Animator State per scene
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Fredo,
Have you thought of having an animator state per scene.
Like some keyframe recorded into a scene.
It would be handy for us architects showing projects to have some scenes with doors and windows open/closed and navigate or walkthrough buildings with our clients. This is mostly done with onclick DC's but those are a lot limited and hard to setup.
I'm imagining a lot of stuff, all rather basic with animator:
- A garage door openning;
- A car getting inside;
- The garage door closing.
All states saved into separate scenes with no camera would allow us to cycle through the action and view it from any view point.
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This is what the Visit Controller is supposed to do in 2 forms:
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With a kind of slider controller
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with switches embedded into the model that you activate This part if not finished for the GUI.
You can try the Visitor and see what I mean.
The final possibility is to create Scene snapshots at certain stage of the animation.
Fredo
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I'm sorry if I've missed that. Animator is an overwhelming experience and I haven't got the time to explore it deeply.
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@jql said:
I'm sorry if I've missed that. Animator is an overwhelming experience and I haven't got the time to explore it deeply.
I had some problems with controlling the location of the Visitor window but it worked fine. My tool for capturing the screen did not work correctly though. I encourage you to try it.
One thing it did not do though was use the Views in my model. When I used the arrows on the Film_1 line, it did open and close the door but it did not play my views like if I was in Animator. -
In Visitor, the cameras are disabled, actually, since you 'visit' the model.
Fredo
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@fredo6 said:
In Visitor, the cameras are disabled, actually, since you 'visit' the model.
Fredo
No problem with that. Just need to be able to control where the Visitor panel is located better. Initially shows up at the bottom of the screen and I have to expand to full screen to then get control. Once I do get control, I still cannot move it around on the screen,
Now, I did find out that my screen capture did work. It is a little hard to see that I am clicking the scene tabs but here is a quick little example of what it looks like. Well not exactly, when I switch the scenes, it stopped recording but it does work.
Well, I just tried in another model and I had full control over the Visitor......
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That's a hell of a feature thanks for your gif dave!
I'm wondering one thing though... Is there any room for CSS customization in your plugins Fredo?
I'm absolutelly sure I'm going to use this in client's meetings but I'd really love to be able to set a minimalistic style for Visitor's dialog... Something black and white probably. Could I do that if I dig into your CSS file? (I happen to know a little CSS/html coding...)
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I also would like to be able to distinguish between clips and sequences:
There is an error in this image (a stray sequence designator). But if possible in addition to distinguishing between the 2, it would be outstanding if the sequences were nestled below their clip.As an example:
Top Brush Demo- Car
.....- Car Translation
.....- Wheels Spin - Top Brush
.....- Top Brush Rotate
.....- Top Brush Spin
You get the idea.
- Car
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@JQL: there is no CSS, as I style the dialog boxes in Ruby. But could be an option
@ntxdave: Yes, I will certainly present differently anyway. Currently, this is more for me to debug.
One small remark:- In Edit mode, you see all films, clip and sequence.
- If you click on one row, you select it, it becomes yellow
- You can switch to the Runtime mode by toggling the small wrench (the panel gets blue) and you only see the sliders selected.
Fredo
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@fredo6 said:
@JQL: there is no CSS, as I style the dialog boxes in Ruby. But could be an option
@ntxdave: Yes, I will certainly present differently anyway. Currently, this is more for me to debug.
One small remark:- In Edit mode, you see all films, clip and sequence.
- If you click on one row, you select it, it becomes yellow
- You can switch to the Runtime mode by toggling the small wrench (the panel gets blue) and you only see the sliders selected.
Fredo
Good things to know.......
Boy, this thread got me thinking. It would be great if the visitor worked inside the SketchUp Viewer or if there was a way to get this view in a web page. At a convention, I had a number of links for videos of different car washes. Man would it be neat if there was a way to click on a link for a car wash and it would launch the visitor and its capabilities. Would almost eliminate the need for generating videos
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Actually, I was thinking of creating dynamic components (switches and various shapes), so that when you interact you start a piece of animation.
Fredo
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@fredo6 said:
Actually, I was thinking of creating dynamic components (switches and various shapes), so that when you interact you start a piece of animation.
Fredo
Where I would eventually like to go is to not have to have the SketchUp software installed. Just a way to view the files with some animation.
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@fredo6 said:
Actually, I was thinking of creating dynamic components (switches and various shapes), so that when you interact you start a piece of animation.
Fredo
Grea idea! I wonder how far off from an animation plugin animator would go if you follow that path, but I like the possibilities.
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@jql said:
@fredo6 said:
Actually, I was thinking of creating dynamic components (switches and various shapes), so that when you interact you start a piece of animation.
Fredo
Grea idea! I wonder how far off from an animation plugin animator would go if you follow that path, but I like the possibilities.
Yep - good question.
Again, I think the capabilities for the visitor is something I have wanted for a long time. I would like to be able to share the file and let them see the model and its animations without having to have the SketchUp software. Again, thinking about being able to give a customer the file with animations but they do not have SU.
Either way, I like what I am seeing but other things are more important to me in the short run (like scaling). I need that for a couple of pieces of the car wash equipment but then I am being short sighted. I am willing to go with the majority and Fredo's original schedule.
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If you don't have sketchup how do you get visitor in a file? Sketchup viewer, for what I know, doesn't have ruby support so you can't have visitor activated in it. Or am I missing something?
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@jql said:
If you don't have sketchup how do you get visitor in a file? Sketchup viewer, for what I know, doesn't have ruby support so you can't have visitor activated in it. Or am I missing something?
Right now, they only show the customer drawings. I am trying to entice them with animations. So, other than me and the president of the company no one ever sees the actual SU files. I think the president has a copy of SU but no one else does. The only time they really see the files is at a convention and even then they only use PDF and movie files. What I am seeing with the visitor has, in my opinion, the opportunity to show off the SU file in a really constructive way. At least that is my goal. I am searching for a way to get them beyond the paper environment.
Last night I was thinking, wouldn't it be neat if you could use the visitor feature to show off your model on a tablet with all of the animation features. But then, I have been accused of being crazy before. Back in the late 70's some people I worked with at a technology company thought I should be fired because I suggested building a portable computer (can you say laptop).
Anyway, the visitor feature of Animator has me fired up. I see lots of potential for showing models developed in SU. Architecture like you discussed, products demos like Solo showed and many more things where you have the ability to "bring that drawing/product to life". What I am seeing is via Animator, you can produce a lot of the same type of things as Lumion, LumenRT and others. Maybe I am going too far.
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Fredo, I am not sure how/if this should be addressed. In some of my testing/learning, I created an animation that uses views to capture different scenes to show/hide objects.
In the video below, I used the view to capture a "spray" when the car reaches a certain piece of equipment. In the normal videos, this works great. However, when I view it using the Visitor, I do not get the same thing because it ignores my "views" and shows things based on the scene that I have active. Notice that there are 2 scenes in this model. One is named "No Spray" and the other is named "Spray". I added a view just before the piece of equipment that sprays to switch the scene from "No Spray" to "Spray" so you would see the spray when the car goes through that piece of equipment. In a full car wash, this type of situation will take place several times and it works just fine. But in Visitor it does not work because it shows the entire animation based on the view of the selected scene. Hope this makes sense.
Maybe I asking to "eat my cake and have it too". Is there any way to view the animation the same way in both Animator and the Visitor? Again, this is not the highest priority in the world. I see this as a long range question that is far less important than many of the other things you are working on.
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Dave,
Yes I know. Visitor is just in draft mode.
Actually, I will allow the usage of views (same filtering as in the Editor).
I will also decouple the Camera, Style and Layer Visibility in the next version. View Camera will still have the possibility to carry style and layer visibility, but that will not be the default.
This will allow to control layers independently of view (in your case, the visibility of the water curtain is linked to the animation of the car, regardless of the view).
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Your horizontal blue object don't rotate, does this normal?
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@fredo6 said:
Dave,
Yes I know. Visitor is just in draft mode.
Actually, I will allow the usage of views (same filtering as in the Editor).
I will also decouple the Camera, Style and Layer Visibility in the next version. View Camera will still have the possibility to carry style and layer visibility, but that will not be the default.
This will allow to control layers independently of view (in your case, the visibility of the water curtain is linked to the animation of the car, regardless of the view).
Sounds good to me..
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