Programmed Animation in Sketchup

A free plugin for object animation In this folder you will find a file called mover.rb and a folder called mover_extensions This plugin, mover.rb, is free and comes from Copy the file and folder for the plugin into your Sketchup plugins folder I have copied them into mine and you will see the functionality of the plugin on the next few slides It produces object animation –but the animation cannot be exported

A plugin for object animation A Sketchup document with several objects

A plugin for object animation Let's select the small box for animation

A plugin for object animation Make it into a group

A plugin for object animation Open the scenes window

A plugin for object animation Create Scene 1

A plugin for object animation Tell the mover.rb plugin to remember position of selection

A plugin for object animation Update Scene 1

A plugin for object animation Create Scene 2

A plugin for object animation Move the small box to its position for Scene 2

A plugin for object animation Tell the mover.rb plugin to remember position of selection for Scene 2

A plugin for object animation Update Scene 2

A plugin for object animation Create Scene 3

A plugin for object animation Choose camera position and box position for Scene 3

A plugin for object animation Remember box position for Scene 3

A plugin for object animation Update Scene 3

A plugin for object animation Create Scene 4 and set up camera and box positions

A plugin for object animation Remember box position for Scene 4

A plugin for object animation Update Scene 4

A plugin for object animation Choose timing settings for animation

A plugin for object animation Choose timing settings for animation

A plugin for object animation Play the animation

A plugin for object animation Export the animation...

A plugin for object animation... as a QuickTime movie

A plugin for object animation I have saved the Sketchup file It is here Load it into Sketchup and you will see that the animation works But, when you export a QuickTime movie, you will see that the object does not move

A commercial plugin for object animation

SU Animate is a commercial plugin for object animation It is available here and costs $79 However, it is possible to download an evaluation copy for free –this has a life-span of 10 days SU Animate appears to offer some attractive functionality –see this demonstration video SU Animate appears to function in a way which automates the manual animation process we saw earlier –it generates scenes by using layers Animations produced by SU Animate can be exported as movies However, some users have reported that SU Animate is unstable and frequently causes Sketchup to crash –this has been my experience too

A commercial plugin for object animation I have saved the Sketchup file It is here Load it into Sketchup and you will see that the animation works But, when you export a QuickTime movie, you will see that the object does not move

Exercise Tackle Exercise 35