face-me components in a batch render

[bigvtapple]

I have set up my batch render of three exterior views of a building. Around the building I have 2D face-me sketchup people projecting shadows to give a sense of scale and add life to my render. When I click render the people face the direction of the first scene, but when TLR switches to the 2nd and 3rd scene, the 2d people continue to face the first scene and generate at slivers in the following two scenes.

Does anyone know how to control this? I can do three different renders but I'm trying to set the program up to leave overnight outputing three large images.

[Chris]

Hi,
Twilight animation runs in several different "modes". There is View only (only the camera or view moves), View and Lights, and Animated Objects. If you don't use "Animated Objects", Twilight doesn't re-evaluate the geometry each time it renders a frame. So the Face-Me components are never "updated". In order to get them to face the camera on each frame, you'll have to use "Animated Objects".

Also, because you are changing the geometry with each frame, you can't use the "Re-use lighting" option (in case you were already). Since this is a batch render, it probably doesn't matter. But if you were doing an animation, using one of the Animation presets will reduce the amount of flicker and flashing between frames (which normally would be accomplished by "Re-use lighting", but which doesn't work with animated objects).

[bigvtapple]

Chris,

Unfortunately this doesn't seem to fix the issue, although I am seeing that all of the components are facing the right direction now in the first scene (rendered as a batch of 3). The second scene still had two people facing the wrong direction while others were correct - and the 3rd scene removed the people all together. Any other suggestions?

[Chris]

I'll run a couple tests. I've always gotten the feeling like the Face Me components acted a little odd. Almost like they lag behind a little bit. Maybe it's as simple as adding a delay between frames.

[bigvtapple]

Thanks for your help.

I'm not sure if this will help but here is an image of what is going on. These translucent silhouettes are draw as a face me component with shadows set to face the sun. Sometimes, at their worst, they were completely parallel to the camera (in another view).

The bottom image is rendered as a stand alone scene and the way the figures are supposed to orient. In the second and third the issue got progressively better but the figure on the right never oriented correctly - always pointing the wrong direction and slightly angled...

rendering issues.jpg (187.27 KiB) Viewed 8151 times

[Chris]

What I think is going on is that when the view changes, a separate piece of code inside of SU is responsible for updating the orientation of the FaceMe components. When Twilight renders an animation, it jumps so quickly from scene to scene that the SU code doesn't have a chance to update those components before Twilight starts processing the scene.

I just need to find a way to give it that opportunity. Apparently, there seem to be some complications (threading, ruby, and all that stuff).

[Chris]

I think I've got it working, by giving SketchUp an opportunity to "catch up". It seems to be working. I'll be posting an updated version in the next couple of days (I hope) that will have this fix in it.

[bigvtapple]

thanks for your detective work - i'll keep my eyes open for the update~