Mighty Animation Tool

kwistenbiebel

Hey Jakob,
You really seem to have thought this through and I am glad you made the effort as indeed the animation part of Sketchup really can be improved a lot.

I love the way you made that scrollbar at the bottom of the screen, and the little slider to scroll in between scenes (keyframes).

If I understand you well, you both support camera animation as object animation.

I do wonder if things can't be simplified even more.
My suggestion would be setting up the camera animation first and after that select the objects to animate
and assign a different position to them per scene tab.

The camera animation setup would be almost like yours, setting up your cameras first by using the 'good old method'= moving through your scene and saving scene tabs.
Then click 'show all cameras', which would show all the cameras you setup as symbols in the viewport, together with the interconnecting bezier curve (which you can alter with control points).

After you setup the cameras, setting up the object animation can start.
You go to 'scene 1' (or call it 'key-frame) ,right click the object you want to animate and choose 'assign positions per scene'.
It will grey out all other objects in your viewport so you get a clear view on the object to animate.
Now you will be asked to assign a new position for the object for each 'scene'.

When your done, you can click 'show object positions' and you'll see a bezier curve and symbols for each position, just like you have a bezier for the camera. The bezier curve can also be changed by contol points.

Mike Lucey

Thanks for painting this picture Jakob. This, I am sure, will be of
great interest the the GSU guys as I feel this is the way SU MUST go
in the future

Mike

plot-paris

kwistenbiebel, you are right. we need to set up cameras directly in the viewport, in the 'good old method'
to save it with scene tabs however will be difficult when having several cameras.

perhaps we should still keep the physical cameras in the model, giving us three different ways of controlling them:

change the camera-path (bezier curve) with ordinary drawing tools
moving the camera arround (which will affect the path like moving a control-vertex of a bezier curve)
entering the camera by double clicking. your viewport will show the cameras point of view. now you change your view as desired, right click and choose "update camera"

your suggestion of having the same kind of bezier-curves as the cameras for any animated model is a great idea - a great way to give us a perfect amount of control over the motion of objects.

for the animation of objects I would prefer if you activate a keyframe by double clicking it. any changes (move, rotate, scale) applied to any object now will only affect this key-frame. like that you can manipulate several objects at a time (without the need of right clicking it and defining the following changes to be animation changes).
while a key-frame is active, you can not change the geometry of objects (drawing tools, push/pull tool...)

it would be indeed useful to have animated objects highlighted. therefore a toggle key would come in handy that switches this highlight mode on and off. you could even right click this button to get additional control, like how many frames back the animation progress will be displayed. something like this...

oh, and one important thing I forgot to mention earlier (and I have not thought of a good way to control it) is that the transition times between key-frames are not fixed like with scenes at the moment. so if there is very little movement in the first half of the animation and a lot of motion in the second half, you will have a lot more key-frames towards the end.
thus you can insert a frame inbetween two existing ones to get additional motion control without changing the overall animation time.

plot-paris

thanks, kwistenbiebel, for this research. highly illuminating. and indeed the animation of objects is not as fluent as we would wish.

and that shows us, that even the commercial animation scripts are not at all close to what you could call an easy animation tool with satisfying effects. so we still have to refer to other software to get proper animations working (do you listen, Google? ).

I haven't used the "proper animation" script yet. but what I read of it so far, it is a nice beginning, but not as intuitive and eye candy like , as we liked it to be

ps: appart from the choppiness this animation is not too bad. we could really do some nice stuff with the right tool...

kwistenbiebel

Maybe, to get better control of both camera animation as object animation, best way could be to have a different series of scene tabs for each item.

1 series of scene tabs for the camera and 1 for each object that gets animated.
In that way one can for instance go to a particular view (by clicking a 'camera' scene tab) and change the position of an object in the appropriate 'object' scene tab.

The scene tab series would function like a timeline (as it currently does).
'Camera scene tab 9' will accord to 'object scene tab 9' etc....
The result would be that one could easily (WYSIWYG) set up the position of an object relative to the position of the cam at a certain time. Chronology is always kept.

This is a simple mockup of how that could look like.

kwistenbiebel

A hypnotising SU object animation, containing only 8 different frames.
Rendered using Fry.

This object animation uses the 'hidden geometry' trick as well to animate objects.
Because the amount of frames is limited, this can be done manually.
In this case, the animation is fluent because the camera remains static.
(It seems that when trying to have both cam as object animation at the same time, trouble starts )

The Newton Cradle model is from 3dwarehouse.
The song is 'pump up the jam' by Technotronic.

Vimeo link:
http://www.vimeo.com/1505858
[flash=640,512:qmtuvtid]http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1505858&server=www.vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1[/flash:qmtuvtid]

For those preferring Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQYoo2K_a5M&fmt=18
[flash=425,344:qmtuvtid]http://www.youtube.com/v/yQYoo2K_a5M&hl=en&fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D18[/flash:qmtuvtid]

plot-paris

what a cute little animation. somehow these little "dancing" balls are really charming. nice effect of changing the image colour. gives a real club feeling.

to the idea of several scene tab rows: I think we will hit some problems with that very soon. imagine we have a highway scene (matrix style ) with lets say 30 cars and 6 different cameras, that would result in 36 rows of scene tabs - not much space left for modeling

I would like to understand the key-frames as saving-points on the timeline of the animation. every key-frame is a scene. but not every scene is a key-frame. like you have the option to "show scene in animation" in today's SketchUp, you would have a "key-frame" tag, as well as a "show as scene tab" option for every scene. that again means, that a scene, shown as a tab at the top of the viewport can be a key-frame, but does not have to be one.

key-frames merely define one position on the time line. which information is saved at this point (animation information, shadow settings, styles...) is up to you.
I think this is, how many other animation programs (like Maya) do it.

but I know what you intend with the idea of saving each object's animation seperately. if one object has a change of direction every key-frame and another object has one continuous movement from frame1 to frame9, it wouldn't make sense to define the second's object's position in every frame

therefore we needed a way to animate several objects in one key-frame without having to save the changes for each object seperately but at the same time to changes for an object in only one frame and interpolate the motion in the frames inbetween.

perhaps a way would be, that if an object doesn't change it's position lets say in the first 6 key-frames and you move it arround in the sixth frame, you can right cklick it and say "interpollate position between frames".
I know, not the most elegant way... but I am sure we will find a good solution for that

princedragoncok

Great thread plot-paris, very interesting indeed and really appreciate the thought you're putting into this.

@kwistenbiebel said:

Wanna know how ?

Kwistenbiebel.. omg how?

kwistenbiebel

Hi Jakob,

Rendering object animations using PR render software IS possible from within Sketchup.

See example using fryrender:

Link for direct view:
http://www.vimeo.com/1545109
[flash=640,480:bp92c3ga]http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1545109&server=www.vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1[/flash:bp92c3ga]

For those preferring youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LO3seJv0ik

Wanna know how I did it ?

plot-paris

what a great animation, kwistenbiebel!

convincing sound effects that bring the whole thing to live. but what really impressed me was your fade from black and white ("wow, rail tracks crossing wide water surface") to coloured ("oh, its not water - its wood!" ).

How did you do it? which animation tool did you use?

Mr S

Hi,

A more versatile and professional animation addition to SketchUp as you suggest would be most welcome.
But while the shadow bug (still not fixed after 9 years) is still present why would anyone waste all their time and effort on producing something like this.
What would be the point of enabling us to produce better animations with these new tools only for the final output to be ruined by the horrible mess of the SketchUp shadows.
Some may take the view that animations can be produced without shadows. Whats the big problem? But Sketchup Pro is supposed to be a professional 3D application.
Shadows form an important part of 3D work and as part of a profeassional application should work correctly.

To me, this situation is a bit like Adobe saying Photoshop is a professional 2D editing application but it doesn't work correctly with JPG files. But don't worry, you can work around this by using other file types. Madness!

The addition of better animation tools would only be of use if seamlessly intergrated to work with third party renderers such as Vray, Fryrender, SU Podium etc.

Regards
Mr S

kwistenbiebel

@mr s said:

What would be the point of enabling us to produce better animations with these new tools only for the final output to be ruined by the horrible mess of the SketchUp shadows?

Indeed, good point.
Personally I just want to use photoreal render software on Sketchup scene tab animations.
The shadow bug doesn't affect this.

johnsenior1973

@mr s said:

Hi,

A more versatile and professional animation addition to SketchUp as you suggest would be most welcome.
But while the shadow bug (still not fixed after 9 years) is still present why would anyone waste all their time and effort on producing something like this.
What would be the point of enabling us to produce better animations with these new tools only for the final output to be ruined by the horrible mess of the SketchUp shadows.
Some may take the view that animations can be produced without shadows. Whats the big problem? But Sketchup Pro is supposed to be a professional 3D application.
Shadows form an important part of 3D work and as part of a profeassional application should work correctly.

To me, this situation is a bit like Adobe saying Photoshop is a professional 2D editing application but it doesn't work correctly with JPG files. But don't worry, you can work around this by using other file types. Madness!

The addition of better animation tools would only be of use if seamlessly intergrated to work with third party renderers such as Vray, Fryrender, SU Podium etc.

Regards
Mr S

Are you going to be stamping your feet in a tantrum on a regular basis over the shadow bug? Maybe if you cry or wet your pants while you do it Google will be forced to act.

plot-paris

I would wet my pants right here in the office if that fixed the shadow bug!

but as you said, Mr S, as long as we can export the animation to external render applications (Indigo! I love it!!! ), such a tool would be a great enhancement

PS: kwistenbiebel, how did you do your animation export to fry? (I'll keep on asking )

kwistenbiebel

@plot-paris said:

PS: kwistenbiebel, how did you do your animation export to fry? (I'll keep on asking )

Straight from within Sketchup
The object animation in SU is basically a scene tab animation with as much scene tabs as there will be animation frames(=hundreds ).

I set the 'transition times' in SU to 1 second (delay=0).
In the Fry 'render settings' panel, I set the framerate of the animation to be 1 FPS.
When clicking the Fry render button from within SU, a fluent animation will be generated, rendering each scene tab as an animation frame.

SUanimate is a cool plugin for object animation. Basically it automates the traditional 'layer visibility' animation method, spreading the animation frames over different scene tabs, each with their own visible layer (each layer has a different object location).

Fryrender does a wonderful job rendering the moving objects and camera.

Skindigo however doesn't take 'layer visibility' into consideration when exporting animation.
As a result, the Indigo animation won't show object motion.

Mr S

To "johnsenior1973"

Perhaps if more stamp their feet over this issue then maybe, just maybe, Google may decide to make it a priority to fix it. I have found that nowadays that unless you are prepared to make a lot of noise about something it is hoped that you and your complaint will just go away.
However, if I, and others do manage to persuade Google to act on this issue (I may just wet my pants if that happens) then you can just enjoy the benefits.

I would not keep banging on about this if SketchUp was still owned by AtLast. They were a small company with limited resources. Google is the exact opposite.
If they really wanted to solve this problem they have everything at their disposal to do so.

If you are happy with the situation and have nothing positive to contribute then why not just keep quiet?

Regards
Mr S

kwistenbiebel

Let us have respect for Plot Paris' thread and get back on topic.
(Maybe the discussion on the shadow bug can continue in the corresponding thread)

Mr S

Well, my original point was that after all the thought and consideration given by Plot Paris towards enhancing SketchUps animation controls it would prove difficult to find or expect anyone to do all that work when the final output could still be let down by the fundamental shadow flaw that exists in SketchUp.

I don't regard that as going off topic.

To repeat myself, any new animation controls could only be appreciated when used in conjunction with third party renderers. But could these added controls work well with all the alternatives now available? Wouldn't such an author be overwhelmed with demands for these new animation features to fit in to the workflow of Vray, SU Podium, Fryrender, Kerkthea etc.

To me, that is the wrong way round.

The core animation features within SketchUp should work properly, then it would be down to the coders of each individual third party renderer to ensure their own product works correctly with SketchUp.

I thought I was making a valid point, but I apologise to Plot Paris (and only him) if he feels that I have taken his post in a direction which he didn't want.
I appreciate all the thought, time and effort he has given this subject.

Regards
Mr S

plot-paris

Mr S, I completely understand (and share) your anger about the shadow bug.
but I think, with an animation tool as we dream it here there would be loads of uses, even without SketchUp's shadows.
and concerning compartibility with render-engines: "In Whaat we trust!"

@kwistenbiebel:

oh dear, hundrets of layers - and that was only one camera pan shot! the only way to get a longer animation would probably be to create a new model for each shot. too bad, that indigo doesn't work with it. have to have a look at fry.

but you proved: with a lot of work (if a longer animation is planned) nice videos can already be produced.

there is still the question of how to realise more complicated camera motions (flightpath), combined with object animation...