Renderiza, iichiversi, Digson and Pilou in the same post ...my google alert has turned into a Christmas tree ))
Again Renderiza your work is amazing. You show a mastery of the tool and a pure creative sense. The movements on the first vidéo are ingenious and beautifull!
Pilou, can we say it is a kinetic sculpture? 
Vraiment superbe, c'est beau et ingénieux. J'imagine le plaisir intense de voir un tel projet prendre vie!
@patrick said:
Compliqué, je confirme que cela a été ma première impression,
En fait beaucoup ici sont habitués aux animations gérées automatiquement par sketchyphysic alors qu'avec SAT c'est l'utilisateur qui définit lui-même les mouvements. Concrètement pour ouvrir une porte avec SAT nous définissons un axe de rotation et une vitesse de rotation alors qu'avec skecthyphysic nous définissons un axe de rotation et une force. C'est normalement plus simple et intuitif mais ce changement de paradigme est clairement difficile.
Créer une animation avec SAT revient à décomposer les mouvements de l'objet en transformations élémentaires (translation, rotation...). La puissance de l'outil réside dans la notion de groupe parent/enfant. Pour la pelleteuse par exemple :
- j'ai d'abord créé une hiérachie (la pelle est un groupe enfant du premier bras, le groupe "pelle+premier bras" est un groupe enfant du deuxième bras , le groupe "pelle + premier bras + deuxième bras" est un enfant du châssis de la pelleteuse...)
- Ensuite j'ai appliqué des transformations élémentaires à chaque groupe: la pelle est en rotation autour de premier bras, le groupe "pelle + premier bras" est en rotation autour du deuxième bras....etc
- Au final nous obtenons un mouvement composé complexe (celui de la pelleteuse dans son ensemble), en moins de 30 mn.
Est-ce que cela est plus parlant...?
Bonjour Patrick,
Si vous êtes volontaire c'est avec plaisir, le boss demande juste un petit scénario (ou une vidéo avec la version démo). Ensuite nous vous fournirons une license pour vos explorations futures.
Je pense d'ailleurs que votre "ascenseur à bateaux" serait un bon début car il y a pas mal de transformations intéressantes (rotation pour les portes, scaling pour le flux d'eau, translation pour le bateau). Si vous m'envoyez le fichier je devrais pouvoir vous faire un tutorial pour réaliser rapidement une démo.
@patrick said:
"si dans le cadre de mon travail je peux montrer le contraire, je suis volontaire ..."
Si vous pouvez m'en dire plus sur la nature de votre travail nous pourrions également réfléchir ensemble aux différents débouchés qu'offre le plugin. Vous pouvez notamment voir sur notre nouveau site (http://www.simfonia.fr/?lang=fr) ce que nous proposons aux clients avec le plugin (bandeau communication scientifique sur la page d’accueil et onglet "nos services"/"communication technique").
Salutations,
Julien de l'équipe SimFonIA
Hello Renderiza,
It is interesting to have your feedback. We are surprised by your workflow (first using SAT before going into code) : very interesting.
About simultaneous recording of rain_plugin and SAT I suggest you send an email to our developer (I am just an awful physicist). He will give you technical information and search for a solution. You can join him there: bugreport.sat[arobase]simfonia.fr
Best regards,
Bonjour Messieurs,
Tout d'abord un grand merci à Pilou puisque je ne connaissais pas cette partie du forum dans la langue de Molière. Et cela tombe bien car je suis l'auteur de la vidéo sur la pelleteuse dont vous parlez.
Effectivement Patrick vous avez raison, le modèle présenté est très technique. L'objectif était de calculer les forces qui s'exercent sur les éléments de la machine et pour cela j'ai fait appel à la physique. Plus précisément au logiciel de modélisation/simulation AMEsim (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMESim) qui est une référence dans le milieu du calcul industriel.
Ceci-dit, si votre objectif n'est que l'animation, vous n'êtes pas obligé de suivre le même workflow et pouvez aisément vous passer des calculs physiques. Un de nos top-user "digson" a par exemple monté un business dans lequel il propose aux sociétés de travaux publics la mise en situation d'engins de chantier (la première vidéo de la page est un condensé des autres). Toutes ses vidéos ont été réalisées avec des transformations simples et des keyframes sans la moindre équation.
A propos des retours d’usagers nous n’avons malheureusement pour l’instant pas beaucoup d’utilisateurs prolifiques. En première approche le plugin paraît compliqué (ce qui n’est pas le cas) et le seul utilisateur qui ait tenté une review (jgb) s’est concentré sur la partie la moins intéressante : les keyframes.
Ceci-dit nous sommes en phase de recherche de testeurs et les choses devraient donc évoluer de ce côté-là.
Salutations,
Julien de l’équipe SimFonIA
Hello Renderiza,
That is a very interesting and usefull job, thank you )). in a recent message you tried to link your plugin with our animation tool, does it work?
Hello all,
Firstly I wanted to thank you for the encouragement messages and for welcoming our designer during basecamp 2012 (a great adventure for him). Today we present you some "exotic" applications of our SU tools:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R0JlrFI6Uk&feature=share&list=PLuPp9HnMzYCc1rPW6n3Bq7g0n88QjDk_T
- In scientific computing we often need to decompose the physical phenomena in elementary meshes (lumped model, CFD ...). In order to easily visualize the results we are preparing an automatic meshes generator for SU.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyQvEnw6sLw&feature=share&list=UU_gETS10HqNYFWqpX2xU71Q
Best regards,
Julien From SimFonIA team
Hello Albert,
SAT animation tool (http://www.simfonia.fr/SAT/) should help you to overcome your problems. If you want you can send me your SkecthUp model on Private-Message and I'll make the animation for you.
Best regards;
Hello all,
Some time ago, I explained the concept of procedural animation to jgb in these terms:
@unknownuser said:
To understand the philosophy of external data-files, it is interesting to look our use of SAT. SimfonIa is indeed an engineering company. Our main task is to predict the behavior of complex systems like an aeronautical hydraulic pump, a battery for hybrid car or a smart-grid network for residential complex. A simple worflow would be:
Our customer want to predict the fall of an apple => Newton gives us the gravitational equation => our simulator solve the equation => we deliver curves, Excel datasheets and analysis to our customer
SAT was thus developed in order to emphasis the work with a video showing the result: the falling apple… That is what we call procedural animation. It is a really interesting perspective for customers to be able to see their product live instead of trying to imagine its movement from 10 stacked curves.
And as a video is worth 1000 pictures, here is an illustration of the concept through a project that kept me busy lately.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA_jyQSSPhs&feature=share&list=UU_gETS10HqNYFWqpX2xU71Q
Hello everybody,
Indeed, many people are asking us for making SAT compatible with classic rendering tools.
Unfortunately, there is no good solution at the moment since there are strong limitations which were perfectly described by Renderiza)
So it is one of our main priorities for the next version of SAT, that's why we are currently working with LightUp and Thea Render in order to make our tools compatible. There are some difficulties but they can be solved, the only thing we need is some time.
There will be information on our website as soon as our next release is available.
We will also post a message on the forum.
Best,
SimFonIA Team,
Hello Gleen,
You can also try our tool. It deals with Keyframes too and it offers the possibility to define the movements of individual parts. You can learn more about on this topic:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=46540&p=416485&hilit=SimFonia#p416485
Hello Bsquared,
It won't help for your particular case but here is an example of interaction between SkecthUp and a flight simulator. We used flight datas to drive an animation in SkecthUp :
[http://youtu.be/XWsI7oR3kdc](http://youtu.be/XWsI7oR3kdc)
Best regards,
SimFonIA team
@pixero said:
Also I havent seen any info on what types of keyframe interpolation it has?
What does the keyframe animation interface look like?
Hello Pixero,
For the transformation Keyframes SAT uses Sketchup's algorithm, for deformation Keyframes SAT uses an algorithm of our own (based on linear interpolation between vertices) and for the camera Keyframe SAT uses a Catmull-Rom Spline.
Does anyone in sketchucation tried to use the transformation processor? We understand that people are used to a classical workflow based on Keyframes, but the cornerstone of SAT is precisly the transformation processor.
Regards,
SimFonIA.team
Hello Jgb,
Well, it is a long work you did there ! Unfortunately it is sometimes difficult to imagine your problem without knowing precisely what case you treat.
So : Points 1,2,3,4,5,7 are possible improvements to the plugin, they are stored on our side and will be discussed for the V2.0. Point 6 is clearly a bug, it is now in the bug-list.
About Part 3 of your exploration I sugest you to take a look at the cornerstone of SAT : the transformation processor )).
Hello Pixero and humpmetwice,
@unknownuser said:
However there isn't really any detailed explanations what those "characteristics" of the different versions are?
As said previously in this post the characteristics of different versions are available here : http://www.simfonia.fr/SAT/index.php?page=compare. But maybe the table is not clear (?), so feel free to ask more precise questions.
@unknownuser said:
I cannot see any price information for the professional versions either. Not having prices in public always makes me suspicious.
I understand your distrust but it is a common practice for professional software. Several reasons for this:
- The price is a strategic lever, especially for users who take several licenses.
- Exchanging with customers allows us to offer a product tailored to their needs.
- Companies may have other needs, including services (training, special supports, modeling ..)
Thus, to get the price of professional licenses, simply send an email to contact.sat (at) Simfonia (dot) com to exchange B2B.
@unknownuser said:
All in all interesting but the product is not presented/packaged in a easy to understand way and the different licencing versions are confusing and makes choosing the right version difficult.
In my opinion there shouldn't be more than 2 (or maybe max 3) different versions of a product.
If you look at our offer, we can say that an individual user has everything he needs with the office Version. The professional licenses are indeed more dedicated to cloud, multi-team work, industrial support and specific applications. That said, do not hesitate to make suggestions about our version policy (for example if you want us to integrate additional options in the version of Office). We are on sketchucation in order to communicate about the tool but also to get feedback from the sketchup community.
Best regards,
SimFonIA_team
P.S: About the "Key frame processor": I'll ask our developer team about the interpolation method. Regarding the interface, simply download the trial version to get an opinion.
Hello All,
We are pleased to announce the official Release of SCA (SimFonIA Character Animation).
SimFonIA Character Animator (SCA) is the first extension for SimFonIA Animation Tools (SAT). It allows to create and animate characters by using BVH (Biovision Hierachy) files.
[flash=600,400:29gv4ikd]http://www.youtube.com/v/EWiryJTz1D0[/flash:29gv4ikd]
Sample Files available
The SCA demo version is now included in the SAT demo. You will find information, a video presentation and a tutorial by following this link
Sample files illustrating the main functionalities of SAT can be found here. You will get the folder "SAT_Documents_and_Examples" which contains:
**"SAT_V1_Basic_Shapes"** - simpe basic shapes (not animated).
**"SAT_V1_Documentation_Examples"** - examples used in the documentation (Keyframe, Transformation, Bullet).
**"SAT_V1_Animated_Components_Examples"** - example of animated components.
**"SAT_V1_Basic_Functions_Examples"**(NEW!) - Simple example for each functionnality of SAT.
Best regards,
SimFonIA_Team
Hello Jgb,
Thank you for your argumented return. You are raising a very interesting problem that we we did not have considered.
Indeed we have designed the documentation for a user who begins its learning by working on the transformation-processor. It is the cornerstone of SAT and as soon as you have understood its use-philosophy everything should be clear.
But your experience is showing us that a user can starts with functions which are of interest for him ( bullet and keyframe in your case). What results in misunderstandings like the one you justly notice :
@jgb said:
primarily the need to use the "Transformation Processor" [TP] when defining a keyframe sequence. The TP part that is linked from the KFE (the transformation name), should be part of the KFE dialog box.
So keep on reviewing, it is very interesting for us and we will for sure take your remarks into account.
@jgb said:
Later if the SimFonIA team wish to incorporate into their own tutorial any that I have written, they are welcome to do so.
Thank you this is a very interesting proposal! If we do so, you'll be informed for sure.
Hello Iichiversi,
Work is in progress for tutorials but It is difficult to give a release date because it is a very time consumming task and we have other priority objectives. That said we have noted that this is an important demand of the community.
Thank you for your advice on the use of SketchUcation forum, we are now discovering this new world and therefore all advice is welcome. The idea of a topic dedicated to SAT developers is good but for our learning period we prefer to stay with only one topic. Anyway you can ask your technical questions in this topic, people who are in charge of this subjetc are developers ;o).
Regards,
SimFonIA team
Hello iichiversi
I presume you're talking about the forum on our website. It is still under debate between us, so no work in progress on it.
