Photoreal animation straight from SU

Frederik

@Frederick: Please bare with me. This is my first attempt ever on making an animation.
I am on a learning curve here so I hope I can improve my skills in time. thanks for understanding...

Chris, you don't need to apologize to me...
Thanks to you, I've seen some amazing renders made using Indigo lately, but I'm not particular impressed with the quality in this animation and the time it took to render...

As you know, photoreal animation has been available in KT for more than a year now and it's fairly simple to set-up and use...

kwistenbiebel

Ok, when it sucks , it sucks. Oh well...

kwistenbiebel

Thanks modelhead.
And yes it is true.
Each frame was rendered for 1,5 minutes so one can't expect a perfect animation.

At the moment I am cooking two more animation experiments which I will post in the render gallery, as it is a more suited section for these things I guess.

vkirchner

You have accomplished something that I hope to complete, but I need a little more information to get this project moving. My goal is to create a driving animation through a German City, which requires the camera to follow a path while rendering the suitable frame per second needed to compile into a nice animation. I would like the camera to follow a complex path or can I only follow a straight line, I do not know this, can someone answer this for me?

Regardless of the path issue, assuming a the camera can follow a path. What do I need to use for this, the Physics plugin or some other plugin, or is this built into the base Sketchup software? Sorry if these seem like simple questions that I should know, but I have not been using Sketchup too long, only for a few days assembling thte German City itself, now comes the part of animation to create the necessary frames for the final movie.

Regarding the rendering, I have loaded the Kerkythea renderer because it is free and it works well with Sketchup materials, because I do not have time to create new Kerkthea materials and apply them. How does the animation get fed into the renderer to create the necessary frames? Does it use the animation info stored in the Sketchup database?

Please, if someone would be kind enough to go slow and explain this I would be grateful.

Vince Kirchner
Guardian Automotive Products
Cad System Administrator
North America

vkirchner

PS. Did I mention that the movie would be used for VW, BMW, and Porsche?

kwistenbiebel

I don't want to disappoint you, but current sketchup, including the animation plugins and/or Sketchyphysics, just cannot do the job properly.

Object animation (moving cars etc...) is possible with SU, but it is very handicapped and limited.
Actually, current 'object animation' capability is merely a hack in SU, and not natively supported at all.
To get it rendered photoreal (Fry Render is the only one I know that can render object animation in a SU combo currently) , you must be able to start from a 'scene tab' animation with a different scene tab for each and every animation frame. Be prepared to have hundreds of scene tabs in your scene.
Sketchyphysics does not allow you to make a scene tab animation like that. 'Proper animation ruby' neither.

The only object animation plugin that allows you to make a 'scene tab' animation currently is the 'Su animate' plugin.
However, the produced results aren't satisfying when rendering it with photoreal render software. It is too choppy.

I would suggest porting your Sketchup files to Cinema 4D, as that software has a much better (object) animator and it supports all the big photoreal render engines as well.

I hope this helps....

Regards,
Kwistenbiebel

As a note: I hope native object animation will be supported in SU 7, as well as improved setup of camera animation paths (read: more fluent paths + more realistic camera behaviour).

vkirchner

Thank you for the quick response. I can simplify the path to a straight line if the motion can keep a constant speed from the starting point to the end point. No part of the car is used in the rendering, only a camera following a path through the village. Can the "SU Animate" do this?

The final render animation need not be photorealistic, but it cannot be cartoonish like the standard Sketchup windows either. To save time and energy, I planned to use many models from the 3D Warehouse with slight modifications to complete the task in a reasonable timeframe. I have tried to take many Sketchup models into Rhino4.0 with mixed results. Normally the textures are skewed, distorted, or omitted. I have tried Softimage also but the textures are always an issue. I suspect that C4D will also be this way, do you have any experience with the texture issue?

I have acess to the following packages and renderers.

Rhino3.0 with Flamingo, Penguin, Treefrog, and Rhinorender
Rhino4.0 with Rhinorender
Softimage with Mental Ray, and Indigo
Carrara 5.0 Pro
Bryce 6.0
Light3D from Optis (http://www.optis-world.com)http://www.optis-world.com/new_pages/archi_lighting/lighting.asp

Regards
Vince

vkirchner

Thank you, I will look at the suggested scripts.

Regards
Vince

kwistenbiebel

If no object animation will be used, yes, Suanimate or flightpath2 are helpful to get smoother animation paths.

Suanimate:http://www.ohyeahcad.com/suanimate/

flightpath2.rb on the smustard website:
http://www.smustard.com/script/FlightPath2

They both are commercial plugins .
I wish they had demos to try them out before buying.
(some youtube clips to accurately show how the flightpath2.rb works would help)

plot-paris

just bought flightpath2 two days ago (7$ is not that much). you have more advanced control over the camera focus compared to the (free) first version of flightpath. you can for example choose on path for the camera motion and another one for the camera aim. you can get quite sleak results. only important thing is to check that your path is smooth enough (has enough vertexes).

I would suggest you try flighpath for free. with this version the camera will always point straigt in the direction of the path.

if you need more control, go for flightpath2

vkirchner

Thanks, I did not realize that the older script was free. It sounds like it will do everything that I need, so as soon as I can get the models inserted, then I can smooth a spline and give it a try.

Thanks
Vince

vkirchner

I cannot tell if the free script will hide the path curve, that would ruin a nice driving animation if the path curve is visible. That would make the $7.00 cost to obtain the newest script mandatory.

plot-paris

as far as I know, it does put the path on a layer, which is hidden.

if it doesn't, you can do that manually. or you could even delete the path for it is not necessary anymore once the scenes are created (not advisable though, in case you want to redo the animation-generation)

something that can really help you in terms of flexibility is to select all scenes (with Shift) of your animation and then uncheck all checkboxes in the scene editor except for camera position. thus you can change things like styles or shadow settings lateron. you could even create scene tabs for different styles (with the "include in animation" box unchecked)...

vkirchner

Wow, that really sounds like a powerful option. Then I could create pencil drawn style, and possibly a Sin City style.

Julius

@plot-paris said:

just bought flightpath2 two days ago (7$ is not that much). you have more advanced control over the camera focus compared to the (free) first version of flightpath. you can for example choose on path for the camera motion and another one for the camera aim. you can get quite sleak results. only important thing is to check that your path is smooth enough (has enough vertexes).

I would suggest you try flighpath for free. with this version the camera will always point straigt in the direction of the path.

if you need more control, go for flightpath2

there's also a free script called flightpathtool (you can find it at http://www.crai.archi.fr/RubyLibraryDepot/Ruby/em_cam_page.htm)

features of the three scripts:

flightpath:

Target: Camera Path Nodes creates pages with the camera looking toward the next vertex of the camera path

flightpathtool:

Target: Camera Path Nodes creates pages with the camera looking toward the next vertex of the camera path
NEW! Target: Single Point asks you for a single point that is the focus for the camera as it moves along the path
NEW! Target: Two Points asks for two points. As the camera moves along the path, the target point moves between the two selected points
flightpath2:
Target: Camera Path Nodes creates pages with the camera looking toward the next vertex of the camera path
NEW! Target: Single Point asks you for a single point that is the focus for the camera as it moves along the path
NEW! Target: Two Points asks for two points. As the camera moves along the path, the target point moves between the two selected points
NEW! Target: Path allows you to select a target path. <---so basically you pay the 7$ only for this.

plot-paris

@julius said:

NEW! Target: Path allows you to select a target path.[/u] <---so basically you pay the 7$ only for this.

you are right. but unfortunately this is exactly what I need.

honestly. a camera-aim path gives you a great deal of control over the sequence. only difficulty is to properly synchronise the two paths to achieve the desired change of focus at the right time.

after a lot of trial and error I found out, that you best create two cubic bezier curves (fredo6's bezier tool plugin) with exactly the same number of control points. thus you can exactly see which point of the camera-aim path is connected to a certain point on the camera path...

flightpath2 askes you for a speed (like 14 m per second). a scene is created at every vertex of the camera path and the transition times are set individually to retain the desired speed.

however, I find it more useful, if all the scene transition times are the same - thus the number of vertexes on the path defines the speed (many vertexes, slow speed; few vertexes, high speed). unfortunately you need another script for resetting all the transition times back to default. you can get this script along with flightpath2 with the "presentation bundle2" for 16$

it is a bit unnecessary, if you are comfortable enough with the free versions. but you definitely have total control over your animation.