Lets talk Animation tools
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I am not sure if y'all have noticed but there is an increasing amount of animated architectural visualizations surfacing at the moment and I for-see it becoming more apparent and probably more sought after in the near future.
I've always offered this as a service but cannot say I had too many arch type calls for it besides some sun studies and the occasional exterior animation or day night animation. I do more product animation explaining assembly or function, but that's normally flash based simple stuff.
So now with render farm prices dropping and small companies building their own not to forget the new Intel chips and multicore home network setups are making higher quality animations a reality. So with this in mind lets talk tools, what do y'all use and how do you rate it.Firstly lets talk animation software, I will not include SU as it's pretty crappy as far as animation goes and one cannot actually charge for anything that clips and flickers like any animation via SU does.
I normally export my objects/components into a third party app, be it Vue, max or C4d for rigging and key-frame based animating. I am pretty interested in trying new apps, so if anyone is using anything else with great results let me know (But not Blender please as I do not have the patience to learn that app)And secondly is the composition of the clips, I use Sony Vegas, acid and particle Illusion as well as Corel animation shop 3, but really interested in After Effects. So if anyone uses After effects extensively and can weigh in on the experience, ease of use and features, I'd be most obliged as it looks like a mighty powerful app, and a little intimidating.
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Solo, Can't speak for other Architects, especially large firms, but in my case if its not done yesterday, it usually is too late to do. I do a lot of animations for clients, but they are very simple, only involving SU, and Win MovieMaker. I think of them as extensions of flip book sketches.
Except for when we (Architects) are showing off, the only big animations I have seen were done for marketing purposes. Selling condo in Honolulu, etc. Still, the developer would probably rather spend money on the model apartment (full scale mock up), then a animated render that is viewed on a computer monitor.
Guess if you got the job, you don't need to spend the money marketing. If you don't have the job, you can't afford to do a huge animation on spec. But having said that, often the profession changes the way it works, just because its time to do so. But as in the case of production CAD, it is is very resistant to change.
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I wouldn't discount blender if I were you Solo. If you ever get the time to learn it like I have recently then you will start to realise its potential. I admit it isn't easy to learn like sketchup, but I recently found a really good course on the internet http://www.gryllus.net/Blender/PDF_Tutorials.html
I didn't approach blender with many expectations, seeing as I had only dabbled with other programs, and over the course of 2 years i've tried to learn truespace (and failed because of it's (IMO) oversimplified UI) and had a go at 3ds, I've returned to blender and have really sunk my teeth into it. Achieving realistic material results with blender takes practice, and I haven't had enough of that yet, but I'm slowly getting the hang of it. But of course there is no need for all that for you solo, because you will be happy to hear (and probably already know) that there is currently a development version of Vray for blender. And for anyone else you can always give yafaray a go.
In my opinion blender is the best 3d package when: price, features, free support and development are taken into account. Although some people complain about the UI, and I didn't like it at first, after a few weeks I actually became fond of it!
If it doesn't agree with you then there is always hope that blender 2.50 will: (there are some exciting new features coming up! including a redesign of the UI system) http://www.blender.org/development/current-projects/blender-25-project/edit: oh yeh, I just realized Solo, blender has a fantastic compositor and sequence editor all built into it. This is great for special effects after rendering, and for anything else you might otherwise use after effects for. The sequence editor is also pretty good considering you don't even need to leave blender to do all your video editing!
ps: I'm not saying people shouldn't use sketchup here of course, because differences in time it would take to model any kind of building or geometric shape would make that proposition ludicrous!
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So can I rephrase solo's question a little and ask what people want from animation in SU?
I guess I wonder whether a full blown animation system is wanted or required.
What are the typical animated sequences (outside camera motion) that people generally need?
Its clearly both the motion itself and the "orchestration" of multiple objects, but whats commonly needed?
Adam
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