Camera: 360° rotation

[Phantomm]

Hi everyone,

Is there a possiblity to spin the camera 360° around an object without getting the ‘jump’ effect. I try this with front, right, back, left buttons and this works fine see exemple video1. But when I place the camera in an angle of 45° relative to the object every ‘camera stop’ creates a 'jumping effect see exemple video2.

PS: I’ve tried the advanced camera settings, but it’s the same effect.

Can this effect be fixed?

VIDEO1

- YouTube

VIDEO2

- YouTube

I want to achieve this
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-HgIFpsfRyUQ/VvI5IWU3wuI/AAAAAAAAAIs/daI578tiZjUagszV17U5YzpdWeFNSEaLg/w958-h539-no/Rotating%2BImage%2B3.gif

[Wo3Dan]

@Phantomm

Is there a possiblity to spin the camera 360° around an object without getting the ‘jump’ effect.

The only way to get the desired result in SketchUp with native tools is to include camera positions at angles inbetween and create more scenes. The more scenes, the smoother and the less the “jump” effect will be noticed
Using positions at say each 45 degrees will make “jumping” hardly noticeable.

[Phantomm]

Thank you @Wo3Dan I will try this.

[jimhami42]

There is a thread about that here:

Animation Without Jumps

Hello! I’m trying to create an aerial animation in which you circle a building. Right now I’m using scenes and animating between the scenes but the jump is distracting. I created a circle around the building, and placed cameras tangent to the center of the circle then created scenes from those cameras.

Another approach …

Auto generated fly-through

I am looking for a tool/extension that will auto generate a large fly-through for me. Let me explain… The end goal is to create a video that will start off looking directly down on my object and then spin around the object at decreasing angles with the goal being to catch the object at almost every angle possible. Then export the video to an image set so I have a large set of images that capture virtual every angle of the target. I know that I “could” do this by making a large amount of scen…

[Phantomm]

Hi everyone,

Here a new test this time with 36 faces and indeed like @Wo3Dan told the ‘jumping effect’ reduced when adding more camera points.

VIDEO3: 36 frames

- YouTube

[josephkim626]

This was a video that I have put together using the same method.

As I kept consistent eye height, it is a smooth transition.

Just thought it might be relevant.

Llico House 360 from SketchUp

[Phantomm]

Thank you for sharing @josephkim626

[jimhami42]

@Phantomm

Is there a possiblity to spin the camera 360° around an object without getting the ‘jump’ effect.

I have a simple Ruby script that can be pasted into the Ruby console. It starts with whatever view you have and creates 360 scenes at 1 degree intervals around the origin. Works in either isometric or perspective views:

c = Sketchup.active_model.active_view.camera
p = Sketchup.active_model.pages
e = c.eye
r = Geom::Transformation.rotation([0,0,0],[0,0,1],Math::PI / 180.0)
for i in 0...360
  c.set(e,[0,0,0],[0,0,1])
  p.add("Scene " + (i+1).to_s)
  e.transform!(r)
end

Two examples:

[Phantomm]

sorry for my late reply @jimhami42. Thank you for sharing your ruby i looks great!

[josephkim626]

Just came across to this again, @jimhami42

jim, if I understand this script correct, is below correct for making scene every 2 degrees?

c = Sketchup.active_model.active_view.camera
p = Sketchup.active_model.pages
e = c.eye
r = Geom::Transformation.rotation([0,0,0],[0,0,1],Math::PI / 90.0)
for i in 0...180
  c.set(e,[0,0,0],[0,0,1])
  p.add("Scene " + (i+1).to_s)
  e.transform!(r)
end

I just divided 180 and 360 by 2. My math isn’t so good, nor my programming.

[jimhami42]

@josephkim626

is below correct for making scene every 2 degrees?

Yes. This creates 180 scenes incrementally rotated PI / 90 radians (or 2 degrees). 360 degrees total.

[dantpdong]

Hi there,

If I want to have the scenes zoomed out a bit, what part of the code would I need to change?

Thanks.

[DanRathbun]

Nothing. The code uses the current eyepoint of the camera before the code runs. So just zoom out a bit before running the code.

[john_mcclenahan]

A small point: you could replace the code:
Math::PI / 180.0

by
2.degrees

for greater clarity - and possibly slightly faster execution?

SU Ruby recognises .degrees and .radians methods to convert between radians (used internally) and degrees used more commonly by humans.

[dantpdong]

Oh right, silly me.

Thanks for that Dan.

[JasonSzumlanski]

Absolutely brilliant simple solution! Thanks!

I used this to create a super smooth video. I wanted a full rotation in 30 seconds at 60 frames per second, so 1,800 frames. I changed to code to rotate 0.2 degrees per iteration to get the 1,800 required scenes. It took a while to process, but it worked. Then I exported the animation as PNG files rather than creating a video. Then I imported into Premiere Pro CC as an image sequence, which assigns each numbered image to a single frame in order. The results were stellar!

[randyc]

Interesting. Would this work with Vray rendering?

[jimhami42]

I don’t see why not. However, I’m not a Vray expert. You end up with a number of images that each have to be rendered separately. I found this tutorial which uses only two scenes, but it explains the basics.

Vray For Sketchup #1/7 - 3D Animation in vray for sketchup

[sketchnoob]

Thanks very useful.
Is there a way to limit the degrees so it doesn’t go around full 360deg on the object?
I tried changing the values and the only value I understand is the
for i in 0…360 = scene #

If it was possible to make it just go half circle on the object or even control it via number, that would be really helpful.