Welcome to Animator Beta Testers
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Hi Fredo
Thanks for the clear explanation. I'm more confident when modify models ( but I still do a backup copy as "insurance"
Hereby, a draft small test. Good to know, apparently complex object ( including holes or concave
surfaces) can freeze kinematic constraint.Pierre
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Apparemment il y a avait une fonction desactivée dans la gestion des contraintes que j'avais oublié de retablir avant release.
Je crois que ca marchera.
Fredo
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@malaise said:
Hello Everybody
Do you have some hints to delete unused movements (wrong or obsolete)
from film ?
I saw there was a maintenance Windows to purge some of them, but it seems not
to work and leads you to delete all to "refresh" the work in progress.Please , [highlight=#ffff40:2zd6tvwo]click on the first picture[/highlight:2zd6tvwo]
Chri
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May I write here when I tested Animator v1.6a and I noticed problems? IDK where to send this.
First of all, for me it is big surprise that it is possible to do such great things with Animator in SU. I found it useful on small models.
I am user of SU8 (Windows XP). I have a model which has over 500.000 edges and over 250.000 faces. I found it too much slow to use animator, even when I hide mesh. In fact currently it looks like SU hangs when I tried to create animation with curve path. I had the mesh hidden in layer "hidden objects" which was active. But Animator disables the layer. I think it would be better if you start animator with the hidden objects off, so animator does not work with them at all and speed it up.
It is interesting that yesterday, when I have tested v1.6a for first time, I managed to create movement of tank object which went over a curve. But the problem was that the motion was not fluent and I was not able to correct it. I tried similar thing on small model with a simple house and there was not this problem. The problem of animation being not fluent means that the tanks looked like "jumping" just like if you would build animation of 16 seconds from 16 frames.
Another problem I have hit was then when I clicked on Visitor and exited to sketchup temporally, there was a loop which make me impossible to terminate the loop. So I needed to kill the SU process. Since the moment there was a problem because I was not able to insert new movement (the icon on left side). When I clicked the icon to insert new movement the tools and all the graphics disappeared. It looked like it was again in the Loop and I was not able to get out of it. Not sure if I could get out. But I solved this problem later, when I clicked on the icon Maintenance of data. And then Purge All. This was solution. This repaired the problem and I could start use the tool again. Hover, I think it would be great idea to move or duplicate this icon into main toolbar "Fredo6 Animator". But still user, which would run into same problem like I did, may have not the idea to use the Purge button to make Animator working again...
Please be aware that the problem is bound to the specific model, one big file (40MB file size). So even that I could not run animator on this model, this does not mean that it is not possible to use it in other smaller projects.
I found it impossible to use animator in the big project with many entities.
Also, in the toolbar there are icons: Save positions Objects and Load position objects. The dialog windows uses Internet Explorer which generates error message with "incorrect parameter" or "incorrect argument" error which asks me if I wish to continue to run scripts. I must press no. But this dialog window pop up often and so it is annoyance. However with the tool Animator - Clip editor I think I don't need to use it.
Cheers
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@barakuda
It may be useful, for reference purposes, to know what the specification of your computer system is. -
A few points about your useful remarks
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Animator is designed to build quality video of an animation at a specified frame rate. The interactive animation with the Edit Mode is just there to support the editing process. With hevy model, it may be not fluid or very slow. But it does not matter, since the video will be generated correctly. So I suggest you generate a video with your tank animation (and install FFmpeg if not already done).
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The Visitor mode is not operational and may have side effect issues. So please do not use it. I should disable it for the time being
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If you can, you should upgrade to a more recent version of Sketchup (2016 or 2017). With SU8, there are potential problem of compatibility (including for Web dialog boxes), which, to be franck, I don't spend enough time on. I really test it for Sketchup 2015, 2016 and 2017.
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It is of course a good idea to simply the model when editing a video. May be you can use light proxies for 'heavy' objects that do participate to the animation, or put them on an invisible layer when editing the animation.
Fredo
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One more problem. When I save my animation and exit Clip Editor, the Clip player and Editor cannot be opened again when I click on the icons. I need to restart SU8 to open Editor or Player. I use SU8 because I am still running on Windows XP and I do not plan to buy new system for years yet.
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As a fellow user of SU8 (albeit on Win8 and Win10), the Animator plugin Clip Editor sometimes not opening does happen. I forget exactly where in Fredo's (rather excellent) documentation it says this, but if clicking the Clip Editor icon results in a system sound effect, you can double click the icon to open Animator (instead of closing and reopening Sketchup). Dont remember why, but double clicking works for me.
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I've just started using Animator, so I apologize if this is a total noob mistake. The whole rolling cart in the animation is one group, with the rolling base (that the chair is on) and the doors are sub-groups. The final moves in the video are to move the whole group up the ramp, and then a second pivot to lower the uphill part of the cart so that it approximates following the curve of the ramp. When the model rotates, however, you'll notice that the rolling base moves independently and becomes misaligned. I'm not sure what I might have done wrong. Im running Make 17.2.2554 and Animator was updated 7/9/2017. I am on a Mac.
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@shanta said:
...you'll notice that the rolling base moves independently and becomes misaligned. I'm not sure what I might have done wrong...
Hard to decipher without the file to look at.
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@rich o brien said:
@shanta said:
...you'll notice that the rolling base moves independently and becomes misaligned. I'm not sure what I might have done wrong...
Hard to decipher without the file to look at.
Hope this works:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/s63r69mm2gh0k3g/20170719%20Ginormous%20Santa%20Chair%20Crate%20Ani%202.skp
Dropbox has changed so much, I'm not 100% sure how to use it anymore.
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You need to share both the .skp and .animator file.
Animator writes all animation data to the .animator file.
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Oops! I did mention I was new to this, right
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@rich o brien said:
You need to share both the .skp and .animator file.
Animator writes all animation data to the .animator file.
Actually, Animator writes the information within the model. The .animator file is a backup, just in case (if ever you undo, since the attributes writing is an undoable operation).
Fredo
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Sorry. My fault.
I spend some time looking at those .animator file to see if we can implement them into animated browser embeds.
Also I was hoping those files could some be imported into larger scenes to animation to objects.
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@rich o brien said:
I spend some time looking at those .animator file to see if we can implement them into animated browser embeds.
Also I was hoping those files could some be imported into larger scenes to animation to objects.
The .animator file is purely technical, in case something happen to the model.
I was thinking also to have an animation specification file, that would be easier to build and in clear language to specify an animation by the sequences and time line (like "Object1 3.0 4.2 Rotate 90 (1, 0, 0)" for a rotation of 90 degrees around the X axi, starting at 3s and for a duration of 4.2s, applied to Object1.
Not sure however if this would be useful and what we could do with it. Somehow, there is a concept of parametric composed animation, which could probably be make more generic with this approach.
Fredo
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