Creating multiple Scene animations in the same file
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In case there are people who can help, who haven't been following the "Create solid-appearing 3d models of a subsurface" thread by gealagie, the question has been asked if you can create multiple scene animations within the same file in SketchUp?
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I don't think so (unless with some plugin). In the scene manager you either include or exclude a scene from theanimation - THEonly one animation.
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do you think about some sort of key frame animation? we had a (rather fictional) thread about that quite a while ago
or do you simply want an option to export 'scene10 - scene54' as an animation? that would really be nice, if you could define the start- and end-scene in the options tab of the animation-export. definitely a good suggestion for the next SU version. or maybe something like that can be done with ruby?
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Well, you could name your scenes, clipa01, clipa02, clipb-01 . . .
Then before you export you could select the scene you want turned on all at once, and check "Include in animation". As default you can leave them all off until you render.
Another option is not to setup an animations in your master file. Create a new file for each animation, and insert your master file as a component. So each animation is its own file, but they are all linked back to changes made in the model. What is nice about this if you have multiple people working on a project, one can be working on the model, while the other is working on how the animation runs. I've done something like this where I had site plan where context was very simple block buildings, and someone else was updating individual buildings at some time, that were each their own component that has been saved out from the file.
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@davidboulder said:
Well, you could name your scenes, clipa01, clipa02, clipb-01 . . .
Create a new file for each animation, and insert your master file as a component. So each animation is its own file, but they are all linked back to changes made in the model.
David can you explain how you link the changes to the main model. Is this a kind of xref?
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I would like to hear about that linking too, David. That would be pretty slick.
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Unless I have missed something in the previous post, it is simple to have multiple animations in one file. What I do is name each group of scenes to be in a unique animation with a unique prefix (i.e. S12-) and then add sequential numbers to the end for each scene (i.e. S12-001, S12-002, etc.). It is then simple to scroll down the Scene window to the starting scene, select it then scroll to the last scene and shift-click it. Then click the "Include in animation" box and you are set to export. Of course, this assumes that you do not have any other scenes set to include in animation.
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Well,sure this is possible but then you set up ONE animation at a time again and ANOTHER ONE next time.The same with playing/exporting separate animations from a certain scene and then next time from another one.
These are good methods though.
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Yes , I think what is trying to be accomplished can be given by the following example.
You are presenting your work to a client. First you would like to discuss the site topography and massing. To do this you set up a set of scenes choosing the sytles, shadows etc that you feel best expresses the project.
Then, without opening a new file,(and bumbling around in the process) You move to concentrating on landscape features, styles etc may change, but it is a new set of scenes within the same file.
Next you want to feature the architecture..... and so on, but this is all done without opening and closing separate files.
Having been lucky enough to attend Google's 3D Basecamp last year, I can see a real use for this. A lot of embarrassing moments for presenters came while trying to open different files to show examples. By being able to set up scenes in this manner simple presentations would be less likely to have problems. -
The method David describes is a good that I've used too when I've had lots of animations to make and didn't want to muck up my model.
The idea is to treat the whole model as a component in a blank model. So save your main model and close it. Then open a blank model. File>Import and import your model file. Place it somewhere in the blank model. Now set up your animation scenes.
Now if you make changes to your original model file, they do not get updated automatically in the animation file. But you can reload the model manually. So in the animation file, right click on the model (which is still a single large component) and choose "reload" and then choose your model again. It will load in the newly modified version in the exact same spot.
Then repeat for all animations.
For me it depends what my other animations are though. If I have 4 animations that are identical camera locations but different styles (pure white and shadows with no lines, pure color no lines, pure white with lines and no shadows, inverted fog to act as a z-depth layer). I will set up all camera scenes to only store the camera location and not thet style or shadow info. Then I make 4 scenes that only store style and shadow info. These scenes do not get included in the animation. But it makes it easy to export my animation in a different style over and over until I get all the layers of animation I want.
So for me it always depends on what I am trying to export. Hope that helps,
Chris
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