sju05322 said:

I purchased license a few minutes ago, and i received license number.
But it's not working with a message, " Failed to connect to license server."
And i cant connect to evilsoftwareempire homepage to chrome internet.
HOW CAN I USE THIS PULGIN????

My country is korea and my email address is sju05322@naver.com

PLEASE HELP.

In order to activate your licence your SketchUp needs to be able to access our licensing server. Please ensure that you are connected to the internet when you are activating your licence and no firewalls are blocking the internet communication. If you are behind a firewall, whitelist the sketchucation.com domain and all it's subdomains.

Found this one: cubicVR. A free plugin by Sketchup Podium.
Description and download here:
https://www.suplugins.com/podium/help/cubicVR.php

It generates the equirectangular output in one clic.
The drawing lines are pretty sketchy, but it's sufficient for my current needs of fast prototyping.

Though, I would be glad if someone knows of a cleaner alternative.

cubicVR first output

cubicVR equirectangular output.

Equirect output - closeup