Animator: Parametric Animation plugin - Discussion

fredo6

@jql said:

We will find something you didn't think of!

That's why the thread was started

Pixero

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

@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

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

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?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

fredo6

@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

@fredo6 said:

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

Easing.

Rich O Brien

Will the easing have types?

pilou

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

majid

@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

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

@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

Time to start another donation round for Fredo!

Anton_S

Nice work fredo!

JClements

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

@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

@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

otb designworks

I agree completely that image sequences is the best and most desirable way to export animations from any software.

JQL

What about animating textures?

Animating backgrounds and foregrounds with clouds and rain.

Animating leafs on trees.

Animating TV or PC screens.

Integrate with render engines to animate channels like displacement, bump, transparency, reflection, emittance, etc...

fredo6

@jql said:

Animating leafs on trees.

oaks in winter are supported
Working on animating snow on the top of Fujiyama.

Fredo