Topic: Animation along one axis

[ngreen]

Hi, can you tell me if this is possible in Lumion free, and if not is it possible in the pro version.

I'd like to test out animating an object along a horizontal line. It would have reflections on it (a reflective sliding door) via a reflection plane.

The animation tools seem to be not very accurate, so moving something left to right also often moves it forward or back slightly, which I think moves the item out of the path of the reflection plane, so as the item moves it loses its reflection?

Is there a way to move an object along a fixed path to avoid unwanted diagonal movement? Perhaps using coordinates.
Thanks

[peterm]

Hi

There are no input dialogues available for users for the animation effects - Move or Advanced Move.  The animation tools are the same in both products - Lumion and Lumion Pro.

In many cases it has been considered that those are not required to do the type of 'casual' or quick animation of objects, such as for people walking along a street where accurate start and end points are not really needed.

There are however other cases such as animating doors where that might be useful or for some sort of axis constraint.  The tools have been kept simple so users can pick them up and go quickly, but for object animation they obviously do not meet other more precise needs.

You can however do things like animate a door, and get the opened position accurate enough in many cases just by using the move tools.

Note, users also have the option of animating in a 3D modelling application and importing the animation, such as Max and export with FBX (is automatically looped in Lumion), and some users have used Blender (FBX) OK as well.

Using a Reflection Plane on the object however is an added complication, and there are some unsupported features of the current Reflection Planes.

from a reply in Licensed users forum area:problem with reflections
Reflection Planes are for static objects.

Objects that use a Reflection Plane will not show the Reflection Plane reflection when they are animated with Move or Advanced Move, only the world 360 reflection (except at initial position where Reflection Plane will work).

The Reflection Plane is not an object that is associated with the object animated, so it is not going to be 'attached' to the reflective area.  Also, Reflection Planes are designed to get a definition of the area to reflect, they are not part of the material of that object, therefore they cannot move as part of the object.

How much of the reflection is retained in the area of the object, in your case the door, depends on how far it travels within its bounds, so if it's a short distance, the Reflection Plane may work fully.

The alternative is to use the Reflection Control and place it up and near the area of the door to get localised (world) reflections.  In a lot of cases this type of reflection is fine, but it is not a detailed resolution and 'flat' reflection as you get with the Reflection Plane.

[ngreen]

Thanks for the reply. Recently I only use sketchup, but I'll think about animating certain items in another program and importing them separately. It would be great if this were easily doable. I also wonder if any sketchup animating plugins would work....

[peterm]

Added my other comments to my post above.

Not to my knowledge for SkUp.  AFAIK, SkUp animation plugins are not supported by any of the exporters (including the new Lumion direct SkUp file import).   The animation needs to be in the required format, and as specifically supported by the export of FBX as in Max (or Blender).

In Lumion, if you place a small static 'placer' object (such as a plane or box) at the required position, then you can position the door quite accurately.  Note, objects such as doors should be centred and with the pivot point at the correct axis for positing and for any rotation (if required).