[Plugin] SAT: animation plugin - Give life to your models!

SimFonIA_team

SAT(SimFonIA Animation Tools) is a plugin created by SimFonIA which enables you to animate SketchUp scenes. Your animations can be defined directly in SketchUp or driven by data files. The tool can handle groups in a hierarchy and its ease of use will allow you to express your creativity.

                              [flash=600,400:13j2ag86]http://www.youtube.com/v/CsX-EJT9Ofw[/flash:13j2ag86]

SAT is composed of different tools:

- Transformation Processor: For each group in the hierarchy, it is possible to change the following attributes over the time:

o Position, rotation, translation, orientation, scaling.
o Color, visibility

SAT offers an interactive method to achieve all these actions in a simple and quick way. These actions can be performed on all groups of the hierarchy of the scene what allows relative motion between objects. Each graphical attribute and each transformation can be driven by the time, by an internally generated signal or by variables from a data file.

- Keyframe Editor provides an interpolation between keyframes during the animation. The defined sequences can be executed: once, several times, loop, round-trip and with a configurable start delay. These keyframe sequences can be controlled with the simulation time or with variable from a data file. There are three types of keyframes:

o Deformation: surface distorsion by changing vertices position inside a group.
o Animation: definition of groups position
o Camera: definition of view points

- Exportation allows to export directly a SketchUp animation in a video or for a WebGL site

o Videos: An easy-to-use interface lets the user choose the resolution, the duration and number of frames per second.
o WebGL site: All SimFonIA customers have at their disposal a free website to host, display and distribute their 3D animations in the WebGL format. Thus the 3D animations can be manipulated through internet.

- Bullet is a physic engine (i.e. which handle gravity and collisions effects) that was interfaced with SketchUp. Different behaviors and bounding box can be defined for each level 0 groups. Groups can be linked by articulations that can have up to six degrees of freedom (3 translations and 3 rotations) and variable stiffness.This tool is used to easily create classical links such as links pivot, slide, springs etc.

Many other functionalities are embedded in SAT, the free trial version of the plugin and its documentation are downloadable at http://www.simfonia.fr/SAT/. Some examples and tutorials are available on our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/SimFonIATeam. The free trial version of SAT also includes a trial version for another add-on developed by SimFonIA:

-Character animation: SCA (SimFonIA Character Animation) is an add-on of SAT which allows quick creation and management of skeletons in order to animate 3D characters. This function is based on BVH files ("Biovision Hierarchy Animation File") that contain 3D motion capture data.

Looking forward to seeing what you will do with it, we remain at your disposal to provide all the information you need.

  Best regards,
  SimFonIA.team

Important Notes
For now, "SimFonIA Animation Tools” is only available for Microsoft Windows (from XP to Seven) and SketchUp 8 and higher.

SimFonIA_team

Hi all,

We have created this topic in order to present our animation tool and to answer your questions. Therefore one of our member will look at this thread regularly. For more responsiveness you can reach us with our official email addresses:

 hotline "dot" sat "at" simfonia "dot" fr                  -- for hotline
 contact "dot" sat "at" simfonia "dot" fr                 -- for commercial contact
 bugreport "dot" sat "at" simfonia "dot" fr             -- for bug report

solo

Very nice showreel.

So what are the prices?

I am also interested in rendering my animations, what render apps are supported?

SimFonIA_team

Hello Solo and thank you for your attention,

The price list is available here:
http://www.simfonia.fr/SAT/index.php?page=versions

And the differences between versions is explained there :
http://www.simfonia.fr/SAT/index.php?page=compare

Rendering is one of our main objectives and we are working on it. But it does not only depend on us because the work consists in interfacing SAT with a third-party rendering tool. More info in September.

iichiversii

Hi was just wondering when will the forums be up and running?

SimFonIA_team

Hello iichiversi

I presume you're talking about the forum on our website. It is still under debate between us, so no work in progress on it.

iichiversii

@simfonia_team said:

Hello iichiversi

I presume you're talking about the forum on our website. It is still under debate between us, so no work in progress on it.

As sketchucation is the lead on forums and tuts I suggest setting up some form of SAT developers topic/trend, the impact would be greater on SATs customers, iv also noticed SAT has a ad space on sketchucation which is great move as more will be aware of SATs existence and the capabilities of the software, what I would like to see is more tutorials which I can see happening in the near future on sketchucation but will SAT be providing tutorials also?

SimFonIA_team

Hello Iichiversi,

Work is in progress for tutorials but It is difficult to give a release date because it is a very time consumming task and we have other priority objectives. That said we have noted that this is an important demand of the community.

Thank you for your advice on the use of SketchUcation forum, we are now discovering this new world and therefore all advice is welcome. The idea of a topic dedicated to SAT developers is good but for our learning period we prefer to stay with only one topic. Anyway you can ask your technical questions in this topic, people who are in charge of this subjetc are developers ;o).

Regards,
SimFonIA team

iichiversii

Thank you and best of luck with SAT

SimFonIA_team

Hello All,

We are pleased to announce the official Release of SCA (SimFonIA Character Animation).

SimFonIA Character Animator (SCA) is the first extension for SimFonIA Animation Tools (SAT). It allows to create and animate characters by using BVH (Biovision Hierachy) files.

[flash=600,400:29gv4ikd]http://www.youtube.com/v/EWiryJTz1D0[/flash:29gv4ikd]

Sample Files available

The SCA demo version is now included in the SAT demo. You will find information, a video presentation and a tutorial by following this link

Sample files illustrating the main functionalities of SAT can be found here. You will get the folder "SAT_Documents_and_Examples" which contains:

**"SAT_V1_Basic_Shapes"** - simpe basic shapes (not animated).
**"SAT_V1_Documentation_Examples"** - examples used in the documentation (Keyframe, Transformation, Bullet).
**"SAT_V1_Animated_Components_Examples"** - example of animated components.
**"SAT_V1_Basic_Functions_Examples"**(NEW!) - Simple example for each functionnality of SAT.

Best regards,
SimFonIA_Team

Pixero

I'm always interested in seeing additions to animation for SketchUp.
However there isn't really any detailed explanations what those "characteristics" of the different versions are?
I cannot see any price information for the professional versions either. Not having prices in public always makes me suspicious.
There are also some things that indicates limits of use even for the professional versions like web quota?

Also I havent seen any info on what types of keyframe interpolation it has?
What does the keyframe animation interface look like?

All in all interesting but the product is not presented/packaged in a easy to understand way and the different licencing versions are confusing and makes choosing the right version difficult.
In my opinion there shouldn't be more than 2 (or maybe max 3) different versions of a product.

Humpmetwice

@pixero said:

I'm always interested in seeing additions to animation for SketchUp.
However there isn't really any detailed explanations what those "characteristics" of the different versions are?
I cannot see any price information for the professional versions either. Not having prices in public always makes me suspicious.
There are also some things that indicates limits of use even for the professional versions like web quota?

Also I havent seen any info on what types of keyframe interpolation it has?
What does the keyframe animation interface look like?

All in all interesting but the product is not presented/packaged in a easy to understand way and the different licencing versions are confusing and makes choosing the right version difficult.
In my opinion there shouldn't be more than 2 (or maybe max 3) different versions of a product.

Very well said and I also agree!

SimFonIA_team

Hello Pixero and humpmetwice,

@unknownuser said:

However there isn't really any detailed explanations what those "characteristics" of the different versions are?

As said previously in this post the characteristics of different versions are available here : http://www.simfonia.fr/SAT/index.php?page=compare. But maybe the table is not clear (?), so feel free to ask more precise questions.

@unknownuser said:

I cannot see any price information for the professional versions either. Not having prices in public always makes me suspicious.

I understand your distrust but it is a common practice for professional software. Several reasons for this:

- The price is a strategic lever, especially for users who take several licenses. 


- Exchanging with customers allows us to offer a product tailored to their needs.


- Companies may have other needs, including services (training, special supports, modeling ..)

Thus, to get the price of professional licenses, simply send an email to contact.sat (at) Simfonia (dot) com to exchange B2B.

@unknownuser said:

All in all interesting but the product is not presented/packaged in a easy to understand way and the different licencing versions are confusing and makes choosing the right version difficult.
In my opinion there shouldn't be more than 2 (or maybe max 3) different versions of a product.

If you look at our offer, we can say that an individual user has everything he needs with the office Version. The professional licenses are indeed more dedicated to cloud, multi-team work, industrial support and specific applications. That said, do not hesitate to make suggestions about our version policy (for example if you want us to integrate additional options in the version of Office). We are on sketchucation in order to communicate about the tool but also to get feedback from the sketchup community.

Best regards,
SimFonIA_team

P.S: About the "Key frame processor": I'll ask our developer team about the interpolation method. Regarding the interface, simply download the trial version to get an opinion.

SimFonIA_team

@pixero said:

Also I havent seen any info on what types of keyframe interpolation it has?
What does the keyframe animation interface look like?

  Hello Pixero,

For the transformation Keyframes SAT uses Sketchup's algorithm, for deformation Keyframes SAT uses an algorithm of our own (based on linear interpolation between vertices) and for the camera Keyframe SAT uses a Catmull-Rom Spline.

Does anyone in sketchucation tried to use the transformation processor? We understand that people are used to a classical workflow based on Keyframes, but the cornerstone of SAT is precisly the transformation processor.

Regards,
SimFonIA.team

congellous

Does this plug in work with OSX ?

SimFonIA_team

Hello all,

Some time ago, I explained the concept of procedural animation to jgb in these terms:

@unknownuser said:

To understand the philosophy of external data-files, it is interesting to look our use of SAT. SimfonIa is indeed an engineering company. Our main task is to predict the behavior of complex systems like an aeronautical hydraulic pump, a battery for hybrid car or a smart-grid network for residential complex. A simple worflow would be:

Our customer want to predict the fall of an apple => Newton gives us the gravitational equation => our simulator solve the equation => we deliver curves, Excel datasheets and analysis to our customer

SAT was thus developed in order to emphasis the work with a video showing the result: the falling apple… That is what we call procedural animation. It is a really interesting perspective for customers to be able to see their product live instead of trying to imagine its movement from 10 stacked curves.

And as a video is worth 1000 pictures, here is an illustration of the concept through a project that kept me busy lately.

SimFonIA_team

Hello all,

Firstly I wanted to thank you for the encouragement messages and for welcoming our designer during basecamp 2012 (a great adventure for him). Today we present you some "exotic" applications of our SU tools:

The combination of SU and WebGL export allows for creating interactive assembly / disassembly manuals (think about your IKEA furniture ^^)

- In scientific computing we often need to decompose the physical phenomena in elementary meshes (lumped model, CFD ...). In order to easily visualize the results we are preparing an automatic meshes generator for SU.

Best regards,
Julien From SimFonIA team

SimFonIA_team

Hello all,

Here is a video to show the possibilities of SAT. We illustrate how we might have intervene in the Vauban's Gateway of Patrick (http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=47725). From simple geometries concept to the object in its environment.

SimFonIA_team

And to celebrate Christmas wee also have a special offer : -50% on SAT Office Version (200 €->100 €) and on SCA Extension (150 €->75 €). Available until 02 January 2013 )).

Quick-start guide to come ))

SimFonIA_team

On the advice and with the help of Pilou we have created a quick-start guide for SAT.The objective is to present the philosophy of the transformation processor through the most frequently used functions: rotation and translation. The first part is a short introduction to SU and thus will not be interesting for most of you.

But the next two part will led you to rotate Pilou's weathervane! Normally, after that, nobody should say that our plugin is complicated))

If someone try the challenge we will be very interested in his feedback.

Best regards,
Julien from SimFonIA

Quick_Start_Guide_en_V1.0.pdf

Girouette.skp

Girouette_mouvement_compose.skp