Topic: REQUEST FOR ADVANCED ANIMATION TUTORIAL

[Aliki_N]

Hi Lumion team / Users,

Can anyone please upload a tutorial on the new advanced animation plugin. I have been trying to animate several cars and people in my project. I can't seem to create new key frames for the second animated object without deleting or affecting the first object. With more than 50 people that I want to animate, this seems to be a nightmare to select the correct keys. If there was at least a color distinction on the keys it would perhaps be much easier to do so. I am thinking of reverting back to Lumion 1 as my project dead-line is drawing near, but then I won't have access to my custom objects created with lumion 2.

Regards,

Alickn

[peterm]

If you were to revert back to Lumion 1, what would you do for animation?  Use the Basic Animation?

Given Lumion 2 also includes the Basic Animation then there would seem to be no need to revert back, or am I missing something here.

Can Basic Animation achieve what you need?  Do you need just basic straight line motion or something more complicated/sophisticated? If Advanced can't do it can the animation be achieved in for example Max and then export the transform animation as FBX/Collada?

Will try and get back to you on your main task of animating a number of objects shortly. Actually haven't tried that myself.

[Aliki_N]

Hi Peterm,

I need to animate people and cars. Previously you would just click the start and finish positions of the cars and people. This is not the case anymore. The problems are as described in my previous post, where you can not easily see which key belongs to which character as they all occur on the

Regards,

Alickn.

[peterm]

I found on one project doing some animation that it was quicker and easier (if the path was generally straight line) to just use the Basic Animation Effect in L2, then use the Advanced Anim Effect for those with more complex paths or complex timings.

Anway, I agree that going from key to key to select is not that easy at present. 

I can't seem to create new key frames for the second animated object without deleting or affecting the first object.

A key can be anywhere on the timeline and every change is a key for that object.  Also, a key is not for one specific object, but all objects that have change.  So if at timeline position 1 second you had selected and changed 3 car positions, then the timeline will show 1 key for all three cars.  Selecting a car X at timeline 1 second (where the key/keyframe is), will let you change car X's keyframe but only car X, and so forth.

So if you are on a key that was there previously from a keyframe of a different object or you have moved the timeline, then simply selecting another object and changing its transforms will create a new key.  So you don't have to be on a key to create a new keyframe.

If you want to have 2 objects changing at the same key, then so long as you have selected the key (ie moved the timeline over the key icon) then you just select which object you want to change.  As above, the issue at present is always getting exactly to select that key, and sometimes you may end up being slightly off the current key and that results in creating a new key.

I think with playing around a little I have found that to get fairly accurate selection, using mouse, drag the timeline, then move the mouse down away from the timeline and drag, and it seems to (almost) click in place to the most current key.

More accuracy could be enabled by also allowing the max time to zoom into 1 seconds or even smaller steps.  See what they come up with maybe in v2.1 if they have had a chance to look at things.

There's also an indicator provided (accidental I think), but use with care.  To see if you are on a key and an object has a keyframe at that key, place or move your mouse over the Remove Key icon, you should notice that the object icon flashes a red dot, so that means it has a key, an other objects that do not have a keyframe at that key will not have a flashing red dot, then its just a matter of getting the timeline selection for that key (as above).

Not sure on the right track for you, but hope the above may help in a small way.

[Morten]

In my opinion, the Advanced Animation effects needs to be improved a bit before it will be useful for more complex animations with many "actors". For example, I wish it was possible to select 1 or more objects, and then only show the keyframes of the selected object(s) Also, it ought to be possible to move keyframes etc etc. But have patience, I'm hopeful that this and other features will be refined in future updates.

We will start making video tutorials as soon as Lumion 2 Free is ready to be released (which should happen fairly soon now that Lumion 2 Basic/Ultimate has been released).

[gseifert]

I hope you're referring to tutorials on all aspects of Lumion and not just animation.  IMO I think that's the only thing truly absent at this point.  BRING ON THE TUTORIALS!!!!!!

[Morten]

Agreed

[Remko]

We're planning a new website with 100 tutorials. I dont know if therre will be actually 100 tutorials but there will be a lot

[Remko]

that will be very time consuming for the team.

so video texture , and other FX requests, .................will have to be delayed indefinitely

Not really.. we can just make small movies of 1-2 minutes showing single simple tasks. In essence I can make like 1 or 2 of those in a day. This means that we can have 100 of those tutorials in 2 weeks. Maybe a we'll have less but it's nice to be able to pick a tutorial about something you want. The time we spend on it is very justified because we use it as marketing too. New users can easily see what you can do with Lumion and if the program can do what they want. Maybe we can create a gallery for tutorials so users can add their tutorials too. There are a lot of users in this forum I would like to see a tutorial from and I already saw some users making great tutorials.

[gseifert]

I can't wait for this.  Please get this up and going.  It will be awesome.

[vishal7]

We're planning a new website with 100 tutorials. I dont know if therre will be actually 100 tutorials but there will be a lot

I am dying to look at such a website which would be full of lumion tuts... kindly update all when you are done building such a website

[Morten]

Yes, we will.

[Architectural Innovation]

will there be a section for user submitted tutorials also? It would be very nice to be able to build off of the official tutorials and have one repository for all helpful videos.

i am sure with this vibrant Lumion community that there will be some very willing souls eager to help thier fellow "LuMinions". OOOOh, i like that term!! can i get extra credit for coining it??? hahahah 

Thanks,

Bob

[Morten]

will there be a section for user submitted tutorials also?

I'm not sure... that's a question for Remko.