Opinion time…
What is the best animation extension to use? Does Fredo hold the crown? What kind of render output can you generate?
Cheers…
NW
What type of animation are you looking to do ? & what sort of rendering are you looking for ?
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I have used @Fredo6 's Animator extension for a number of complex video projects (10-20 minutes long each) and am quite pleased with it. If “best” means feature-rich then Animator would do well because it has many features. It takes some time to learn how to use it, but once the basic user interface paradigm is understood it is not hard to use. Performance bogs down with a very complicated model (a few million edges and faces) but it works. Regarding rendered output, I have only used the ability to utilize SketchUp’s native image rendering machinery. Animator does integrate with two or three third-party external rendering applications but I have no experience with any of them.
Some years ago (before discovering and switching to Animator) I used an extension named Keyframe Animation from regular-polygon. It is much simpler and more limited than Animator, but it worked for a short project. I used SKetchUp’s native image rendering capability there too.
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It depends on what you want to animate.
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if you want to animate how parts of the model fit together, Fredo Animator might be the ‘better’ option.
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If you want a more realistic animation/video where people are walking, cars are driving, birds are flying, rain is falling, etc… you can try D5 Render.
Of course there will be more options, I hope you find the one that best suits your preferences.
I’m looking to animate construction site progress - so plant movements, constructed elements etc.
I’d like to output through Vray afterwards for pretty images. I know it’ll take a while, but it can sit humming in the background…
Well, we’ve been using Enscape for a few months and find it pretty good for Architecture & construction; not everyone likes the render style, but it’s ergonomic & was quite easy to learn. (We’d been playing with TwinMotion before that, but found its “gaming” style render and animated people/cars & stuff too limited & distracting)…
Twinmotion has some phasing specific tools.
[ Twinmotion ] 4K Cinematic Construction Simulation | Phasing Art (youtube.com)
Can you animate the Sketchup models in this, so move a vehicle that you’ve imported rather than use the vehicle options in the program?
Am I making sense?
lol
Can you move elements withing the animation, rather than just pan through the model?
Good question. I’ve never tried…
Yeah you can. You can import individual SKP files (or other 3d files) and they come through into the software , a bit like loading a 3dwarehouse object or importing a file as a component into SketchUp.
I found this tutorial…
