Update: After a bit more troubleshooting, I see that the Capture Rendering Style "mostly" works to activate/deactivate section cuts. I created a simple movie:

• Style1: Section cuts deactivated
• Style2: Section cuts activated
• Style3: Section cuts deactivated

Initially, if I stopped the movie during Style2 and jumped back to Style1, Style1 did not deactivate the section cuts properly. The only way to get them to deactivate was to go to Style3.

I then swapped the position of Style1 and Style3 which revealed that Style1 was not retaining the "start with section cuts deactivated" setting I had tried to save. It didn't work to deactivate section cuts after Style2. With Style1 positioned after Style2, I re-captured the "deactivated" style which appears to have resolved the issue, allowing the setting to be saved into Style1. Now Style1 and Style3 work in either position.

In further testing, I have had trouble reproducing the "first style fails to save deactivated section cuts." I created the original Style1 before saving any "activated section cuts." I wonder if now that this file has an "activated" section cut style, that future styles will properly save "start deactivated" unlike my initial behavior. I'll let you know if I figure anything else out.

I have not had success activating a section plane using Animator. It seems that the "save rendering style" is limited to the visual style itself (unlike Scenes in SU which preserves the active section plane, and whether section planes should "cut" or not). Animator appears to defer to whatever SU's setting is, without the ability to control it.

Am I missing something?

Thanks

I know you have a plugin that can scale objects without scaling their textures? Is there any way to do this in Animator?

Not a huge problem, but when I was first setting up Animator I used a colon in my film name "1: Film Description". When I tried to output a video, the video would never output. It would give me the options, but when I hit 'generate' the window would disappear and nothing else would happen. No error or message, so I didn't know what to do.

I started troubleshooting and soon realized that it was the colon in the film name, getting transferred into the 'file name' for the video output causing the problem. Removing the colon in the film name fixed this. I expect just changing it in the file name every time you output would also work.

It would be good to have the program check the file name and warn the user that they have invalid characters, or simply strip them out automatically (or both).

I have come across what appears to be a weird bug, or possibly a calculation error, or something similar. I have found a work-around, but wanted to explain what I discovered what I found to be the problem, and my work-around. Not sure if it is something that needs to be fixed, or simply a limitation in the software.

I have a model with several tall objects that range from +1000' to -300'. The horizontal dimensions are not as large (500' x 500'). I am animating slender shafts that extend up/down in various ways. To animate these, I create a 1" tall cube, then scale it up to 300' tall. When I did this for a cube starting near the ground level, extending 300' down, it works fine.

When I create a similar 1" tall cube that starts at -300' and scale it up so it is 300' tall, it causes a problem. First, I noticed that once I did this, SketchUp starting clipping the camera view (causing walls to get sliced open, not showing faces, etc; similar to when you zoom it too close on a really large object and the perspective gets forced/broken). One other characteristic I noticed (I have both ground and sky planes enabled): As soon as the object starts scaling, the relationship between the ground and sky planes changes (the ground starts extending in the distance, as if the overall model is getting larger).

Disabling the scale-movement fixes the problem (after saving, exiting to SU and then back into Animator).

It seems that when I scale the object that starts at -300' that the resulting object has erroneous "super duper tall" data or something that makes SU think it is taller than it actually is (or that the model is much larger than it actually is).

I tried many things:

• Scaling the object a little, then a second scale for the rest of the way
• Using taller objects to start (partially helped, but just reduced the problem to be not noticeable - but it still existed)
• Constructing a full-height object and scaling it down myself, to have Animator scale it back up

Finally, when I moved the offending object up to the ground level, and let it extend 300' above the ground as a test, the problem disappeared. I discovered that if I "save" the 1" tall cube above ground to start the animation, it can remain hidden by layer. Once the animation begins, with the object hidden, I move it down into position, and then have it appear when needed and it is able to scale up as planned.

It seems that the object's original position when saved into Positioner is part of what causes/resolves this problem. The deeper below ground the object begins, and the more you need to scale, the more severe the problem. Note that I want these cubes to "appear" from nothing and grow very tall, so I am going from 1" to 300' which is a LARGE scale factor.

It may be that a large negative number in the original coordinates of the object causes some math rounding or calculation error? Anyway, I wanted to pass along my troubleshooting in case it is something that you can fix.

Thank you for the quick response.

I am working on a large/complex animation with several other people. It would be useful to build portions of the larger animation in separate files (by separate people) and then bring them together into the final model to complete the animation.

Another situation would be if you had previously done an animation (or two separate animations, in separate SU models). Then you want to combine these (reuse them) in a new file to add additional animation.

I could imagine copy/paste the model objects, then an 'export/import' animation data to bring the associated animation data into the new model file. I understand there are technical challenges in maintaining the object associations, and other limitations of Sketchup.

Your plugin is amazing, thank you so much for the hard work and support.

Is there a way to copy objects+animation from one SketchUp file into another file?

Thanks