Animator: Parametric Animation plugin - Discussion

[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

[JQL]

@fredo6 said:

@jql said:

Animating leafs on trees.

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

Fredo

Bah! You didn't do that! Animating textures? Nah! It was me that remembered that first!

[Pixero]

Animating leaves got me thinking. Would it be possible to have vertex animation with a small sinus curve to animate leaves and branches like in many games?

[JQL]

Damn Pixero! I was coming here to post that! Vertex animation would simply...

Well...

[Humpmetwice]

Is this something available now or something in the works?
Either way nice work and I can't wait, been looking for something like this for sketch-up awhile now...

[ntxdave]

@humpmetwice said:

Is this something available now or something in the works?
Either way nice work and I can't wait, been looking for something like this for sketch-up awhile now...

WIP by Fredo6

[solo]

[CadFather]

@unknownuser said:

Working on animating snow on the top of Fujiyama.
Fredo

Fredo, i have thought many a times you must be living somewhere at those heights...!

[fredo6]

@cadfather said:

@unknownuser said:

Working on animating snow on the top of Fujiyama.
Fredo

Fredo, i have thought many a times you must be living somewhere at those heights...!

Yes, must be a nice place, but never been there, so just my imagination!

So far, it seems to work, as you can judge in the video below

Overall, still a long journey for this plugin, but I am progressing (slowly) on the framework to later host advanced visual effects.

Fredo

[jo-ke]

Wow. I'm looking forward to this phantastic plugin

[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 MP#, Avi, etc., formats?

I made some tests, and Animator can generate all or any of the following formats

• numbered sequence of images
• mp4
• avi
• mov
• mpg
• flv (for Flash)
• animated gif
• wmv (although seems to have problem of quality)
• ogv (ogg, but don't know what it is for)
• webm (for Android phones and tablets, I guess).

I don't know if miss some important ones. Also, there may be some options for each of the format.

Normally, this should work on Mac, but I still need to test (via a proxy 'kind user').

Fredo

[ntxdave]

WOW Fredo6, is there anything of any type you are not going to cover

Cannot wait to give this tool a try. This sounds more exciting every time you post something in this thread.