Object animation for Sketchup?: some ideas

[kwistenbiebel]

Hi Whaat and fellow Skindigo users.

I am pretty happy with current animation support in Skindigo.
It works like charm and even speedier than one would expect for an unbiased render engine.

Lately I really feel the urge to be able to animate objects in sketchup and render the animation with Skindigo. Object animation would definitely be a super feature that opens the gates to all sorts of creativity (even gravity controlled animation etc...

That is why I pop the question here to hear if there is chance we will be seeing object animation in some near or further away future .
[Looking at Whaat now ]


Some ideas I have about implementing it in the most easy way.

I am no coder, but maybe it could work as follows:

1. A object animation script that spreads the animation to 1 scene tab per frame.
(e.g a 180 frame animation has 180 scene tabs).

2. batch rendering each frame, only calculating the 'difference' in geometry position.
So actually the code would only take in consideration what changes, so it doesn't need to export full geometry for each scene tab/ frame.


I would love to hear your opinion on this and off course Whaats opinion in the first place, even if it means it would be an impossible mission .

Cheers,
Kwistenbiebel

[Whaat]

Basic object animation support is definitely feasible. However, it would be a lot of work on my part that would be utilized by very few users.

Also, I don't think you would be satisfied with 'basic' animation anyway. It is simple enough to code 'move from point A to point B' but it will look like crap unless you provide non-linear animation curves. This suddenly starts to become a massive undertaking.

Generating large number of scene tabs is not a good idea IMO. I think animation support is a request best made to Google and then, they can provide the interface and methods for me to export the information to Indigo. I am not saying it can't be done, but it's a ton of work for something that will be used seldomly by very few people.

If someone were to create a robust object animation script (independent of SkIndigo), I would be interested in working out a method to export the animation to Indigo, but this request is too big to handle on my own.

Cheers,
Whaat

[kwistenbiebel]

I understand perfectly.
It would indeed be best if we would already had a decent object animation script for Sketchup.

Making Skindigo compatible with such a script would be 1 step away.

I already suggested some time ago on SCF forum that Sketchyphysics is almost an 'object animation' script .
Unfortunately it can't spread the animation into scene tabs (a previous version was able to do that though) and current verion is not so intuitive to use imho.


Let's hope either Google or a 3td party ruby coder will make a decent object animator in the (near) future.

Cheers and thanks for the reply,

Kwistenbiebel


By the way: Any news on the new 'secret project' you are working on?

[kwistenbiebel]

I decided to download a demo SU scene from the 'SU Animate' website and ran it through Fryrenders engine.

It seems that Fryrender has the possibility to render object movement by choosing the 'classic animation' setting, which calculates geometry again for each frame.

Here is the ( choppy) Fryrender object/cam animation:
http://www.vimeo.com/1504129

[kwistenbiebel]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQYoo2K_a5M (Fryrender)

[kwistenbiebel]

@Whaat,

I think I have found a way to render SU object animations (with x scene tabs for x frames in batch rendering) in Indigo , if only the exporter would take 'layer visibility' into consideration.
If it would, I would be posting my first Indigo moving train animation here


In the mean time, I managed to render a moving train using Fryrender:

Direct view:http://www.vimeo.com/1545109
or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LO3seJv0ik

[SketchUp Master]

I am willing to wait another year or two for somebody to release a script for animation with render.

I have spent far too many hours trying to animate objects in sketchUp.
The train is good kwistenbiebel, will it skindigo animate export not work with SU animate?

[kwistenbiebel]

The train is good kwistenbiebel, will skindigos animate export not work with SU animate?

Thanks.
Unfortunately Skindigo doesn't take 'layer visibility' and object position into account for each different animation frame. Skindigo will render the camera movement, but it will not render the movement of the objects. At least not for animations made using SUAnimate (also not for other object animation tools like Proper_animation plugin).

If your interested,here's another object animation I made , generated with SuAnimate and rendered using Fry:
http://www.vimeo.com/1553167

.

[SketchUp Master]

I saw that on YouTube. It's not bad. I'm only new to Skindigo after using Podium a bit. I think Skindigo is great!

I am doing alot of work on Sketchy Physics at the moment and would love to be able to render some of my scenes.

It's hard enough to get good enough footage with large models (50MB+), shadows and physics all operating at the same time.
Hopefully the next version of sketchUp will be able to produce some form on movement to an object. I've been hopeing for that since version three so I might still be waiting a while yet.

I have come accross this on YouTube. This is the best use of animation ive seen on sketchUp without physics. I have asked him how he has gone about these animations with no reply.

http://www.youtube.com/user/KMZWalker

[kwistenbiebel]

I am doing alot of work on Sketchy Physics at the moment and would love to be able to render some of my scenes.

+500000.

Sketchyphysics is currently missing a key frame animation function (scene tab animation) .
That plugin has the capability to be the best animation plugin for Sketchup around.
I am not sure if the developer sees the benefits of this though.
Maybe if we would all wine about it some more on the SCF forum?

By the way: your animations are superb!
Thanks for sharing the youtube link.
Now that would make awesome Indigo rendered animations

[SketchUp Master]

One scene at a time might work,
I'll give it a shot in the next week or two but it would take a long time. You would have to move an object for each frame little by little.

Actually, I might not have the patience!

[kwistenbiebel]

Doing it manually is nuts

[SketchUp Master]

Yes it is.

But it might be the only way for us to achieve this at present.

kwistenbiebel, I understand that you have been using Fry render.
Does it provide movement to a rendered object?

[kwistenbiebel]

The movement is assigned using the 'SU-Animate' plugin for sketchup.
(=a faked method using layer visibility, switching objects on/off at a slightly changed position)
Luckily, fryrender can render these animated objects.
I think it is the only engine capable of it at the moment.
All the others seem to neglect geometry changes per frame.
Not surprisingly off course, as Sketchup doesn't have a built in object animator.

I don't think SU 7 will support it, even though it is about time sketchup should.

[SketchUp Master]

SU 7 is just around the corner so we should find out shortly.
They are being very secretive about it.