Scene animation with Animator

Rich O Brien

Great, just keep plugging away. There is no better way to learn other than just brute force.

Failing is part of winning.

ntxdave

@Rich-O-Brien

Still wondering about some video editing software

Rich O Brien

@ntxdave said in Scene animation with Animator:

Still wondering about some video editing software

Go research it. But if you keep biting off more and more things to learn you'll get nowhere.

What's the rush? Take things at a sensible pace and enjoy the journey. Make the best animation in SketchUp you can then fuss over the rest when that part is sorted.

ntxdave

OK, I have created a very basic model/animation that has an object that I view via the front, right, left, back, top and bottom. Each of the segments is 2.0 seconds. Not what I would like to do is control the transition from one sequence to the next. However, so far, I have not been able to figure out how to control the transitions,

Here is the silly little model.
Camera Positioning.skp

I probably should also figure out a nice clean way to animate the change from one scene to another. Again, this is really helping me get to the direction I want to go with my future 2 models/animations.

Rich O Brien

Try reverse engineer this:

nxtdave-camera.skp

I didn't look at your file but check that to see if there are scenes in my file. If not then figure out how the camera moves without using scenes.

ntxdave

@Rich-O-Brien Thanks Rich but that is not my issue. I have some totally different objects in multiple scenes. I can capture the camera position/view in each of the scenes but I cannot get a smooth transition from one of the views to another. Each camera view is the different view, not always but usually different objects' When Animator goes from one camera view to the next, it is a crisp shot. I would like to have a way to make the transition rather smooth instead of just a different shot.

Rich O Brien

@ntxdave said in Scene animation with Animator:

I cannot get a smooth transition from one of the views to another

That is because the Scene is Static. Hover the buttons to see the tooltips.

Use the first icon

Click the Scene tab and then Capture View. Repeat for each Scene.

ntxdave

OK, @rich-o-brien I have made some progress thanks to your post in the @majid thread.

So here is an updated file with the multiple scenes and the video I was able to create after following you response.

Camera Positioning 2.skp
amera Positioning 2.mp4

Now back to the last thing I am still trying to solve. How do you create a nice smooth transition between the clips. Just to let you (and other) know, I learned that before you do the screen capture, I needed to lick on the scene first.

Again, progress....

Rich O Brien

@ntxdave said in Scene animation with Animator:

How do you create a nice smooth transition

If it is movement between Camera A position and Camera B position you can see how that is done in the file I shared further up.

If the element in your timeline is stretched or fills the duration between A and B then the transition has no space to occur.

So lets say you capture camera position at 0.0 and make it last 1 sec and then capture at 1.0 for another 1sec. You are essentially telling Animator keep that captured view held from 0.0 to 1.0 then switch to the next view at 1.0 etc.

What should happen is you capture at 0.0 and then set the duration you want that held for. Then space for the Fadeout before your next captured view.

In that 'space' the Fadeout will execute.

ntxdave

Well, again, I have made some progress. On the positive side, I found out that adding a one second blank space between the clips provides a transition between the clips that I like.

However, I have run into 2 problems:

For some reason, the animation stops after the 3rd clip (right). I have not been able to figure out why.
I have had problems trying to clean up the Animator clip names. I have tried deleting the names, clicking the Purge Unused, Save Changes, and then exiting Animator. When I come back to the animation, the clip names I tried to delete are still there.

Here is the updated version of the file:Camera Positioning 3.skp

Rich O Brien

@ntxdave said in Scene animation with Animator:

For some reason, the animation stops after the 3rd clip (right). I have not been able to figure out why.

That's a bug. I discovered that today playing with your file. Fredo is aware and will post a fix with a new Libfredo.

ntxdave

@Rich-O-Brien Thanks. I thought I was doing something wrong.

That 1 second pause in between the scenes is giving me what I wanted. I think I will be able to use it in the models I have in mind.

Can you give me a clue as to why I cannot delete some of the unwanted/unneeded clip names.

This is turning into a real learning experience

fredo6

This should be fixed with LibFredo6 v15.8a, just published.

Rich O Brien

@ntxdave said in Scene animation with Animator:

Can you give me a clue as to why I cannot delete some of the unwanted/unneeded clip names.

Would you consider that if you have unused animation elements in your model that this is animation data saved into the file?

The clue:

Could it be that marking unused animation data that is saved into the file for purging needs to be saved?

Could the save icon go from disabled to enabled after you have told Animator to trash it?

Also if you do mark unused elements to be purged by clicking the Maintenance of Data button and Save Changes and then Exit the tool using the Exit Tool button are you prompted that there are changes that have not been saved?

The clue:

ntxdave

@fredo6 said in Scene animation with Animator:

This should be fixed with LibFredo6 v15.8a, just published.

Thanks @fredo6 and @rich-o-brien Yes, this fixed the problem I was having. Just for fun (and my learning process), here is a video of an example of how the update to LibFreedo6 v15.8a solved my problem/issue.

Animator Learning 3.mp4

Now I can go off and work on some things I want to use this resolution for.

ntxdave

Since the last update to LibFredo6 v15.9a I am having problems creating an animation with multiple scene views. Seems like no matter what camera view I try to capture; there is no longer a transition from one scene to another. I thought I was using the same process as before the update.

fredo6

Difficult to tell without seeing the model.
Do you get errors in the Ruby console?