Standalone Analytical Animation

chrisglasier

Some of you may have seen my video trials, discussions and pleas for help about analytical animation. My original intention was to develop it only as a Nameset plugin. But over the last few months I see quite a few members are interested in animation other than that built into SU, which gave me the idea that a standalone javascript JS SU animator may be popular and useful as an SCF plugin. I should say that I first became aware of the possibility from Scott Lininger's video on web dialogs which led to his Prince IO game. Scott shows plugins work for gaming; I know they can also be made for a wider range and to satisfy the type of needs commented in the forums.

Example comments

livra_depp - "I try Sketchup, but my prof wants the cars and people moving with certain speeds to support accident's risk estimation" ... topic

yaakovraskin - "Does annyone know of any animation programs which work with SU (free, preferably)? The easier (and cheaper) the better, obviously, but I havent found any so far" - topic

chango70 - "Sketchup's native animation keep falling short." - topic

JClements - [ARPlugin] "Another reason for SketchUp to develop some core animation tools." - topic

Ross Macintosh - "It would definitely be cool if your approach to animation (as shown in your video examples) would work while the model was presented as an augmented reality." - topic

McFlurry - "Didnt know SU can do such things. Way to go SU!" - topic

Example animation trials

Please go to Animation section of NS website

Development considerations

If JS SU animation is to be capable of providing accurate and useful analyses beyond pure fun and scores it must not only involve knowledge of Ruby, Javascript and Sketchup (particularly with respect to weight and visualisation) but also UI design to set and analyse the animation data, the theory behind time scheduling methods (e.g. Gannt, Pert ...) and sequencing and so forth for each of the various processes for which JS SU is to support. I am willing to pitch in ideas, code and UI design proposals as well as my experience in design and construction planning and management, but I believe it needs a team from the community to properly criticise, develop, expand and support it for it to be adopted by members. So the purpose of this posting is to see if there is any interest. To help decide here are some starter ideas and scripts.

Starters

This short clip shows JS SU animation at its most basic:
[flash=425,344:37h1rdfk]http://www.youtube.com/watch/v/4RNnrK4Q2UU[/flash:37h1rdfk]
extract to plugins
but you can say if you can do one you can do many. It is more complicated than that of course but it brings out important points.

Here the Sketchup entity is initiated, sized and positioned by js via a Ruby, so that Sketchup is acting principally as a viewer. The variables have been entered directly into the js, but outside the basic they should come from a store of plain text records.

I haven't had much luck with exchanging data with such records if the .skp file already exists as a normal model, but I think it should be possible to run a ruby loop to extract name, array index, dimensions, x, y, z and rotation for each. The name is important for users to identify from the web dialog what is to be manipulated, and the array index for identification of same by the ruby and for compiling or amending the records. I believe a single observer could be set up simply to rerun the loop after any change.

Another point is control of speed and smoothness. The setInterval function is regulated in milliseconds and the incremental movement in millimetres. So there is plenty of room for adjustment. I came across this tutorial about multiple object animation and Tween class which has interesting methods for acceleration and deceleration. I believe there is much more to discover to add to the potential of JS SU animation.

Here is the ruby file I compiled for Namesets:Namesets3.rb I think it contains most things to allow js to communicate with Sketchup, with exceptions like, for example, raytest.

Having said all that and, of course, if there is sufficient interest, then I guess some of the first things to agree would include a name, basic interface design, development stages and administrative protocols.

Thanks

Chris

sepo

I think this sounds as a good proposition. Certainly I would like to see this plugin developed.

MALAISE

This could extend animation capabilities for sequential conditionned driven movements.

MALAISE

chrisglasier

See also:
http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=16060&p=125140#p125140

for another example.

Chris

kwistenbiebel

A better animation solution definitely is welcomed.
In my case, the result should be a 'traditional' scene based animation that I can use in a render engine combo.

Preferably one that works with a simple timeline.
You go to keyframe 1: setup your view and 'record' it to keyframe 1.
Then drag the time line to a chosen point in time and set up your second viewpoint. Record it to that keyframe. etc..etc...

To be perfectly flexible, editable F-spline curves could be automatically drawn between the camera points so you can easily tweak that path.

This is my 5 cent on animation for Sketchup.

chrisglasier

Scott Schiller, the author of the tutorial mentioned above, sent me this:

This is interesting stuff, I had no idea there was a Google Sketchup community etc. For animations and so on in JS, I might consider looking at some of the modern javascript libraries like Yahoo! User Interface, http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/ or JQuery, http://jquery.com/ which have useful animation components that allow you to easily create and run arbitrary tweened animations on various properties of HTML elements.

I'm looking into his suggestions; if useful I will post some example videos.

Chris