[Plugin] Smoothstep Animation

jcdb

jcdb,

Go to Model Info, under window, and then Animation, scene delay.

Thanks spence

Whaat

Thanks for a great script.

Would it be possible to add an attribute to all the existing scenes in the model that they are "keyframes" and then add scenes for every frame in the animation with an attibute that they are "inbetweens" and add scene transition times according to your smoothstep script.
The script should then be able to delete all the "inbetweens" if you want to change the animation but leave the "keyframes" intact.
I believe this would make it work with external renderers.
What do you think, is it doable?

That's a cool idea and definitely doable! I'll do some experimenting.

Jon

Thanks again, Whaat!

RickW

@whaat said:

@pixero said:

Thanks for a great script.

Would it be possible to add an attribute to all the existing scenes in the model that they are "keyframes" and then add scenes for every frame in the animation with an attibute that they are "inbetweens" and add scene transition times according to your smoothstep script.
The script should then be able to delete all the "inbetweens" if you want to change the animation but leave the "keyframes" intact.
I believe this would make it work with external renderers.
What do you think, is it doable?

That's a cool idea and definitely doable! I'll do some experimenting.

Unfortunately, there's currently no way to delete pages/scenes in ruby...

Pixero

Here's what Todd said at the Google Group:

@unknownuser said:

Sketchup.active_model.entities.erase_entities(page) should work, but
it hangs SketchUp. It's a known and reported bug.

To get around this bug, do this:

First, make the page you want to delete the active page. Then, issue
this from Ruby:

Sketchup.send_action "pageDelete:"

That means it can be done even if its a work around.

If not we could save the model prior to using the script and then saving it after, under another name or with a "_anim" after.
Not the best way but it would still mean we could render a smooth animation.

erikB

Thanks from me to Whaat, very much needed script !
greetings erikB

kwistenbiebel

Thank you Whaat!
I hope you get the 'to scene tabs' method working, so we can use external render software on the animation.

Great job!

Matt666

@pixero said:

Sketchup.send_action "pageDelete:"

A confirmation message box opens every attempt to delete a scene...

Pixero

Well...lets hope Whaat finds a trick to fool SU to delete the scenes without SU knowing what happened...

Is

entities.clear!

not working either?

kwistenbiebel

Hi Whaat,

Would it be a sh*tload of work for you to have this plugin make default scene tabs after smoothing the animation ? (needed for render engines)
The current method (cameralines.rb,F-Spline bezier,Flightpath (or SU-animate) is kind of tedious.
Your smoothstep animation ruby would be an easier 'out of the box solution' when it can create a scene tab animation.

If it is a lot of work...maybe commercial?

Whaat

@kwistenbiebel said:

Hi Whaat,

Would it be a sh*tload of work for you to have this plugin make default scene tabs after smoothing the animation ? (needed for render engines)
The current method (cameralines.rb,F-Spline bezier,Flightpath (or SU-animate) is kind of tedious.
Your smoothstep animation ruby would be an easier 'out of the box solution' when it can create a scene tab animation.

If it is a lot of work...maybe commercial?

I am curious. Which render engines are able to automatically render all scene tabs? I assume you are not manually rendering each scene tab when you are creating these types of animations.

kwistenbiebel

Vray and Fryrender can render a scene tab animation.
For instance, if you have 1 scene tab per animation frame, you set the SU transition time to 1 second.
In the Vray/Fry panel, you set 1 fps.
That way, Vray/Fry will render each scene tab automatically when hitting the render button.

I thought Skindigo can do this as well? (confused)

steelers05

yeah im with biebel on this one.. that would be great if you could make something like that

Dan

Thanks for yet another great plugin, Whaat!
Me too I did a very quick test and all seems to be ok.
I have to ask you a little change to the script, if possible: can you make it to number the exported bitmaps like "name00001.jpg", "name00002.jpg", instead of "name0.jpg", "name1.jpg", etc. to make the conversion to avi program to read them in the right order?

Thanks again!

Fletch

I second KB and Steeler's request, Whaat... you still thinking about this?

zeal

Thank you for sharing

kwistenbiebel

@whaat said:

@kwistenbiebel said:

Hi Whaat,

Would it be a sh*tload of work for you to have this plugin make default scene tabs after smoothing the animation ? (needed for render engines)
The current method (cameralines.rb,F-Spline bezier,Flightpath (or SU-animate) is kind of tedious.
Your smoothstep animation ruby would be an easier 'out of the box solution' when it can create a scene tab animation.

If it is a lot of work...maybe commercial?

I am curious. Which render engines are able to automatically render all scene tabs? I assume you are not manually rendering each scene tab when you are creating these types of animations.

I needed to add that in a lot of cases an animation spread over X scene tabs according to X animation frames (1 scene tab per animation frame) can be an advantage.

For instance, when you have 'face me' components. Both Vray and current Skindigo won't render the face me components correctly (they will not face the camera), unless the animation consists of as many scenes as there are animation frames.

I think if someone of the ruby masters would be able to make a decent and easy to use smooth animation plugin like that, we don't need to learn the dinosaurs apps to get some decent PR animations.

Currently I use the combo of rubies described above and it works , but it is too tedious to do in a daily workflow.

kwistenbiebel

@fletch said:

SU2KT lets you export animations via scene tabs, and can include or exclude face-mes depending on your desired outcome.

Yes, I hear positive things about a Kerkythea animation workflow.

It is good though to have a freedom of choice on render engines when it comes to animation, so a built in smooth scene tab animation in Sketchup would be cool.
Since Google doesn't seem to have a go at it (animation is untouched in 3 versions), the ruby masters might be are our only option here.

Whaats Smoothstep plugin is a good start, but it doesn't play with the render engines yet.

Pixero

I still thinks my idea in my post on page one in this thread is both doable and would be the best way of using keyframes and inbetweens in SketchUps current animation implementation. That way you could go back to only the keyframes if you want to edit the animation and still get a scene per frame for rendering the animation.

Fletch

@kb said:

Both Vray and current Skindigo won't render the face me components correctly

SU2KT lets you export animations via scene tabs, and can include or exclude face-mes depending on your desired outcome.