Whats Your Best Method Of Animation With SU?
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I have completed several projects with proper animation, and it is good - it does everything that it ought to.
But I am wanting to hear people's thoughts about other ways to animated with SU as I can't get the accuracy (timing etc) I want with proper animation.
I don't know much about keyframe animation and I have heard that simlab has a good third party animation extension - what are people's thoughts/recommendations?
Are there other good options that I haven't mentioned?
Are there 3rd party packages that SU can export to that I would be better to use for up coming industrial machinery animations?
Thanks in advance
Ash
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I'll be interested to hear what people has to say on this - as I've stayed clear of any animation in SU. Even the native Scene transitions in SU is terrible. I've seen a few plugins here and there - but the workflow doesn't seem to be ideal - far from it. And what's worse is that rendering isn't easy either.
SketchUp just doesn't seem to be even close to be the right tool for the job.
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@thomthom said:
I'll be interested to hear what people has to say on this - as I've stayed clear of any animation in SU. Even the native Scene transitions in SU is terrible. I've seen a few plugins here and there - but the workflow doesn't seem to be ideal - far from it. And what's worse is that rendering isn't easy either.
SketchUp just doesn't seem to be even close to be the right tool for the job.
Yep
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I've done some pretty major animations using proper animation in SU - we're talking a week+ of work.
These have required me to do post production editing due to the difficulties in getting timing (and other things) right with proper animation.
In some instances I have used flash and transitioned the final animation video to a 2D format and shown certain processes that way so that I could get timing down to the nth degree.
Unfortunately, a lot of this kind of work is under intellectual property agreements so I can't share it here....
But the animations are of a length and complexity that I haven't seen proper animation used for in any other places on the web.However, as I said before - proper animation is just not cutting it and I'm convinced someone out there has found a slicker workflow to get this sort of thing done more efficiently.
What are people's experiences with keyframe animation?
Ash
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Keyframe animation in SU, or 3DE modelling in general?
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Sorry,
Two questions:
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What are people's experiences with keyframe animation for machinery-type animations in SU?
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What other workflows do people have (including exporting to another file format and animating with 3rd party software) that are an effective way to do a complex animation from SU file?
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Did I post this in the wrong place or something?
Or should I just change the subject to "FREE BEER" to try and get some more attention.....
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@ashscott said:
Did I post this in the wrong place or something?
Not necessarily - it's just the week-end...
(Sorry, I cannot answer s I do not have experience with any)
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You generally have some experience with....well.....most things sketchup - got any recommendations Gai?
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I think a lot of people are not doing much of this work.
I've tried and its just such a pain that I don't do it if I can avoid it. And I pretty much always can avoid it.
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@ashscott said:
You generally have some experience with....well.....most things sketchup - got any recommendations Gai?
I do not really animate anything either. I have always dreamt about making a working wind- or water mill but have no time to learn SketchyPhysics.
As for keyframe animation: I have not had the need yet and since it's a commercial plugin, have not even bought it yet.
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I think the main reason there are so few replies is that in general, people don't do animation in SU.
We could try to move the topic to the SketchUp section, maybe there are more viewers there... ?
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I made a couple of quick animations with proper animation. The videos were concept ideas to explain how a county bridge could be built. They were not intended as "final" projects.
I just learned proper animation for the videos and it seems like a useful, if slightly unstable, plugin.
So what I did was setup things in sketchup/proper animation and then export all the images based on how many fps I wanted. THe output was okay but I decided to send them through a batch action in photoshop that made them brighter. (too bright, but I didn't want to wait) Then I just put them in windows movie make.
I have used keyframe animation and I like how it makes "tweens" between scenes. Proper animation has a lot of stuff in the background.
So to sum up, I think you could batch render images from proper animation in something like Kerkythea. (I did it for a test clip but it takes a long time on my old machine) Or you can add things to the output images by using photoshop and batch actions.
I would like to learn how to do better animation myself, so keep asking questions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6XR1cCzFu4&feature=player_embedded
Youtube Video -
I use Sketchup for animataion, iv both keyframe animation and SU animation, i find keyframe is very easy to use and fast to set up a scene, heres a clip i created last week just using keyframe animation, its simple and fast, just so you know i rendered this in shaderlight
@unknownuser said:
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SU Animate and SketchyPhysics are also possible options for object animation. I do mostly drive-through animations, and SP works okay for that...cumbersome to set up, but the results are pretty cool. I've seen similar drive-throughs done with SUA. I don't know what kind of machinery you're trying to animate but I'd bet both of these would work, depending on what you're trying to do and how physically accurate you need to be.
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Here's one I did a while ago. My first serious attempt.
I didn't use any plugins, simply played with scenes until it looked right, sort of
I used Adobe Premier Elements to put it together, using advice from a Paul Russam tut.(Attached).
Not that good, I think, a bit jerky, but I ran out of time. The client was impressed tho
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Baz
Ps: The music is awful too.
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Baz thats a simple fly thru animation, su animate or keyframe are not needed to do this, ifyou wanted to animate the jeep to move in your scene you could use keyframe or su animate to do so, but nice fly thru, and music sets the mood, i like it
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Awesome! Feedback - I love it, thanks folks.
Thomthom - I would be keen to move the topic to the sketchup section, I think animation is an important thing for a 3D modelling program to do - sketchup does all most all other 3D modelling/CAD processes and worthwhile animation would be another benefit on the long list that sketchup has. I have personally found 3D animation to be staggeringly powerful in 'selling' a project to someone. They say a picture is worth a thousand words - in that case a good animation must be worth about a billion words.
Tallbridgeguy - Those are nice animations and convey your clever methodology for executing the process - without animation that would be hard to do. My previous animations with proper animation have been similar but more complicated. I think proper animation is neat, and I truly praise Morisdov for his work there, but not its not the commercial level tool I need for lengthy and complex animations. In terms of instability, proper animation takes some real patience to get used to, with more polishing and usability I would pay well for proper animation....but not in its present state.My proper animation workflow was similar to yours except I used fraps and just screen recorded the animation - fraps gets it in hi-res so saved me a lot of post production time. I would recommend this workflow for simple animations. On my last project with proper animation I created five SU files of the model whose animations linked together. After screen recording with fraps I stitched the five .avi files together in Windows Movie Maker.
iichiversii - That is a clever animation. I have now purchased keyframe animation and will soon give feedback on my experiences with it. Could you describe your workflow to get the animation to that level?
In case the link isn't working for anyone, iichiversii is referring to this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP1ILu_IWII&feature=youtu.be
**Wyatt -**Thanks for the input - I have done a bit of work with Sketchy Physics and it is some darn cool software. I saw this animation done with it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY5iP0BzNew
I think that animation is really cool. However, for the work I am doing sketchy physics was (as you say) very cumbersome to set up (think saws, logs, chains etc resulting in dozens of SP hinges and other paraphernalia) and often the physical motion I was trying to simulate ultimately didn't work or required so many joints, hinges and boosters to work that my computer simply freaked out when I tried to run the animation....its cool but it won't work in this instance.I had a go with SU Animate a long time ago and I didn't get very far - would you recommend it for the kind of object animation I am describing?
Baz - Thats a nice animation. Here we're talking about object animation so groups and components are moving around in the animation.
iichiversii - I checked out your blog: http://dawnofheroes.blogspot.com/
The game project sounds cool - can you share much else with us about it?
You must have learned to avoid some serious pitfalls in SU based animation(of which there are many) having played with SU and object animation for that long - what else can you share with us?Thanks for the feedback everyone - keep it coming.
I am looking to get permission to share the complex (five SU files) animation, that I did with proper animation, on the web - if possible I will share it here.
Looking forward to hearing more
Ash
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Well where should i start, it took me forever to figure out how to animate in sketchup, to be honest i didnt think it could be done, but thru su animate, keyframe animation and keyframe by layers all jumbled together it made happen, im currently working on a bigger and better clip at the moment, its the rendering thats taking forever due to a bug in shaderlight, now for the game idea.
like i said in my blog my models were originaly designed for a game project i set out to do, A war game with a bit of humour added, as you can see from the blog but i lack the pargramming knowledge to do this, im looking into a social network game for facebook etc but also a 3rd person shooter for smart phones and tabs, and these games will work together side by side, not sure if it has being done before but the idea is there, finding programmers to work on it aint easy thu due to already working on a project, so i set up my blog and animations to market my idea and hopefully recruit the right people for the job, but the blog is new, but like i said im working on a bgger and better animation, its a trailer to market the idea and will show the size and amount of models that have being made for this project, iv being working on this concept for 3 yrs now and its only now im putting it out there, it will be updated very soon to give you a bigger picture.
Yon mentioned pitfalls in animating in su and believe me i came across many, for example facial animation is not something you can do in sketchup, but i found a way around this, i use a program called crazytalk6, i baught the lience and have come up with fantastic results, i havent posted any example as of yet but i assureyou it works and very well, heres a link to the trial version, be sure to try it out http://www.reallusion.com/crazytalk/crazytalk_trial.asp try it out with my pic of Kyle Bugsy on my blog, its fantastic, its almost as good as pixar if ya ask me, you can use any 2d image with a face in it and animate in in literly minutes, very powerful stuff, but when i get my clip finished this feature will also be in the trailer, and it looks great so far, some great examples of this on youtube also, very easy to use believe me
My view on Keyframe animation is brilliant and without it i wouldnt be able to do the animations im doing, i also have su animate and with the current release of the new version last month i believe it has its own version of keyframe animation, havent played around with it as of yet but i suggest try it out in su animate before buying keyframe animation, im sure they both do the same from the tutorials iv seen
Just 1 more thing, iv mentioned animation in su many times before and many prompt me that i wouldnt succed in doing so, but as far as im concerned i have and once this trailer is finished im sure it will make others retink, ill also post some simple tutorials on how i did it, and the cocktails of other softwares im using to get it to where it is, but unfortunately su isnt designed for animations i do which is a pity, rigging characters would be a great feature but i have rigged my characters using a rig on a layer, theres an image of the rig at the bottom of the post
http://www.reallusion.com/crazytalk/crazytalk_trial.asp
Also heres 3 still image from my trailer, onboard an aircraft carrier
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The trailer looks cool - looking forward to seeing it.
When you rig up a character on another layer, as shown, is that so you have easy to grab rotation points with the axis in the right place?
I assume that kind of rigging is character specific - in my machinery animations I have metal pins in all the drawings that all the machinery rotates around.
I just did a test run on a project with keyframe and rendered with twilight - I left it overnight but it didn't capture animation and I can't figure out why - will talk to the folks over at the twilight forum.
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