Hello Solo and thank you for your attention,

The price list is available here:
http://www.simfonia.fr/SAT/index.php?page=versions

And the differences between versions is explained there :
http://www.simfonia.fr/SAT/index.php?page=compare

Rendering is one of our main objectives and we are working on it. But it does not only depend on us because the work consists in interfacing SAT with a third-party rendering tool. More info in September.

Hi all,

We have created this topic in order to present our animation tool and to answer your questions. Therefore one of our member will look at this thread regularly. For more responsiveness you can reach us with our official email addresses:

 hotline "dot" sat "at" simfonia "dot" fr                  -- for hotline
 contact "dot" sat "at" simfonia "dot" fr                 -- for commercial contact
 bugreport "dot" sat "at" simfonia "dot" fr             -- for bug report

SAT(SimFonIA Animation Tools) is a plugin created by SimFonIA which enables you to animate SketchUp scenes. Your animations can be defined directly in SketchUp or driven by data files. The tool can handle groups in a hierarchy and its ease of use will allow you to express your creativity.

                              [flash=600,400:13j2ag86]http://www.youtube.com/v/CsX-EJT9Ofw[/flash:13j2ag86]

SAT is composed of different tools:

- Transformation Processor: For each group in the hierarchy, it is possible to change the following attributes over the time:

o Position, rotation, translation, orientation, scaling.
o Color, visibility

SAT offers an interactive method to achieve all these actions in a simple and quick way. These actions can be performed on all groups of the hierarchy of the scene what allows relative motion between objects. Each graphical attribute and each transformation can be driven by the time, by an internally generated signal or by variables from a data file.

- Keyframe Editor provides an interpolation between keyframes during the animation. The defined sequences can be executed: once, several times, loop, round-trip and with a configurable start delay. These keyframe sequences can be controlled with the simulation time or with variable from a data file. There are three types of keyframes:

o Deformation: surface distorsion by changing vertices position inside a group.
o Animation: definition of groups position
o Camera: definition of view points

- Exportation allows to export directly a SketchUp animation in a video or for a WebGL site

o Videos: An easy-to-use interface lets the user choose the resolution, the duration and number of frames per second.
o WebGL site: All SimFonIA customers have at their disposal a free website to host, display and distribute their 3D animations in the WebGL format. Thus the 3D animations can be manipulated through internet.

- Bullet is a physic engine (i.e. which handle gravity and collisions effects) that was interfaced with SketchUp. Different behaviors and bounding box can be defined for each level 0 groups. Groups can be linked by articulations that can have up to six degrees of freedom (3 translations and 3 rotations) and variable stiffness.This tool is used to easily create classical links such as links pivot, slide, springs etc.

Many other functionalities are embedded in SAT, the free trial version of the plugin and its documentation are downloadable at http://www.simfonia.fr/SAT/. Some examples and tutorials are available on our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/SimFonIATeam. The free trial version of SAT also includes a trial version for another add-on developed by SimFonIA:

-Character animation: SCA (SimFonIA Character Animation) is an add-on of SAT which allows quick creation and management of skeletons in order to animate 3D characters. This function is based on BVH files ("Biovision Hierarchy Animation File") that contain 3D motion capture data.

Looking forward to seeing what you will do with it, we remain at your disposal to provide all the information you need.

  Best regards,
  SimFonIA.team

Important Notes
For now, "SimFonIA Animation Tools” is only available for Microsoft Windows (from XP to Seven) and SketchUp 8 and higher.

Hello All,

Thank you Jgb for creating this post, it is very interesting to have feedback from users. We are about to create an official topic for SAT on Monday. Just time to give the finishing touches, conform to the forum etiquette and, as Pilou said, liberate the Bastille… About your technical questions, be sure they will be answered by a technical interlocutor; especially if you use our dedicated email (hotline and bug report).

Iichiversi, I apologize for inconveniences. I am going to investigate your issue in order to understand what happened. Can you please send me a pm with the email address you used for ordering?

@jgb said:

It does a lot more than SP did, does much of what SP could do as well. It incorporates a Keyframe Editor (which I am exploring as my introductory to SAT) and a ballistics processor, akin to SP.

The keyframe animator is a classical tool to animate your scene, the main capabilities of this one are deformation handling and the possibility to plan the animation with a csv files (see after). But SAT also offers a "transformation processor" in order to directly assign a transform to an object.

For example you can animate your scene in the following way: "this door will rotate 90° around its Z axis" or "the hand of the clock will rotate 360° per second around its Z axis" or "this car will move 110km/h along the X-axis". As the tool allow working with hierarchies and easily handling of coordinate systems you can create very complex moves with some mastering…and imagination.

I invite you to refer to the documentation relative to the “transformation processor”. And directly begin by chapter 4.4 “transformation related to a motion” (p.20). I think the tutorials will give you a good insight of this feature.

@jgb said:

But it also has an external data input derived from an Excel spreadsheet and other sources, plus a reporting function that will plot motion. That and a video exporter as well.

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.

Fortunately, you don’t need to be an engineer to be interested in procedural animation. You can indeed use this concept to capture a scenario. You have to put the time in the first column of your csv file and signals that will drive your transforms in other columns. For example you can set the speed of a car versus time or use a trigger to launch a specific rotation after 10s or drive your keyframe transformations with these scenarios. You can also create driving signals directly in SU using the "signal generator".

@jgb said:

*This is the email I sent to SimFonia, regarding setting up this thread.*I am evaluating SAT for my personal use. I used to (almost) use SketchyPhysics, but found it too difficult to master. SAT is far more capable and complex, but suffers from any real "How To" tutorial. YOUTUBE videos are not a solution for a new user.

It is “in the hoven”.

@jgb said:

*This is the email I sent to SimFonia, regarding setting up this thread.*The examples in the PDF docs are too simplistic and there seems to be no relation (as seen so far) to any of the SKP files provided.

I took a look for skp examples of Keyframe manual, they seem relevant. Do you think about another file? You can found them in the following repertory of your SU install. \Plugins\simfonia\SAT_DATA\SAT_Examples\Keyframe_Editor

  Thank you all, we are looking forward to seeing what you will do with SAT, more infos on Monday.