Posts made by Treadshot A1

@barakuda

As a fellow user of SU8 (albeit on Win8 and Win10), the Animator plugin Clip Editor sometimes not opening does happen. I forget exactly where in Fredo's (rather excellent) documentation it says this, but if clicking the Clip Editor icon results in a system sound effect, you can double click the icon to open Animator (instead of closing and reopening Sketchup). Dont remember why, but double clicking works for me.

Animator 1.6a is awesome! Most happy about Animator actually saving animation and model data on click now (previously, saving was... not reliable for animation data). Only had time to try out the follow path feature, by driving a tank of course.

https://youtu.be/EH1GRYmgMCY

Great job Fredo as always, thanks!

Qucik question: does Thea render support changes to Layer Visibility in animations? It works fine with natural rendering in the example below, but the sword parts don't show in the Thea version.

https://youtu.be/XjUtOraCZ5U

https://youtu.be/wDRY0sSuWq0

*For the record, there are 4 swords, positioned for the car mode and jet mode. The sword components are different for each pair (in Outliner, it shows 2x <car_sword> and 2x <jet_sword>), so that each component definition can be on a different layer (main robot model is layer0, then layer_car_sword and layer_jet_sword are turned on/off as needed). Animator starts with [Layer0 ON / layer_car_sword OFF / layer_jet_sword OFF].

Also, Thea or otherwise, is layer visibility able to be faded in/out? I'm not aware of a way to change component opacity with basic Sketchup functions (aside from transparent materials), not sure if that can be achieved in a plugin. Would be nice to have so parts don't just pop in and out of existence.

Found a workaround with Animator and Thea rendering. Used to experience random movements of groups/components when rendering with Thea, which did not happen when rendering video with Animator's Natural rendering option. For instance, if a component rotates at 16.5s, anytime from 0-16.4s the component's position could not be relied upon, but 16.5s and onward the animation works fine (see: Data Minion Jaguar animation, a few posts up from this one). Solution: In Sketchup, place all objects in one large group, then apply an unnoticeable Unit Movement to that group at 0.0s in the timeline. In the test case below, I've used [move along Z-axis 0.1mm].

Test animation, Natural:

https://youtu.be/P21xEbhVhtQ

Test animation, Thea:

https://youtu.be/kYq8qbi49IM

//SU8Free, Win8, Animator v1.5d, Trial Thea, Natural video rendered from Animator, Thea video Rendered using Animation setting in Thea Render window (Thea calls Animator).

More testing with Animator v1.5b and trial Thea. I have no idea what Thea is doing, to be honest. At least every group moves back to its intended position right as its first unit movement starts. Also, once a group does have a unit movement applied to it, after that movement, it doesn't move about unexpectedly anymore.

Animator tested on [SU8Free Win8] and [SU8Free Win10]. Rendering achieved with Thea calling Animator, Thea settings [IR-Presto (AO) Interactive unchecked, 16 samples/px], rendered on [SU8Free Win10].

Model: Trinity by Treadshot A1
Fine print: As per trial version of Thea, Thea rendered video is set to Unlisted, uploaded solely for purpose of reporting results of beta test, and will NOT be used when Trinity is released to public. Natural Rendering video will be used for public release of Trinity, as it does not use Thea.

Natural Rendering (Animator only)

https://youtu.be/SnNgzX7rvyk

Thea Rendering

https://youtu.be/M8Mii2iENVs

Glitches: Lots of things move. Not the way they should move, unfortunately.

Notes: Video length doesn't match, because the Thea video was made with Blender, at 24fps, while images were rendered at 25fps. Not a major concern.

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Attempted more testing with Thea and Animator v1.5b, with new Animator files native to v1.5b (previous examples used Animator files created in v1.4). I'm not seeing the above glitches, but it's only one animation I've done so far, so I cannot say if the unexpected movements are the result of using old Animator files or not.

Animator tested on [SU8Free Win8] and [SU8Free Win10]. Rendering achieved with Thea calling Animator, Thea settings [IR-Presto (AO) Interactive unchecked, 16 samples/px], rendered on [SU8Free Win10].

Model: Data Minion Eagle by Treadshot A1
Fine print: As per trial version of Thea, Thea rendered video is set to Unlisted, uploaded solely for purpose of reporting results of beta test, and will NOT be used when Data Minion Eagle is released to public. Natural Rendering video will be used for public release of Data Minion Eagle, as it does not use Thea.

Natural Rendering (Animator only)

https://youtu.be/NMUBifJN7J4

Thea Rendering

https://youtu.be/NcZZMpDn8M8

EDIT: I am completely wrong. Files native to v1.5b can still have parts moving randomly. I tried adding an extra section to the animation of Data Minion Eagle above. A few unit movements were affected (a translation of 10mm in x direction is followed by a translation of -10mm in x direction later; for some reason the part ends up slightly shifted in the y direction, which had to be corrected with an additional movement). It looked fine in Animator, but Thea doesn't seem to match it.

I will note that in the process of rendering the animation, either Thea or Animator went haywire; I was put back into Sketchup's interface, but Animator's actions were accessible through Sketchup's Undo (pressing CTRL+Z would show the groups as they were moved in Animator, but actually moved in the sketchup model file). I couldn't get a screenshot of it; I had to close Sketchup and open a backup copy of my model/animation. I have no idea how that happened. The rendered animation below is a second attempt at rendering.

https://youtu.be/yp6deqn3NA4

https://youtu.be/WDGOvmVo9WM

@ithil said:

One more question.
Can you add the option "start numbering from 0 seconds"?
I use the Images Sequence to save the animation. My video has more than 2500 frames. And it's rendered for a long time.
If I need to fix just a few seconds of this movie I'm trying to use "Start at:" and "End at:" options.
But as a result I get files with numberings like this "Image0001"
It would be better if it was possible to call the file not from scratch but from the current position. E.g. Image1551

Just out of interest, what renderer are you using? When I'm rendering with Thea, I call the animation from Thea, which lets me choose what frames to render. When I was rendering my Jaguar model, if I wanted to redo frames jaguar_0100 to jaguar_0120, I can just go into Thea and set it to render frames 100 to 120, which it correctly names. I've not tried messing with Animator's built in "Start at:" and "End at:" options, but that's mainly because I find a frame range to be more precise for what I'm testing now.

That said, I agree that such an option would be useful natively in Animator.

@fredo6 said:

That may be an issue with Thea, as it actually 'watches' the object movements.
Did you get the glitch when rendering with direct method (i.e. from Animator) or reverse method (i.e. from Thea)?

Fredo

PS: nice model and animation!

The glitch happened when rendering from Thea (I still get Script Errors when rendering from Animator, so reverse from Thea is the way to go so far). Not entirely sure what you mean by 'watches' the movements, though. I ended up trashing the unit movement applied to the tail and creating a new rotation from scratch (hence the change in rotation angle), but that didn't solve the problem.

Here's the result of my testing with Animator v1.5b and trial Thea. Animator tested on [SU8Free Win8] and [SU8Free Win10]. Rendering achieved with Thea calling Animator, Thea settings [IR-Presto (AO) Interactive unchecked, 16 samples/px], rendered on [SU8Free Win10].

Model: Data Minion Jaguar by Treadshot A1
Fine print: As per trial version of Thea, Thea rendered video is set to Unlisted, uploaded solely for purpose of reporting results of beta test, and will NOT be used when Data Minion Jaguar is released to public. Natural Rendering video will be used for public release of Data Minion Jaguar, as it does not use Thea.

Natural Rendering (Animator only)

https://youtu.be/QeCwRVvVR-A

Thea Rendering

https://youtu.be/MVcUiUMcOKA

Glitches: "Tail" part should rotate starting at 16.5 seconds. No other movements applied to "Tail", no movements referencing "Tail" geometry, "Tail" group is separate from all other components and NOT nested in any other group. Animated correctly with Natural settings; "Tail" unexpectedly moves down then snaps back into place when animated by Thea. *Note: Tail moves 180deg in Natural video, 165deg in Thea as result of trying to fix movement, angle rotated is not an error.

@fredo6 said:

Actually, there is a problem with Thea which does not always notify Animator when it has finished rendering a frame.

Other users are encountering similar problems, even on SU2017. See this thread.

Fredo

Ah, I see. My apologies Fredo, I was not aware of that thread before. You are correct, starting animation from Thea does indeed work, frames are coming out smoothly. Tested on SU8Free, Win 10. Will show the results when done.

As always, thank you very much Fredo!

@fredo6 said:

Maintenance release

• bug fixing for SU8 and SU2013, as reported by Treadshot A1

Wow, that was fast! Thanks a lot fredo, I'm almost convinced there's some wizardry/magic involved in how you fixed the code so quickly.

That said, I'm not sure if what I have for you is good news or bad news. I can confirm v1.5b works on SU8Free (which is awesome!). I still have the "Script Error" popup I mentioned before, difference is I see the actual consequences now. Previously, all it meant was I pressed "Interrupt", then "Cancel", and it would redo the frame (say, stuck on Frame 5, okay, Animator regenerates Frame 5). Now, same process, it regenerates Frame 5, but actually with Frame 6's data (I can see components move when I hit "Cancel" to their new positions). This gets saved as "Frame_004" (yes 004), even though it's actually Frame 6.

Let's say that it's stuck on Frame 5, then I interrupt and cancel to get it going again, then it gets stuck again. I repeat the process. Then I get a "Frame_004", but with Frame 7's data. It's consistent, each time it freezes, it moves one frame's worth of data ahead. I've attached to screenshots from File Explorer of the frames being generated, with 004 overwritten, while Animator says it is stuck on Frame 5 (the overwritten 4 is pictured 2 frames later, I think).

*I did check if maybe Animator was simply saving the picture before moving to the next frame and not actually stuck, just in case I wasn't patient enough; can confirm Task Manager shows 0% activity from Sketchup-related processes.

*This happens only with Thea rendering on; Natural rendering works fine, no glitches. I do recall suggestions that Trial versions of Thea may have issues with weird dimensions, so I tried 16:9, 4:3, Viewport settings. Glitch above still happens regardless.

EDIT: Sorry, forgot to screenshot Ruby output. Attached are "test_2" images of frames overwritten, and ruby output.

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Well, I finally updated to Animator's newest version (thanks to the old version reminding me it was expired). I had a working animation before, but I can't access it now because v1.5a doesn't open. The Video Player and Clip Editor don't seem to load(?); at least, it never gets to showing the UI. Animator 1.5a is running with LibFredo 7.5b, SU8Free.

Ruby console output is attached; first section is what happens when I open a model, and try to open clip editor without doing anything else. The model_name.skp and model_name.animator files were functional in v1.4. Second section is trying to open clip editor again, since the first time didn't result in anything showing up on screen. The "(eval):249" line at the end seems to be consistently where it stops when clip editor is opened, except for not reaching that line the first time it's opened after opening the model.

*I have no idea what the TrajectoryManager it asks for is; is it something I need to install separately?

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@fredo6 said:

Which version of Windows do you have?

Happens on both Windows 8 and Windows 10. Internet Explorer is up to date, Ive unchecked the 'Display a notification about every script error' box in settings, and checked both 'Disable Script Debugging (Internet Explorer)' and 'Disable Script Debugging (Others)'.

@fredo6 said:

@treadshot a1 said:

Restarted Trinity's animation with Natural Rendering on two machines again to confirm; both animations were successful with no freezing, no frames repeated. Script Errors happened on both machines for Frames 1-10 on both; one machine also had Script Errors for the last 3 Frames, the other had them for the last 10 Frames.

Could you tell me which Script Errors you get in Natural rendering.

Fredo

Consistently get "Invalid Argument" Script Errors. Not sure what that means though.

@fredo6 said:

Can you at least confirm whether you get freezing situations when you do not use Thea.

For Thea, I'll have a look, but it may depend on the rendering mode you use. In past tests, I have noticed that 'unbiased' and 'adaptive' always had problem with the API of Thea (on top of being slow), maybe because the calculation is progressive. So the Thea API may miss the signal for termination.

In general, for an animation, IR Presto is good enough.

Fredo

Confirm: No Freezing with Natural Rendering.

Restarted Trinity's animation with Natural Rendering on two machines again to confirm; both animations were successful with no freezing, no frames repeated. Script Errors happened on both machines for Frames 1-10 on both; one machine also had Script Errors for the last 3 Frames, the other had them for the last 10 Frames.

You're right on the rendering mode, I had left it Unbiased which definitely added to the rendering time, IR Presto - AO with Interactive unchecked works fine. Tested Thea rendering with IR Presto, using a different model to make sure Trinity wasn't the issue, appears to me Thea has finished a render, Animator and Sketchup move the the next frame, the Thea doesn't start. This is after I get a Script Error.

Anyway, I'll keep testing on my end. Sorry to keep pointing out problems, hope it'll all work soon.

@fredo6 said:

Actually, Animator waits for Thea to finish to go to the next frame. So the freezing is likely to be related to Thea not answering it is finished (or not finishing).

By the way, you can also follow the process by opening the Thea rendering window, because the status of rendering is also displayed (time, frame and completion).
Also, it may depend on the rendering mode you choose. In any case make sure that the Interactivecheckbox is off (for instance with IR Presto). Low samples/px (like 15-30) is also advised.

I also suggest you keep the Ruby Console opened to see if there is any error.

What was puzzling me is whether you get freezing when you generate a video WITHOUT rendering.So thanks to confirm.

Finally be aware that with Thea trial version, there may be a small problem. Because the resolution is limited, Thea may have to redimension the images and, bad luck, end up with odd resolution in X or Y. Unfortunately, there is a bug in FFmpeg, which prevents it to generate MP4 from images with odd dimensions. So I strongly advise that you do a "Preview video" at the beginning of the generation to see if everything is fine (otherwise, you would wait for long and for nothing and get frustrated).

Fredo

Thanks for the tips Fredo, I hadn't remembered to pull up Ruby Console so that's definitely very useful.

As we suspected, Animator is not currently receiving responses from Thea correctly. Above screenshot is the result of Animator freezing after Frame 2 ("Rendering Frame 2...62.0s", then "Rendering Frame 2..."), at which point I clicked Interrupt then Cancel. Can confirm Thea started on Frame 2 again, but Animator believes it's on Frame 3. I am receiving a Duration value in Ruby, but I have no idea if that duration is calculated by Thea or by Animator.

Note: The reason Sketchup and Animator are 0.5s out of sync in the image is because of Snipping Tool freezing the screen output, so I think that's just event handling and the scheduler updating different programs at different times.

/as always...my guess could be wrong/

EDIT: I've hit Interrupt and Cancel again, it's done the same thing: Rendering Frame 2 in Thea, Animator shows Frame 3. Thrice in a row this has happened, so it's reliable at least.

EDIT: Oh, completely forgot to mention, I didnt' realise Thea's default was 512 samples/px in earlier testing; the above test was set with 15 samples/px, so far I have not gotten Script Error popups. That said, it's stuck on very early frames, so I'm not celebrating just yet. Also, I'm generating Image Sequence (FFmpeg isn't installed on the test computer), so I don't think resolution limits should be affecting it.

@fredo6 said:

Difficult to tell what is going on. It may be related to the fact that you run a trial version of Thea.
But anyway, if it freezes with no rendering, there must be a problem somewhere.

The best is to send me the model so that I have a look.

Fredo

Hmm, I've run the animation again, and so far I haven't been able to recreate the issue of parts moving incorrectly. In the meantime, I did change from 1.3b to 1.4c, so I'm not sure if that had anything to do with it.

That said, the freezing and Script Popup issues are reliably happening with many models, not just Trinity, so I'm confident it's not isolated to Trinity's animator file nor model file.

https://youtu.be/vK0Fj5jWXXY

*Note: Video is unlisted, and not linked to from pages related to Trinity. Thea's trial version is used solely to beta test Animator.

I managed to get a computer to process part of Trinity's animation with Thea Rendering (392 out of 1000 frames), with freezing occurring roughly once every 40 frames or so. At Frame 392, it finished the frame, then Sketchup became "Not Responding". I left it in Not Responding state for 30 min, but then force closed Sketchup. The video above is the result of those 392 frames hastily thrown into Movie Maker. To be clear, these frames were made using Animator to call Thea.

So far, all I can conclude is that, on my end at least:
Animator calling Thea -> Renders animation correctly, but Script Error popup and freezing abound.
Thea calling Animator -> Renders animation weirdly (but sometimes correctly), no Script Error popup nor freezing.

Thea's trial version doesn't seem to be a problem as far as I can see; it generated the images just fine whenever Animator called it. It seems to me that whenever it freezes and Animator shows "Rendering Frame 390..." without showing a time in seconds, that Thea just hasn't been told it needs to render anything. Equivalently when it repeatedly generates the same frame, Animator shows "Rendering Frame 390...62.0s", then shows "Rendering Frame 390..." (at which point it does nothing until I click Interrupt then Cancel), then shows "Rendering Frame 390...0.0s". My guess is that Animator has not iterated to the next frame, so after I click Cancel, it calls Thea to render the frame it's on, completely unaware it's rendering a frame it already did.**
**Obviously I have no idea how Animator is coded behind the scenes, this is just my guess based on the behaviour so far. Out of curiosity, does Animator operate at all similarly to [Calculate Movement(s) For Frame -> Call Thea ----Thea responds Frame is complete---> Iterate to Next Frame -> Calculate Movement(s) for Frame ->...], in terms of a very abstract flowchart? Because its behaviour seems to indicate that when Thea responds, it sometimes fails to iterate to the next frame, or fails to call Thea afterwards. /If i'm completely off then just ignore my random guessing/

Tested on [Windows 8, SU8Free] along with [Windows 10, SU8Free]. Video above generated with [Windows 10, SU8Free].

@fredo6 said:

Just to be clear, do you have the errors and freeze when you just generate the video without rendering?

Or does it happen only when you render with Thea?

Fredo

Sorry, should have been more clear. The Script Error popup that shows up for the first and last 10-ish frames happens both with and without Thea. Randomly freezing or repeatedly doing the same frame happens with Thea rendering turned on.

My Thea render settings are all the default settings, except with Min Time Limit set to 1 minute instead of 2.

Currently i have to start rendering through Animator's interface (I believe Animator then calls Thea). I have tried starting the animation through Thea instead, which doesnt cause any freezing nor has any issues with the first/last frames (at least, it hasnt happened to me yet), but the animation is entirely unpredictable. For example, in the animation for Trinity (posted in the Gallery thread), clearly no objects intersect another (it's been 3D printed as an actual figure), but if I start rendering through Thea, Trinity's legs end up stuck halfway in its own body. The animation should start with a part being detached moving away from the rest of the model; that doesnt happen if I start rendering from Thea. I cant say for sure what does happen, because its slightly different each time i run it from Thea.

Edit: Frames of Trinity attached. One is straight from Animator, frame 24. The other two are render with Thea, when the animation was started from Thea, for Frames 0 and 24. Frame 0 looks correct, Frame 24 doesn't match Animator's output, nor does it correspond to any part of the animation at all.

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Not sure if I'm doing something wrong here, but I'm getting script errors when generating video files. Seems to happen very often (read: almost inevitably) for the first 10-ish frames, and also the last 10-ish frames. Processes a frame, then Script Error popup asking if I want to continue.

Oddly, even if I continue, occasionally clicking Yes results in the popup closing, and Animator doing nothing. It's recognisable because Animator normally says "Processing Frame 9...42.5s", but after clicking Yes, Animator just says "Processing Frame 9..." (i.e. the number of seconds disappears). It seems to not actually continue rendering. I've found a workaround, in that I click "Interrupt", then in the popup menu that asks if I want to generate the movie file using the frames that were made (Yes/No/Cancel), I click Cancel, and Animator starts working properly again. This workaround works most of the time, but sometimes (especially early frames, like Frame 2-5) I have to do this workaround multiple times for the same frame. If I do have to use the workaround more than once, it repeats the same frame over and over. For example, "Rendering Frame 3...62.0s" is displayed, at which point it should go to Frame 4 (I am testing with evaluation version of Thea Render, set to min Time Limit of 1 minute, so it spends 62 seconds per frame). Instead, it shows "Rendering Frame 3..." (again, the time disappears), and then it restarts Frame 3. Can happen upwards of 5 times per frame, not yet observed a pattern as to how many times it does happen.

So far the end result is I have to sit and wait for the first 10 frames, using the workaround each frame. Then I can walk away, and come back when the animation is nearly done, and use the workaround for the last 10-ish frames.

In testing, I've also had Animator freeze on Frame 25 once (I have no idea why exactly 25) as well. The Script Error showed up for Frames 1 through 10, then 11 - 24 worked fine. Not a clue on why this happened, have not yet been able to replicate. Wish I could be more helpful here, so far can only report symptoms. As always, thanks for the plugin, it's been really useful.

EDIT: Literally as I was typing this post, froze on Frame 30. Not sure why, no Script Error popup, just froze. Happened on a separate computer that had nothing other than Animator/Sketchup open.

EDIT: Should mention, I'm testing with multiple machines, running Animator 1.3b and 1.4c. 1.4c has more instances of getting stuck on one frame, 1.3b gets stuck on Frames 1-10, then on random frames after that, but almost never gets stuck on just one frame repeatedly.

EDIT: Reliability of v1.4c seems better, after a fresh install of v1.4c alongside LibFredo 7.4c. Still stuck on frames occasionally.

Made this animation to illustrate how an action figure of mine transforms. Haven't got it properly rendered yet, but it works.

For reference, the action figure is Trinity.

https://youtu.be/SnNgzX7rvyk

Posting to confirm Animator - v1.3b fixes the invisible menus of v1.3a in SU8Free, Win 8. Options are indeed visible now. Thanks Fredo!