Animator: Parametric Animation plugin - Discussion

fredo6 · 3 Feb 2016, 22:07

@jql said:

Fredo and what about animating stuff by cycling through scenes as usual, is it also possible?

I mean it's so advanced in it's own that I can't understand if that is a possibility as it's what a basic animation plugin for SU does...

If it is, can we do it without showing UI? In fullscreen mode, to present stuff live to an audience?

Animator is not based on the native Scene animation mechanism of Sketchup. You can actually position the animation at any given time. Indeed, it is possible to develop a small GUI to make short cuts to specified time.

Also, there is a Player mode, with a much smaller palette. I plan to make the option to hide it when playing animation.

Fredo

pilou · 3 Feb 2016, 22:51

Seems very promising!

JQL · 3 Feb 2016, 23:07

We will find something you didn't think of!

fredo6 · 3 Feb 2016, 23:15

@jql said:

We will find something you didn't think of!

That's why the thread was started

Pixero · 3 Feb 2016, 23:20

What about how hierarchies are created?
Can that be made separate from how objects are grouped?
And what about inverse kinematic?

I'm also very interested in ways to fine tune camera animation paths and speed.

fredo6 · 3 Feb 2016, 23:21

@pixero said:

What about how hierarchies are created?
Can that be made separate from how objects are grouped?
And what about inverse kinematic?

I am not clear about what is "Reverse kinematic" and "hierarchies".

Could you illustrate ?

Fredo

Pixero · 4 Feb 2016, 00:10

Forward kinematics. You rotate a shoulder and the arm and hand follows.
Inverse kinematics. You move the hand and the arm and shoulder rotates to match the hands movement.

I think it would be great to have a way of creating the hierarchy independent of how objects are grouped.
Something like bones in other software where you create a structure that you bind geometry to.
How you model and group geometry doesn't always match how you want to animate them.

Rich O Brien · 4 Feb 2016, 07:33

How do you control the motion of an object over time? Is it linear interpolation?

If an object moves along X at 2m/s can you control the acceleration from 0 to 2m/s in some way?

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fredo6 · 4 Feb 2016, 08:03

@rich o brien said:

How do you control the motion of an object over time? Is it linear interpolation?

If an object moves along X at 2m/s can you control the acceleration from 0 to 2m/s in some way?

This should be addressed with Easing, which is supported in the Animator engine (in the initial video, you can see that the explosion of Homer is accelerated).

But I still need to build the GUI for custom easing.

By the way, I don't know if the appropriate term in English would be 'Easing' or 'Pacing'.

Fredo

thomthom · 4 Feb 2016, 08:38

@fredo6 said:

By the way, I don't know if the appropriate term in English would be 'Easing' or 'Pacing'.

Easing.

Rich O Brien · 4 Feb 2016, 09:25

Will the easing have types?

pilou · 4 Feb 2016, 09:42

Will be cool for animate gears! (a new gear plugin by Caermalo)

majid · 5 Feb 2016, 16:49

@rich o brien said:

Will the easing have types?

[attachment=0:1tzh4w5t]anim-fredo.png[/attachment:1tzh4w5t]

Mover plugin had some easing as I remember
Great plugin as always!

thomthom · 5 Feb 2016, 16:59

There is a nice lib on GitHub for easing in Ruby:
https://github.com/munshkr/easing-ruby

And nice visualisations here:
http://easings.net/

fredo6 · 5 Feb 2016, 22:01

@thomthom and Majid,

Animator should support predefined easing and custom easing. Simply, I need to build the GUI for custom easing.

Animator also supports oscillations (i.e. cyclic movement back and forth), either libnear or smooth as sinusoidal curves.

Fredo

thomthom · 6 Feb 2016, 07:25

Time to start another donation round for Fredo!

Anton_S · 6 Feb 2016, 19:26

Nice work fredo!

JClements · 9 Feb 2016, 16:55

What about exporting the animation to movie formats? Would that be left to the native SU export options or would there be other means for MP#, Avi, etc., formats?

fredo6 · 9 Feb 2016, 20:18

@jclements said:

What about exporting the animation to movie formats? Would that be left to the native SU export options or would there be other means for MP4, Avi, etc., formats?

Unfortunately, the Sketchup API does not expose a method for generating videos, even if there seems to be an embedded video module in Sketchup for Scene animation.

So I test with an external tool, so that Animator can generate videos at a specified frame rate and dimension. My current tests are with MP4 (as the animation of Car Wash posted by ntxdave), but I think it can generate other formats like AVI or animated GIF. I'll check when I have time. I'll need a Mac user to validate it also works on OSX.

I also hope that rendering software have a way to generate videos.

Anyway, this is an area where more exploration is needed. By default, Animator can generate a sequence of images.

Fredo

solo · 9 Feb 2016, 20:22

@unknownuser said:

Anyway, this is an area where more exploration is needed. By default, Animator can generate a sequence of images.

IMO the best way to do animation