[Plugin] Floating Camera 1.0 public beta 1.4

halroach

Hi,

Very nice plugin!

Works really well the minute you get the speed right! around 400-500 km\h max works good for me. I'm working on a model that is in cm. for some reason I don't believe I am traveling at 500 km\h. It must be a bug in the units or something.
I tried recording the movement with 'camera recorder' and it works pretty well!
Are there any other good ways to record the movement? Are you thinking of integrating something like that?
For maximum control, I would suggest to add the option for controlling 'pitch'(up and down) and 'yaw'(left and right) with the keyboard and not only with the mouse.
I used to play 'Doom II', 'Quake', and the best controls were in 'Descent II' and you could control the 'yaw' with left and right and holding down 'Alt' would change it to strafing left and right. I imagine there are problems with using alt in sketchup, but maybe that's solvable!? alternately you could use keypad 1 and 3 for 'strafe', 4 and 5 for 'yaw', and 7 and 9 for roll.
as for 'pitch' I would suggest using the keypad 8 and 2 keys.
Holding down Shift was used for Run/Walk mode - would be nice too!

Thanks!!!

bentleykfrog

@unknownuser said:

Hi,

Very nice plugin!

Thanks Yoni

@unknownuser said:

Works really well the minute you get the speed right! around 400-500 km\h max works good for me. I'm working on a model that is in cm. for some reason I don't believe I am traveling at 500 km\h. It must be a bug in the units or something.

It is an error on my part, my unit conversion isn't working like it should for any model units other than millimeters. In the next release (which should be available in about 3 weeks) this is fixed. There's a raft of other changes and some unrelated work that's delaying the release.

@unknownuser said:

I tried recording the movement with 'camera recorder' and it works pretty well!
Are there any other good ways to record the movement? Are you thinking of integrating something like that?

Camera recorder is probably the best thing available for recording the camera movements, but it does have some issues as you've probably noticed. This is because Camera recorder was based on Sketchup's walk tool. Floating Camera added features that are outside the scope of the walk tool. To get a good recorded camera path from Floating Camera you'd need a script that can smoothly interpolate camera positions, that can store camera data (like roll, interval, fov, etc) as attributes or definitions, and that can provide a good suite of editing tools to edit all of this data. It's quite a mean feat of coding so no promises, but I am looking into this.

@unknownuser said:

For maximum control, I would suggest to add the option for controlling 'pitch'(up and down) and 'yaw'(left and right) with the keyboard and not only with the mouse.

I'm probably more of a fan of the mouse than you are. In sketchup the mouse represents the only analog input, so it gives you a smooth gradation of control over pitch and yaw.

The problem with keyboard inputs is that they're either all or none. This is probably ok with PC games like 'Descent II' as you're using these keys in an early video game environment (you sort of overlook/accept the violent way that you control the game). From a video presentation perspective, its really really bad.

The way I see it is that Floating Camera is designed for two purposes: 1. to provide a simple interactive navigation in Sketchup, 2. to produce smooth camera paths for export to video. For both of these purposes the keyboard + mouse combo isn't really ideal. I'm looking at 5th/6th generation console controller integration for the next release, as these provide the best of both worlds (IMO). They're an easy to use navigation controller, and they provide very, very smooth control. The only problem is what I mentioned before, the mouse is the only analog input to sketchup through ruby. I'm working around this by using the keyboard as a binary system, which is probably not the best idea, but it'll provide smoother camera control without the need to write a huge C++ script to get gamepad inputs into sketchup.

I'm currently working with:
PS3 Sixaxis controller (usb input) (cheapest option)
XBOX 360 Wireless controller with a wireless gaming receiver
XBOX Kinect (lots of setup required, but almost no troubleshooting)

I'm currently ignoring with prejudice
Wii remote (interesting, but not enough analog inputs)
PS3 Move (?)

If you've got any suggestions I'd love to hear them

@unknownuser said:

Holding down Shift was used for Run/Walk mode - would be nice too!

Hopefully using more analog inputs will negate the need for this, but I guess it would be nice to have to save a few seconds between camera setup.

Bertier

is your plugin compatible with 3Dconnexion controller from logitech ?

this is a great analog controller for SU8

bentleykfrog

@bertier said:

is your plugin compatible with 3Dconnexion controller from logitech ?

this is a great analog controller for SU8

If you're refering to the SpaceNavigator, the short answer is no. There are a couple of bodges that would make SpaceNavigator compatible with Floating Camera (ie. using ControllerMate/XPadder to re-jig the controls to keyboard output) but I'm getting increasingly unhappy with these. My main concern for the next release is controller integration and there's a raft of things that I'm unsure about so I can't confirm either way that the SpaceNavigator will be compatible with Floating Camera.

Out of curiousity, what kind of problems are you having or what kind of features are you lacking with the existing SpaceNavigator & Sketchup support?

bentleykfrog

From: [Re: Preview - Sketchup Floating Camera [Update 2011-03-19]]](http://forums.sketchucation.com/posting.php?mode)

@tspco said:

A short video using Floating Camera and Camera Recorder
http://youtu.be/9mDYQBtYC04

Thanks for the example Ryan

I see a couple of things to add/fix in the next release. The first is analog support. In your video its quite noticable that you jump between the forward and left directions. I'm guessing that this is probably not ideal and that analog/gamepad support would solve this.

The other issue is a combination of Floating Camera and Camera Recorder. The poor frame rate could be hardware related. What I mean is that the combination of running Camera Recorder and Floating Camera at the same time is too taxing on your cpu + gpu that Camera Recorder isn't recording even steps between frames (ie. one frame would represent 0.1667 seconds, the other 0.24, another 0.18). This is probably whats causing the uneven jumps between frames. I'll look into some interpolation features to resolve this.

thanks again

-niall

eoinosullivan

Any updates to this plugin since 2011? Any alternative plugins for Sketchup 8 or newer that works similarly?

aldenkr

The extension will not load in either sketchup 2014 or 2015.
shows a list of loading errors, is there a .rbz file version. It will not load with auto install nor with the zip file

TIG

@aldenkr said:

The extension will not load in either sketchup 2014 or 2015.
shows a list of loading errors, is there a .rbz file version. It will not load with auto install nor with the zip file
I updated the code within th terms of the OP (c) - v1.4x_beta is now >=v2014 compatible.
http://sketchucation.com/pluginstore?pln=FloatingCamera

josephkim626

Seems though that all transparency settings become 0 upon activating the tool.

I believe my hardwares are good enough to maintain both transparency and the smooth transition. Would there be a way to set this setting off?

TIG

I did not write the toolset - I simply adjusted some lines to make it >=v2014 compatible
However, if you edit the file floating_camera in the Plugins folder using Notepad++ and find these lines starting at line#77:
` @@q_render_opts = Hash[
"ModelTransparency" => false,
"EdgeType" => 0,
"EdgeDisplayMode" => 1,
"EdgeColorMode" => 1,
"DrawSilhouettes" => false,
"DrawDepthQue" => false,
"DrawHidden" => false,
"DrawLineEnds" => false,
"ExtendLines" => false,
"JitterEdges" => false,
"DisplayDims" => false,
"HideConstructionGeometry" => true,
"MaterialTransparency" => false,
"ShowViewName" => false
]
@@q_shadow_info = Hash[
"DisplayOnAllFaces" => false,
"DisplayShadows" => false
]

	@@q_degrade_opts = Hash[
		"Texture" 			=> **false**,
		"TransparencySort" 	=> **0**,
		"DisplayFog" 		=> false
	]`

and adjust the appropriate values, false >>> true etc, in the Hash then it will change things like transparency settings...
I have emboldened a few of the likely suspects...

josephkim626

@tig said:

I did not write the toolset - I simply adjusted some lines to make it >=v2014 compatible
However, if you edit the file floating_camera in the Plugins folder using Notepad++ and find these lines starting at line#77:
@@q_render_opts = Hash[ "ModelTransparency" => **false**, "EdgeType" => 0, "EdgeDisplayMode" => 1, "EdgeColorMode" => 1, "DrawSilhouettes" => false, "DrawDepthQue" => false, "DrawHidden" => false, "DrawLineEnds" => false, "ExtendLines" => false, "JitterEdges" => false, "DisplayDims" => false, "HideConstructionGeometry" => true, "MaterialTransparency" => **false**, "ShowViewName" => false ] @@q_shadow_info = Hash[ "DisplayOnAllFaces" => false, "DisplayShadows" => false ] @@q_degrade_opts = Hash[ "Texture" => **false**, "TransparencySort" => **0**, "DisplayFog" => false ]
and adjust the appropriate values, false >>> true etc, in the Hash then it will change things like transparency settings...
I have emboldened a few of the likely suspects...

Thats great. Thank you so much TIG.

ARTchi

Couple of comments:
If you set the small inertia of the moving up and down (shift and ctrl) movements are not smooth, twitches.
It is clear that the camera is controlled with the mouse, it is possible to hide the mouse cursor so that you can make a good video. The movement of the mouse is intuitive and without a cursor.