Hello Fredo,
I have been using animator extensively for the past year and a half and I have a bunch of questions / comments I wanted to send you. Sorry if I am throwing everything at once.
Over time I ended up with very complex models and complex animations. Which is a lot of fun but also leads to some challenges in terms of organization.
First, now animator works perfectly with VRay. Thank you for the fix.
I sometime have a clip far into the timeline, let’s say, at 45s. When I want to edit it, I click on it. However, when I exit the clip, animator always brings me back to timecode 0.0, which can be very difficult to navigate, especially when trying to adjust several clips around the same timecode (here, 45s) and if I were zoomed in on the timeline.
Would it be possible to return to where I come from and not to 0.0?
I like how movements and clips are separated by colors and I know it’s possible to assign a color element. However, it displays only a small square of color. Would it be possible to assign a color specifically for the full clip? I sometimes think it would make the whole timeline clearer.
In one of my projects, I am currently using 15 tracks in the timeline. When the project is complicated, with a lot of overlapping clips (some with pursue or repeats), if I change the length of one, it jumps to a different track and it becomes very complicated to locate on which track it went. And it seems that it’s moving the other clips. Would it be possible to ‘’lock’’ a clip on a specific track? I think this is why I was hoping to change the whole clip into a different color. To be able to locate it easily once I come back to the main timeline.
As someone mentioned in a previous post, it would be fantastic to be able to import an already animated object from a different file. Or be able to import specific clips and/or movements and re apply them to the new model.
The easing feature is what makes your plugin so great, among other things. However, for now, the in and out value of the easing have to be the same. Would it be possible to enter different values for in and out?
Would it be possible to have grey (semi transparent) bars that show a defined aspect ratio? For example, if I make a video of 2:1 ratio, grey bars would allow to see what will end up in the final frame. It would be really helpful when exporting with V-Ray.
I was wondering if there is still a time limit for each frame rendered on VRay? I remember you mentioned there was a 10 minutes limit for each frame rendering time. Is it still the case?
Finally, because my models are now very heavy and complex, animator becomes quite slow. It takes some time to get inside a clip and get back out. Or just disable it. I tried converting my non moving objects into proxies but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. I also now have to export the file (in natural mode) to judge if my animation is correct. Is there anything I could do differently to make animator run smoother?
I am sure there are very good reasons why everything is the way it is, and I apologize if these features exists and I am just unaware of them. I just thought I should send my questions. I wonder if anyone else thought about the same things. Thanks again so much for your fantastic plugin. It really changed my way of using SketchUp.