Animation discussion

solo

Could not think of a better name for this thread. I need a lot of answers for a bunch of questions relating to animation within the SU realm.

Firstly I normally use other apps for animation yet I do most of my modeling in SU, the other apps which I will not mention (Vue, Max) Do not handle SU groups well enough to get good control over embedded groups and such, so an animation solution in SU is desperately needed.

I know there are a few SU animation solutions, some free like Mover.rb and Proper animation as well as a commercial one called SU animate (did not mention Sketchy physics as it's something different IMO), price is NOT the issue here as the right solution will find it's market if it indeed is good.

I need one that can work with a timeline (like most animation apps work), I need control over frames, objects, groups, etc. I need to be able to set individual paths, delays, accelerations, decelerations, camera focus and targets. I may not be able to get all of these but the majority will suffice.

Now... I need it to be able to save as either a sequence of images or an .avi.(not a screen recording)
I also need it to be work with a few choice render engines like Thea, Twilight, Vray, NXT, Podium etc. (I understand that it may take pressure of users to get the dev teams to enable such capabilities)

Am I asking too much? Can it be done? Is there anyone that can do it? anyone else want this?

I would have started this in the development section but I decided rather here so that more regular users can weigh in before going to development.

thomthom

I'll be following this with interest. I've not done any animation since graduating - mainly due to SketchUp which is The tool at the office. And animation in SU as abysmal. It only does fly-through - and it even does that badly with them horrible jerky movements between scenes.
And when you throw in the need to render an animation the selection of usable plugins drop even more.

solo

Google may need to figure out how to overcome the shadow bug if one wants a raw animation

I'd like to reiterate that one comprehensive solution/product is important as that needs to be the standard which all render engines can support, having a bunch of plug-ins is all fine and well but they are useless unless supported.

In an ideal world Google would be taking on this quest as it is after all in their interest and an extension of their product, but I do not think it's on their road-map.

Rich O Brien

Do you think there is merit in Google creating a separate application that would deal with the animation only? Similar to how Layout integrates with SU but offers a different toolset.

It would alleviate having extra functions in SU and could be a feature to the Pro Version only?

We use the animation functions of SU extensively to display detailed models of aircraft components but find it's cumbersome at times.

Like Thom, i'm glad this thread has started and hope it might help push the envelope

KXI System

I'm glad you brought this up Solo because animation brought me to these forms.
Yes I do see SU as a potential source for animation but your idea of render being thrown into this makes me open up another realm of animation:

We have a separate app for this(as mention above)
We have a simple interface with timeline
A "camera" to capture the action instead of what the user sees, user captures
Lines to animate
Physics involved
PARTICLES!

I would like to add on from the last four points:

Camera to capture:
Yes this may be a bit Hollywood like but the point is that if we see what recording, we can move it easier. How? Well if we move the "Camera" like we move the objects it would make a lot of camera effects (i.e. shaking, rapid movement, first person/robot/security camera view) more easier to pull off. Also its really unique and possibly more easier, at least I think its easier (and cooler).

Lines to animate:
No not a line for the object to a destination, the lines are for better control. What I see from my time with Mover is that SU doesn't know what it looks like from point A to point B, it just takes a easy way out. With the lines in place of the object thats moving (i.e. in direction of its red/blue/green axis) you can use it to tell SU how the object is align all the way through. It also makes animating complex joint objects like cars and people more easier to do for now SU knows what part is suppose to look like all the way through.

Physics:
Not to copy Sketchy Physics, the physics are involved to do more physics tasks like for example you wanna make a car crash through a window. Without physics you have to move each glass shard in the right place until it falls, with physics you just gotta make sure the car rams into the glass at the right time. It also keeps the car on the ground but also can be disabled to make the car "fly".

Particles:
I mean come on! How can we talk about animation without particles?

chrisglasier

A proposal

ScottPara

I would love a quality animation solution for Sketchup as well. I like the idea of it being a separate app like Layout. I am not sure if I want it cluttering my sketchup UI. I think it still needs to stay some what simple. Camera movements, object movements and deformations and such. I am not sure Sketchup is going to handle particles. It has a tough time with high poly models now much less an animation of a snow scene with particles, but I like the idea. I think this is really when Sketchup needs to solve/fix the shadow bug. I would hate to run a huge animation over night only to find out I have flickering like an old silent movie going on.

I have to agree with Pete that I do not see this on the horizon for Google though. I think if things do not add to GoogleEarth they are not going to be investigated. It seems much of the development goes towards GE and not some basic functions in Sketchup that would move it into a different league.

Google still has more that enough to cleanup or fix in Sketchup:
A quality UV solutiuon
Shadow bug
Better texturing capabilities (layered textures please)
These are my top requests.

Scott

remus

I cant help but think of blender while reading this. It does everything that has been mentioned so far (and a lot more), costs nothing and is relatively easy to use (as of 2.5) Id guess the major barrier to SU people using it at the moment is the difficulty of getting models between SU and blender, though i think this will become much easier with the integration of bmesh in to blender (i.e. blender getting ngons.) All that would then remain would be to write a decent exporter that preserved groups, components etc.

Personally i think this workflow would have a lot of advantages in terms of flexibility and in reducing time spent developing things that already exist in a very mature form.

Another option that springs to mind is being able to trigger DC animations via scenes. This combined with a few scripts that could automatically add animations to DCs (an analogue to inserting keyframes) could be a pretty lightweight and user friendly system. Id guess the major problem here would be then getting those animations out to a renderer (would likely require a degree of re-working with how SU handles objects and their positions in time.)

Gaieus

Currently (afaik) Twilight is the only renderer which properly renders animations with SketchyPhisics and Proper animation. The obvious problem is that even native SU cannot handle them via scenes therefore it is always problematic to translate them via render engines.

remus

Indigo can do sketchy physics animations, although im not sure about proper animation animations.

Gaieus

OK, cool, thanks. I didn't know that (so sorry for the Indigo developers)

solo

Let's try not derail as to what does and does not render the current plug-ins, what I am looking for is one good and comprehensive standard that will have all or most of the standard features we need.

I like the idea of Google doing it and adding it to the Pro tools, that would make sense and integrate well.

Remus, I hear what you are saying and must agree Blender has fantastic animation tools, but I'd like to keep SU animation confined to SU, I really do not want to have to learn a whole new GUI if possible, I mean if I need to learn Blender for animation then I might as well learn the modeling side to and dump SU altogether as it is a much stronger app anyway...I want easy.

Particles...nah! not needed initially, at least until Google redoes the SU core to align with this millennium in support of a reasonable amount of poly's.
I'd rather have the animation tools support .avi and .gif imports(TBD had something in the works if I remember)

Really all I want is straight forward object animation, camera controls, staged with a timeline and the ability to render out with a choice of engines.

solo

Okay...

Object and camera animation, that includes nested groups, timeline based (not scene)

solo

To explain what I have in mind will take hours drawing example images, which at moment I do not have, however a basic idea is...

Lets say you need to animate cars and people driving and walking past a building that you are doing a walk-through. The car is a group/component, the front and back wheels are embedded groups, the car is the main group that has a defined path (bezier, etc) the wheels rotate on a central axis with, the front wheels align to path, the rear wheels align do not (so if it turns the wheels maintain their rotation around the central axis yet align with path). The people are .avi clips that a) face camera b) move along a set path.

The camera can be set to either look ahead, or follow an object.

All of this to be controlled with a time scale, allowing some animations a delayed start, acceleration, camera can follow an object for a determined period then be set to follow another of just look ahead.

Now once you have run a preview of animation and happy you then either export to render studio of choice or setup material and lighting with embedded renderer which will then be able to render out the animation in a video format or image sequence.

Am I making sense?...as it sound okay in my head, but my head is a mess.

KXI System

And one more thing I forgot in my long list of ideas:

Video on Face:
I know lots of people are trying to figure this out but think about it... If you project a video on a face that you want as a human face... well you instantly get a human face that can move its lips, make emotions etc...

@Solo, apparently a bit more detail won't hurt SVP

Charlie__V

Solo,
Maybe Jakob (plot-paris) will be along shortly as he had/has some great ideas here

I also would like to see an an animation/timeline tool set added to SU pro.

Best,
Charlie

KXI System

@unknownuser said:

I also would like to see an an animation/timeline tool set added to SU pro.

Why pro?

Its okay, I understand...

Rich O Brien

@solo said:

group that has a defined path (bezier, etc)

The camera can be set to either look ahead, or follow an object.

controlled with a time scale, allowing some animations a delayed start, acceleration, camera can follow an object for a determined period then be set to follow another of just look ahead.

Good idea

Having the ability to export to .swf would allow for simple interactive animations with embedded 'scene triggers'. Taking a regular scene based SU animation but adding extra elements that involve the end user the ability to interact at pre defined points.

The user could toggle through various 'triggers' when the animation reaches certain junctions. This would pause the animation and allow pre defined extra features to be enabled.

So, for example, a room could be viewed with -

different furnishings;
different colour schemes;
different times of the day;

or

a mechanical component could be viewed -

exploded outwards;
cross sections;

This makes sense to me but i'm afraid i may be a little deluded