TIEBIAOJI SketchUp Tutorials

Creating flythroughs from paths

The usual way of creating flyover presentations in rendering software, such as 3D Max, is to create a travel path. The camera is then attached to this path and told how fast to travel along it, where to point, and when. This is exactly what you can do in SketchUp too. This method is usually preferable to the walkthrough you've already looked at because:

♦ Travel is smooth, and not "jerky"

♦ The speed of travel is constant

♦ There's greater control over where you go and where you look

♦ Scenes are created automatically

To prepare for this Time for action, first you need to download and install the following plugins:

♦ Flightpath.rb from http://www.smustard.com/script/flightpath

♦ Bezierspline.rb from http://www.crai.archi.fr/RubyLibraryDepot

Time for action - smooth transitions

You're going to simulate an aircraft flying through some tall buildings. This will teach all the slightly more advanced skills you need for your architectural video, although you might be working on a smaller scale with a single building or site. You're going to use a 3D Warehouse city rather than your own project so you can practice all you like and not worry about getting it just right.

1. Click on the Get Models button to enter the 3D Warehouse.

2. Type in 3d cities exhibition and select Collections.

4. First delete or hide all the polygon intensive trees and stuff as follows:

□ In Outliner, click Details | Expand All

□ Type in "Tre" into the Outliner text box (in case tree is spelt wrong, as it is in this case)

5. Go through it and select, right-click and Hide/Delete what you can. This will really speed things up (refer to the following screenshot).

6. Start by going to the Plan View and switch to the monochrome view style. Also turn off shadows. This will speed up manipulating and viewing the model and animation.

7. From your new Bezier Spline toolbar (View | Toolbars | BZ_Toolbar), select Cubic Bezier Curve and draw the path you want on the plan view, as shown in the following screenshot:

^ Cubic Bezier curve - [Control Points = 6 ~ Precision = 7s — Loop = 2c] (Drag points or double-click to add / remove control points)

8. Right-click and select Done.

9. Orbit your view as you can see below, then move the path up off the ground in the blue axis.

6. Now set the view style and shadows exactly as you want them.

7. Unhide anything you want to see in the animation.

8. Save the model. This is important because you can't undo the flight path easily.

9. Select the path you just created.

10. Right-click and select Flightpath.

11. Enter the speed you require. 88 meters per second is 60 mph (car speed). I'm going for 500.

12. Now go to View | Animation | Settings and reduce Scene Delay to 0.

14. Reduce the size to 320x240 and set Frame rate to 10. This is a test render size.

15. If after you view the animation you need to make path adjustments, re-open your saved SketchUp file and edit from there.

What just happened?

You created a 3D curved path for the camera to follow. The flightpath plugin creates scenes for each step in the path and sets the transition speed between scenes to keep the flight speed constant. You entered a speed in meters per second to control this. You now have a camera path converted to scenes which you can edit individually. This is really great because as you'll see in a minute, you can fine tune what the camera does every step of the way!

But best of all, did you notice how smooth it was?

Fine tuning with camera controls

Now it's your turn to add some real panache to finish off your flythrough! Install the

CameraControls.rb camera plugin from http://www.smustard.com/script/ CameraControls

This plugin's a little more difficult to install because you need to create a new folder in your Plugins folder. Details are in the readme.txt file you get when you download it. This plugin gives you fine control over camera pan, roll and tilt, and allows you to see values for these at each step of the animation.

Currently the CameraControls.rb plugin only works for the PC, not MAC. If I you're a MAC user you can still achieve these camera effects manually though. I The plugin is just there to give tighter control over the values. I

Have a go hero - camera pan, roll, and acceleration

Add camera effects to each scene along your path using the camera controls plugin. Here are some examples of what you can do with pan, tilt, and roll. Remember to update each scene after your changes.

Example of effect

Method

Tilt Roll

Focus on a building as you go past it to Use the Pan slider to keep the camera simulate a passenger looking out of the trained on a building through several window scenes

Increase or decrease the Tilt value on one scene.

When you want to simulate lift as the car or motorcycle sets off or brakes

When you want to bank to the side like Add progressively higher values of roll an aircraft when turning to adjacent scenes, then do the opposite to come out of a roll.

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