Mecabricks animation tools

[Scrubs]

If you follow Mecabricks on Twitter, you may have seen that a few days ago I started to work on animation tools for the workshop. It was not planned at all but I felt like it was the perfect time. That is very very early stage and it won’t be released soon however I published a little video showing what it may look like:

And the (almost) first ever animation rendered:

 

Edited May 11, 2020 by Scrubs

[Mylenium]

Interesting, though it seems to me that animating this stuff deeply inside a model would be like pulling teeth. Any automated features planned like auto-detecting gear trains and forward/ inverse kinematics? Also, and apologies beforehand for highjacking this thread, what's up with the import bugs? I was just trying to import my model (https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/177422-moc-classic-car/) and the black turned all trans orange and some parts were oriented wrongly, regardless of whether using the .io file or the original .mpd. A quick look on the forum didn't reveal anything and the orientation issues appear on too many pieces to be parts-specific IMO.

Mylenium

 

Edited May 6, 2020 by Mylenium
Fixed typo and bad grammar

[Scrubs]

New short video about the development. Node editor is now functional:

 

[NathanR]

@Scrubs This looks fun. Will we be able to use the render farm to output final animation sequences?

[Calabar]

The work looks very interesting.
I look forward for the public release of the complete animation feature.

Many years ago I followed the youtube user tubafrog (now renamed Coby Basset) and his LEGO assembly animated video (example),
Do you think an "assembly" mode could be added to the animation feature to obtain automatically a similar result? 

Excluding changes of camera position it seems quite prone to automation, bricks came from immediately outside at a stated speed and from the side where the brick is placed in the figure (mainly from the top as the assembly is usually bottom-up).

[SylvainLS]

6 minutes ago, Calabar said:

Excluding changes of camera position it seems quite prone to automation, bricks came from immediately outside at a stated speed and from the side where the brick is placed in the figure (mainly from the top as the assembly is usually bottom-up).

Yes, it must be easy because Studio can do it  

[Scrubs]

54 minutes ago, NathanR said:

@Scrubs This looks fun. Will we be able to use the render farm to output final animation sequences?

Yes, it is already working. It is how I made the gear video above. For now, it outputs a sequence of images properly labeled. It takes a couple of minutes to stitch them in a software but the plan is to generate automatically a mp4 (or other) video file as well as the frames.

18 minutes ago, Calabar said:

Do you think an "assembly" mode could be added to the animation feature to obtain automatically a similar result? 

That is not super hard. I think it could be easily achieved with the node system. That would actually be a fun exercise later to show what it is capable of.

 

Lot's and lot's of other ideas in my mind that I need to code now.

[Scrubs]

The development version has been made public if you wish to try (use at your own risk) https://www.mecabricks.com/en/workshop/animdev

Users already started to have fun with like IstakaCiti

 

[Scrubs]

The Mecabricks 3D player has been upgraded to support animations. Check this model.

[M2m]

Check this out (it’s Mecabricks but not animation)
 

https://www.brothers-brick.com/2020/05/30/when-we-all-learned-to-sit-thought-the-credits/

 

[Scrubs]

I have been following him on instagram for a while now. It is interesting to see a 3D artist with real LEGO knowledge embracing mecabricks. There isn't this preconception that some older LDD users may have.

A couple of more animated models to showcase the current animation possibilities:

JK brickworks Orrery MOC and a few models by saabfan - Planes, Revolver, Clock

Edited June 2, 2020 by Scrubs

[Leewan]

This is incredible. I'm really eager to learn how to do animations.

[Scrubs]

Animation node and the other new features are all available in the production version of Mecabricks now. It is really fun to play with. Do not hesitate to open the public animated models to check how they are made. I will regularly add new nodes.

The scene below has been made with just one brick in the scene. 
https://www.mecabricks.com/en/models/7l2BPwzRv0N

 

Edited June 9, 2020 by Scrubs

[Scrubs]

A couple of things that I'd like to share here. The first one is that the Mecabricks renderfarm code has been updated to better integrate animations that are now a big part of the platform. It is also much faster to render, even for still frames, and it provides new options like motion blur. I made this little test video for demonstration purposes. It took only 11 minutes to render the 54 frames (1920x1080) on the mecabricks render system.

 

The second one is an awesome animation created entirely on Mecabricks by Sealund. It really showcase the possibilities knowing that there are still lots of nodes missing.

https://www.mecabricks.com/en/models/xov7gRVwv0D

 

 

Edited July 8, 2020 by Scrubs

[Scrubs]

Another great model built, animated and rendered directly in Mecabricks. Original design is by Jason Allemann.

It took about one hour to render the 144 frames on Mecabricks servers.