I did generate the video (in SU2017) with the 635 frames and did not have any problem.
Could you keep the Ruby Console opened for the next generation. There are traces on what is going on, so you can follow and check if there are errors.
Yes, this is the first thing I ever did was sketch up and that’s the way it worked out or I don’t know what I’m doing.
But I am getting better at it!
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At some point you changed the axis orientation. If you right click on an axis line you can reset the axes to their correct orientation. I would think you’d have found orbiting around the model to be quite difficult with things oriented as they are.
The solid blue axis should be pointing up when the horizon (line between green ground and blue sky) is horizontal.
You’re correct, Orbiting was always a mystery. I found that Orbiting with the mouse wheel button depressed/control key worked much better but now I see that was a workaround. Changing the axises will improve the videos also. Thank you for the tip. Is the ruby console the window that comes up when you start generating a video? Somehow I am supposed to save it when I generate a video.
No. On SketchUp’s Window menu there should be an item named “Ruby Console”. That will open a separate window with a text-entry field at the bottom. Any Ruby code from any extension can emit messages that will appear in the main part of that Ruby Console window. (Ruby source code text can be entered in the text-entry field at the bottom of the window. Be careful there, don’t enter anything unless you know a bit about the Ruby programming language.)
Okay, progress. The following was generated from the “Ruby Console” Window when I executed the Frido 6 animator video generation tool. It did not generate any frames.
c:/users/denni/appdata/roaming/sketchup/sketchup 2017/sketchup/plugins/fredo6_!libfredo6/body_lib6webhtml.rbe:30: warning: already initialized constant Traductor::T_HTML_SCRIPT_TYPE
c:/users/denni/appdata/roaming/sketchup/sketchup 2017/sketchup/plugins/fredo6_!libfredo6/body_lib6webhtml.rbe:29: warning: previous definition of T_HTML_SCRIPT_TYPE was here
RENDERING INIT
Status natural = {}
Status thea = :not_supported
Status ambient_occlusion = :not_supported
Status sketchFX = :not_supported
Status twilight = :not_supported
VRAY Init
Status vray = :not_supported
:beg_time => 0
:end_time => 32.519999999999996
:frame_rate => 25
:speed_factor => 1.0
:reversed_play => false
:transparent => false
:dimX => 1512
:dimY => 730
:dim_mode => “viewport”
:filter => {
} (:filter)
:root_dir => “C:/Users/denni/OneDrive/Documents/Animator Videos”
:movie_dir => “Faring Recovery Vessel annimation trail - 09-Jun-2020 10-29-45”
:movie_name => “annimation of vessel”
:date_modified => 1591664192.837121
:movie_formats => {
:mp4 => true
:mov => true
} (:movie_formats)
:rendering_method => :natural
MOVIE PX = 1512 PY = 730 transpa = false
NATURAL image 1 time = 0s Image001.png frame = 1 res = 1512x730
NATURAL image 2 time = 0.04s Image002.png frame = 2 res = 1512x730
NATURAL image 3 time = 0.08s Image003.png frame = 3 res = 1512x730
NATURAL image 4 time = 0.12s Image004.png frame = 4 res = 1512x730
NATURAL image 5 time = 0.16s Image005.png frame = 5 res = 1512x730
NATURAL image 6 time = 0.2s Image006.png frame = 6 res = 1512x730
NATURAL image 7 time = 0.24000000000000002s Image007.png frame = 7 res = 1512x730
NATURAL image 8 time = 0.28s Image008.png f
I stopped the program because it was just more of the same!
I generated a trace, it is below!
Faring Recovery Vessel annimation trail.skp (14.0 MB)
I uploaded the file with the Ruby window open
My computer is not the most robust. Having said that this is my first model and the first animator film so there’s lots of variables. My guess is that my problem is either the model or ffmpeg. If I purchase the pro version what video-export services would you suggest? If worse comes to worse I guess I could just give up on animation and create some stills.
I want to make sure these video-export services will be used with Fredo6 animator, I’m not going to have to start over!
I strongly feel that SketchUp Pro will not in itself make a difference. As I mentioned in an earlier reply, I believe that the Animator extension does not use any of SketchUp’s native video-export capabilities. Animator asks SketchUp to create a series of still frames, and when all frames are created Animator launches the ffmpeg tool to combine that set of still frames into a video. SketchUp’s native video-export features are not relevant here because SketchUp does not understand Animator’s timeline and all the various motion effects etc. that are part of the action. Therefore, any video that was created directly by SketchUp (File>Export>Animation…) would not contain the action that you defined via Animator.
You can ask Animator to keep the set of stills (click the “Image sequence” button in the Generation of Video dialog box). Then in theory you could manually run ffmpeg (if you can figure out the set of switches that are appropriate for your video!) to do the conversion yourself from still frames to a video. I have done this when I wanted to post-process the individual frames which were created by Animator (before running ffmpeg manually), but determining the proper switches to run ffmpeg can be complicated.
Can you describe the problem more exactly? In your original post you stated that the “program seems to kick out and not complete the task.” I don’t understand what that means. Does SketchUp crash? (That is, does it terminate execution, causing you to re-launch SketchUp.) Or does it just hang, stuck, forcing you to kill the program?
Or does Animator never update the video-in-progress window (with the progress bar that creeps from 0% to 100%) to replace the Interrupt button with the “save and exit” button (in the Generation of Video dialog box)? I see that behavior sometimes, by the way. When it happens to me(i.e., Animator seems stuck on the final frame, no “Save and exit” button appears at the 100% point in time), I just click on the Interrupt button. When I do that, Animator seems to instantly wake up and my video is properly created (ffmpeg step and all).
Animator is a bit fragile, in my opinion. I am working with moderately complex models (30MB to 200MB SKP file size, essentially all geometry). Animator blanks out its User Interface fairly often for me, or seems to ignore button presses until 20 seconds later when I’m in the middle of doing something else with it, or gets stuck in the middle steps of adding an animation step, various problems. Therefore, I have gotten into the habit of saving early and often, so that I can force-kill SketchUp when Animator gets out of whack (and then restart SketchUp). It’s annoying, but the features of Animator are good enough that I put up with the bugs.
Animator is great, it is exactly what I was looking for, moving an object along a spline. I keep two models and as I progress I update with “save as” so I have a fallback if things get screwed up. My skp file size is 20mb. When I run the “Generation of a video” tool it runs correctly for about 400 of the 800 frames. I get about half of the video that I desire(400 frames). During the first 400 frames it takes the tool about one second to create a frame. Then it starts creating frames in say a tenth of a second but in reality no frames are created. If I select save then I will get a video of the first 400 frames. SketchUp is hung up at this point and I have to exit the program to resolve the problem. The video is 32 seconds long and I was just now able to get the second half on about my third try so now I have to concatenate the two videos. I would still like to resolve this problem for future projects and any edits I would like to make.
I have never seen this kind of behavior (and I have used Animator to create hundreds of clips, from a few dozen frames up to ~1000 frames each). When this happens, does the “Interrupt” button in the Generation of Video dialog box button disappear and a “Save and Exit” button (I think that’s the wording) appear, as it normally does when generation is complete?
After you click the Save and Exit button in the Generation of Video dialog and SketchUp then appears to be hung, do all the Animator UI features stop responding? Do SketchUp menus respond at that point - can you click on the Camera menu, say, and select Zoom Extents? I’m just curious, I cannot offer any solutions, sorry.
I tried several tools and nothing worked including animator. I’ll keep you posted as to problem resolution, thank you for your interest. I really appreciate your help.
I don’t think I did a good job answering your question. Both SketchUp and animator are hung up. I have to exit SketchUp to resolve the problem.
Hi, I’m having problems in generating a video output from Animator via Sketchup 2017 but now running a new MacBook Pro with Big Sur, just updating to “Monterey”. I keep getting an error message:" sh: /Applications/ffmpeg: Permission denied" although I have copied the FFmpg file into both Applications and into the Sketchup folders without success. The first time I ran the video output it just dumped the png files into the Animator folder with the same error message above, now just the error message and no png files? Any help gratefully received?
On Mac, you may need to authorize the FFmpeg application. You have to go the Mac Settings, Security icon. Then, the panel should propose you to authorize FFmpeg.