Thanks Bubin, wasn't aware of Frapps, it works brilliantly and gets around the problem that my model crashes about 90% of the time when I press the reset button. So even with the ability to save the sketchy-replay to jpg's I'd still struggle to get to that option before it crashes.

The only issue with Frapps is you can only save the screens' resolution, so I've had to rearrange the model abit in a higher resolution screen display to get a decent result. Still much easier than frame by frame saving.

I hope its not too bigger task, its clear you already get requests galore for new features.

Thanks again Mr Phillips!

Thanks for the responses

I haven't got much idea what you mean, I'm pretty much out of my depth with much of the discussion this forum, but will do some reading and have a look at skindigo...whatever that is!

Tumble-weed appears to blowing through my thread!

I guess the answer must be there isn't a way of exporting a jpg from sketchy replay, a definitive 'no it can't be done', would make the tedious frame by frame export job I'll have to do a lot easier to bear! A 'yes, and this is how you do it....' would be a whole lot better though!

This observation doesn't apply to the model above, but my model crashes consistently if there are any controlled joints with associated groups set to ignore or static. To stop some objects from falling from my model I had set their overall groups to 'static/ignore'. When later connected to a joint I had overlooked some groups in the static/ignore states, bug splats occurred until I corrected the states. The bug splat sometimes occurs at the point the play button is pressed, but also when the reset button is pressed after successfully playing the animation.

Is there a way to export SP3 animation frames as jpegs or other image format, the only option I can find exports each frame as a whole new .skp file. Of course I could go into each skp file and export a .jpg but this would very tedious, and even slower than exporting incremental changes from the original model as the simulation is ruling.

A button to step frame by frame would be an imporvement, but an automated export would be brilliant.

Thanks Wacov, your suggestion has helped me resolve my problem. My earlier post is incorrect, setting ballast blocks to the 'ignore' state does eliminate them from the mass of the overall group, so the joints do go flexi. However using the overall group shape as default seems to get around the unwanted collisions provided any colliding sub-groups are set to 'ignore'. I can now place my ballast anywhere because although the overall group can be huge its not getting used in collision calculations.
Another property of note is that the largest ballast needs to be concealed within the connected group, NOT the group containing the joint itself.

Many thanks, I don't think I would have worked that out, definately not in the short term anyway.

Just checked the suggestion of giving my invisible ballast blocks a state of 'ignore'. Whilst their mass still seems to be taken into account, their presence is not ignored, because the overall collision geometry of the complete moving part is based on the size and shape of the complete group (of which the ballast is only a sub-group)and I can't give the whole group a state of 'ignore' because I want it to move.

To explain further my problem, it's an ergnomics project I'm working on. I've got a ball-jointed manikin supported on a device. My model is an attempt to show that the mankind who has effectively fainted is safely supported and won't fall off the device under the influence of gravity. The problem is that the manikin has a much larger volume than the device, compare your own volume to the chair you're probably sat on. The device has lots of moving parts, some very small in relation to the manikin, as a result the device joints get distorted under the weight of manikin. The ballast blocks hidden within the device components solve the problem, but its a difficult job to stop them from fouling on one another.

There was a 'no-collision' state listed on an earlier SP tutorial I came across, this would resolve my particular problem but I guess was never implemented?.

I'll try more and bigger joints next, any other suggestions welcome

As an illustration the attached file shows what I'm on about. If you unhide the layer called 'physics joints' you can see the mesh segments have a slab of ballast beneath them. Without the ballast when the ball is dropped it rips through the mesh! Ballast in place and the joints have enough strength to catch the ball.

Anyway regardless of what can or can't be done with SP, I think its absolutely brilliant, and its creative potential is freely available to anyone, as stated above full respect to Mr Phillips.

mesh and ball.skp

Thanks for the responses

There may be a solution amongst them, I hadn't tried making the invisible blocks into sub-groups and then giving those groups the 'ignore' state. I hade assumed doing this would take their 'mass' out of the equations and I'd be back with flexi joints.

Another thing that occured me, but I hadn't thought to try, is the size of the joint itself. Does the joint itself become proportionately stronger as you increase its size by scaling?, I'll try both ideas and post back.

Not sure if I should have posted two threads, but has anyone got an answer for the animation export query?

Thanks

I suspect the answers to my queries are present somewhere on the these forums, I have looked but so far have failed to find them, so I'll apologise now if I'm duplicating previous questions.

I'm a dummy compared to the majority of posters on this forum, but I had managed to get my head round most of funtionality of SP2, and produced a functioning model of an engineering project I'm working on. SP3 obviously has new features, some are obvious, I'm hoping there are others that I've failed find information on that will assist me.

The problem I have is with the strength of joints. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong here, but the joint strengths appear to be directly related to the size (and hence mass) of the objects to which they are connected. I would like to ensure that the joints work how a rigid joint would behave in the real world, i.e. no flex or deviation from the intended axis of rotation/ direction of slider etc. The work round I have employed so far has been to use large invisible blocks within the connected groups to increase their mass. The problem with this approach is that I'm running out space, and no amount of playing with their underlying 'SP shape' can prevent them colliding and fouling each other.

I note that on SP3 there is a 'properties' window at the bottom of the UI, I can't find any posts that expalin what (or not) can be achieved with assigning a property. Obviously a density setting would do the job, but I did find a post on that topic which rules that out.

There are some new 'states' in the UI, I'm not clear on 'static-mesh' as a state (i understand what the shape static-mesh is), and what is 'noautofreeze' and 'showcollision'.

My other query concerns exporting an SP animation. Is there an easy way to export the frames as .jpg's rather than full SU models? The size of my project will make the only export method I can find unusably slow, and I'd quickly run out of HD space.

I'm hoping someone can direct me to a guide/tutorial?

Anyway thanks for reading and my thanks to C Phillips for all his time and effort.