[Plugin] Smoothstep Animation

RickW

@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.

facer

Help Note for use of:
smoothStepAnim.rb - 0904_05apr_jpeg to avi
Working with image sequences - using VirtualDub to convert jpeg images to avi.

Following on from Whaat's usage notes item #3:
smoothStepAnim.rb
by Whaat on Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:18 am
Usage:
3) Plugin can export single frames only. The images must be joined into a movie format using other software (eg. VirtualDub)

VirtualDub
http://www.virtualdub.org/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=34
Working with image sequences

Time to actually post something for users and not just developers.

To reading a series of numbered images as a video stream
use File > Open video file... and select the first image. VirtualDub will automatically step the filename and find any sequentially numbered frames after the starting file. You can open BMPs and TARGA files this way. Starting with VirtualDub 1.6.0, you can also sequential JPEGs and single files. In 1.6.2, you can also open non-interlaced PNG. Once the sequence has loaded, use Video > Frame Rate to set the correct frame rate for the sequence.

To exporting a video segment as a sequence of numbered images
on disk in VirtualDub, use File > Save Image Sequence. What you may not know is that nearly all of the regular video processing modes are still enabled in this mode. This includes video format, frame rate decimation/conversion, filtering, etc. modes. In particular, if you only want to write out every fifth frame in the video, simply set frame rate decimation to "every 5" and you will only get 1/5th of the frames. Similarly, if you are writing out BMPs, you probably want to use no video compression and a normal video format such as 24-bit RGB. (That VirtualDub allows you to write out something silly like MPEG-4 compressed "BMPs" is actually a misfeature that I need to fix.) For the most part, though, what you see in the preview is what will get written out to disk as images.

Side note:
It isn't well known, but VirtualDub uses the exact same pipeline for all of its rendering operations. That includes AVI, WAV, and image sequence output, as well as... preview. The primary differences are whether certain outputs are disabled and whether the frame limiter is enabled. I spent a long time ago optimizing the pipeline to overlap I/O and CPU utilization and reduce synchronization overhead for better real-time preview; when you save to disk, the limiter is kicked out and you get the benefits of that work in faster rendering.
20 comments | Dec 30, 2004 at 20:05 | default

Additional topic - jpeg images to avi - questions
can be viewed at:
http://www.virtualdub.org/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=34
pmolson posted 2007 Jun 15 00:14
"photo slide show" (converts jpg frames to avi)

facer

I support Dan's suggestion above (10 Feb 09) about numbering image files on export.
I did a small test which resulted in 160 frames exported. I had to re-number
61 frames to allow VirtualDub to read them in correctly. This would make a typical
building file unmanageable for video software as VirtualDub.

I have attached my CHECK Note for anyone who has not tried it before.
This is my process for a SunTool Video TEST.

Process:
The following video used these key SketchUp plugins:

SunTool - http://tx.technion.ac.il/~arrguedi/SunTools/dwnld_after_reg/STdwnld.htm
Scenes Transition Times - scenes_transition_times.rb - by http://morisdov.googlepages.com
Export smooth Animation - smoothStepAnim.rb - by Whaat

Process used on a TEST SketchUp Model with SunTool set for the month of Sept 21

Jpeg images of views are exported using Export smooth Animation. These have to be re-numbered as they are not numbered to maintain the "number width" as required. For example images0035 image0036 etc when 1000 frames are exported. This is a nuisance but it has been pointed out by Dan to Whaat the Ruby programmer. Hopefully this will be addressed in a future update.
Scenes were created for:
scene1. Sept 21 - 0800 (start)__scene2. Sept 21 - 0900
scene3. Sept 21 - 1200__scene4. Sept 21 - 1500 (end)

These correspond to shadow studies for one of the months and dates set by the local town planning authority hear in Melbourne.

Layers are used to turn off the sun location graphics produced by SunTool for times not in the scene. Therefore each SCENE shows only the sun location for
the time corresponding to the shadow turned on.

Transition times are set using the Scenes Transition Times plugin. This plugin allows quick comparisons VISUALLY for different time settings for each scene.
Exported jpeg images using Export smooth Animation and assign all to one folder - CHECK number sequencing to maintain "number width" (refer note above).
Using VirtualDub:
http://www.virtualdub.org/

1.File>open video file
select files of type - image sequence >select first file > open
Files are imported and images should display in VirtualDub window.
1. Video > compress (compress file size)
2. File > save as AVI ( compressed AVI)
  1. Video Completed.

Stray

I made a small change to Whaat's code so it pads the filenumbers with leading zeroes, I hope you don't mind.

Just change this line (line 107):

@image_path=File.join(@export_path,@filename+"#{@frame}"+".#{@format.downcase}")

to this:

@image_path=File.join(@export_path,@filename+"#{@frame.to_s.rjust(10, '0')}"+".#{@format.downcase}")

Thanks for the plugin Whaat! Best regards.

A very slightly modified version of Whaat's Smoothstep Animation script that pads the output filenames with zeroes for better sorting.