Sketchup physic - Animations possible?

[jyarddog]

Great to hear that works for you. Odd though, I've made radar dishes and such with transparencies and animated and everything was preserved and worked well, with far fewer steps. But then, whatever works!!!! Kudos to ya.

 

[=rk=]

I've made radar dishes and such with transparencies and animated and everything was preserved and worked well, with far fewer steps.

Awesome. Here I was thinking I'd found a solution to the impasse between SU and FS animations, I'd love to learn your more elegant one..

 

[jyarddog]

Are we discussing an object with transparencies and animation? To my recollection I haven't seen any problem with that. Have you tried it with FSDS and had problems with it? Bob

 

[=rk=]

You may or may not know that SU has textures, mostly portions of fence, in .png format. PNG is unique in that it can declare pixels transparent without requiring an alpha channel. Neither FSX nor FSDS can read .png, understandably as it was published in 2004, but MCX can and when it converts the texture, it assigns different properties to portions of the .dds to allow them to remain clear or translucent. You can tell this because a single texture has multiple entries in the texture editor, each with different values.

 

[jyarddog]

Yes SU comes with some textures, but usually the ones you personally make are better. I thought the alpha channel is always there, used or not. Interesting. FSDS can change bmps into dds, but it cannot itself read or 'see' dds. If Sinclair ever does an update maybe he will change that.

where are you in Washington? I'm stuck way up here in Ione where rush-hour traffic lasts about 5 seconds. Terrible.... just terrible! Bob

 

[=rk=]

Ok well the thread was about animations with MCX which seemed sort of an impasse. I was intending to demonstrate how easily one could incorporate the FSDS interface into the process to accomplish the goal; not that one might expect Arno to recreate the whole key frame animation implementation within MCX, but to demonstrate that there is practical cross application functionality, which had, to my knowledge, one significant limitation; the understanding of which might help Arno if he decides to add animation. The post above implied to me that the limitation was less significant, but I am guessing that others have not experimented with this particular .png format transparency preservation.

Here's an example of what I'm referring to. This is a model of Zumwalt DDS-1000 and the catch fence texture is taken directly from the SU "chain link" .png. It has been squished slightly to add a bias to the diamond pattern, which is the only modification from the stock SU texture. I was able to compile the model without animations because Zumwalt is stealth and all radiation sources are either fixed and electronically aimed, or concealed within radomes. You can clearly see the waves and ship through the catch fence, despite the fact that FSX can not render from .png:

...and the savings in polygon count for that type of component is potentially significant. Kind of funny (to me) because portable network graphics format is supposed to be the "no frills," take up the least space on your flash, load your pages quickly, replacement for .gif.

In Washington State I live in Underwood and I could about hit Oregon with a rock, it's almost like having two passports. Oregon, no sales tax, Washington no property tax, something like this. It took them several years of "stinging" people at the bridges in the afternoons for driving home to Wa. with Oregon plates, from a state where vehicle registration fee's are much lower, before some bright Washingtonian figured out to price fix with Oregon DMV to recapture all that lost registration revenue.

 

[jyarddog]

I like it. very impressive!
I remember when there was a big to do about back and forth across the I5 bridge. Live in WA , work in OR. so what? More power to them! Car reg used to be by year and price of car in WA. People payed an arm and leg just to reg a new car or 1-3 yr old car! Things change a few yrs ago. state income tax.... sales tax... either way they gitcha comin' or goin'. Again- good work - above. Bob

 

[tgibson]

Hi,

You can always add back the transparency to the textures used in FS using the alpha channel. Just use a different set for FSDS.

 

[jyarddog]

Maybe I misunderstood, but I just made a dumb looking radar screen and did the alpha thing in dxtbmp. Went to FSDS Made a screen with this bmp. animated it and place it in a scenery. animation works perfectly,........... no transparency loss at all.

 

[=rk=]

My point being that the whole process was largely automated, fairly powerful and extremely easy - I call it intuitive when you don't have to learn things and can just sort of click your way through. Sketch Up is like that. I could teach myself alpha masks, but here Arno has automated the process and for whatever reason the automation fails when FSDS is invoked.
Consider that transparency in textures, for FSX, is controlled by an alpha channel. The .png has no alpha, I didn't make a black and white image delineating clear from opaque, so MCX must parse the .png for the null data and write that information into an alpha channel. I am only guessing but it seems logical. Something about running the model through FSDS blocks this alpha, apparently...
I have compiled these things side by side. You'd think I could use the transparent textures from an identical but un-rotated radar and it is not the case. The transparency is blocked by the model somehow. Something about the alpha channel MCX creates in incompatible with the alpha channel in a model created in FSDS.

 

[jyarddog]

I see. Then when it comes to animations, I'd just do it in FSDS. I prefer it anyway, but when punching holes in walls for windows and doors, Sketch up is very nice.

 

[=rk=]

Right, but anything moving that runs through FSDS has to use alpha transparency...although it seems at least potential that we could one day have .png direct conversion, given that Arno has contemplated adding animation and Sinclair is apparently still alive...
Aside from a lack of integration with the ACES tool set that could possibly be remedied using the Ruby scripting component, SU is indeed very nice I agree. I have the others and none allow the "middle mouse button grab," where you can just spin your model like a Google Earth (or real) globe. The other 3d programs make me feel like I am working on an operating table in comparison. Also the web integration, the ability to share models and paint Street View screen grabs directly onto your models, the 3rd party plug-in and resource community, are all assets for SU and with SU's built-in shadow/light casting, the ability to open Photoshop format and export for edit, texture baking should be possible as well.

 

[jyarddog]

In my Corel PSP I can bake a texture and also bump map it, then put this into the folder where I have FSDS cave textures and instantly my design in FSDS shows the changes I made to the texture on the object. We use what we're used to - we use what works best here.... then there. It is like two artists. One says.... Ah, NEVER use that brush! No one uses THAT brush anymore! The other says- Pfffft, I'd use my elbow if it got the effect I wanted! Bob

 

[=rk=]

Nice, something I'll have to look into...

Probably more the Corel baking than the elbow, but if that works too..

 

[jyarddog]

In Corel PSP X4 (I would imagine X6 as well) I was sent some plugins after buying PSP. One is KPT which I haven't fiddled with much, and the other is NIK software. In NIK I found 'graduated filters.... a kick in the pants tool for shading effects. Fun to use.

The other is under effects-distortion- distortion mapping. This is for a more 3D effect (bumps) Watched a tutorial on it. Very easy but touchy. I don't quite have the hang of that yet. I did mess with it using a bmp of a beer can. it gave the can a few lighting reflection hilites which did give the can a more 3D look. The tutorial did say to make changes a little bit at a time. Patience and finesse I guess.... or go back to using my elbow. Bob

 

[=rk=]

There's an app called Crazybump that you might want to try, spendy but it has a 30 day try-al. This thread is about SU animations, so I don't want to stray too far, but I was hoping you could just provide a few details in another post; because I think it might be helpful information for anyone reading and we're not really hijacking any hot topics.
In my understanding, texture baking involves shading the model textures to represent shadows cast by 3d geometry. I have also seen it used to imply wear marks around hand rails and moving parts, dirt near the ground, etc. So my question is, how do you arrange the 3d geometry, do you render the model within Corel? Or does some sort of screen capture suffice? Perhaps, what seems most likely, is that you use some sort of graphical interface on a 2 dimensional image to represent 3d geometry, sort of like the Photoshop stretch tool. Is that accurate?
I have been of the belief that 3ds Max has to perform both the render of the model and edit the texture, which seems a little extreme to me, why have Photoshop or it's equivalent at all..?

 

[jyarddog]

Well, 3DsMax costs around %4k!!! It better do all! hahahaa As for the bump thing in Corel, (distortion- distortion map) I'm just barely learning it. After some main adjustments, then over on the right where you see the layers there's a box that says 'normal'. This is the blend mode. You open that then choose among a number of items. Still playing with it. If I have a wall I did this with and looks ok... then I might put some text on the wall(like Post no bills). I have to switch the text from vector mode to raster mode then fiddle with the distortion with IT. I can then play with the transparency. it ends up looking like I actually painted the words on and the letters flowed down into the cracks and back out. Or I can make it look like the paint skipped over various 'depressions' in the wall. If I were better at it, it would look great. Right now- .... it's a gittin' there. Bob

 

[=rk=]

I see. So you're kind of doing a combination of bump map/texture baking. Sounds pretty cool and only tedious until you get a pattern.
In the interim I explored shadow baking and discovered a technique where people are rendering in SU, using common render plug-in's, LightUp is popular; then they capture an image and project that capture onto the model. Sounds neat but the devil is in the details so I did a little experiment and you want to talk tedious...ya the textures looked real cool merged onto a 4096 by 4096 image, all shadowed and highlighted out. I thought so at least; but to try to project that onto the model and keep everything lined up without re positioning the master texture for each individual face...well it would probably be faster to get a side job mowing lawns and buy 3ds Max and learn how to use it. Imo, of course.

 

[jyarddog]

Buy 3Dsmax? Nah no money for that, and I'm happy with my stuff. Not going that big for a texture sheet. I'm just getting into trying to understand some of this. Corel has the distortion effects- distortion mapping.... then the free plug in I got for buying PSP X4.... NIK for the shadowing. That's good enough for me and will keep me busy and out of the bars for the next decade or two. Bob