Thanks Ken. All great suggestions and you are exactly right about the lighting and atmospherics. π
What you see right now was all done in SketchUp. I was testing the limits of SU. Here's what I did:
The background is a watermark. WM is set as "background" and not "overlay"
the fog isn't really fog, it's just the blend slider on the WM setting. Fog doesn't work with watermarks.
The WM is what makes the bike shadow "off"
the light beam is a rather dodgy square cone with transparent material π
the shadows really don't match quite right with the background due to SU's lighting limitations (I tried to pick a picture that was somewhat ambiguous for this reason)
So yes, it definitely needs more work and I will eventually make the changes. π This is my first experiment with backgrounds in SU. My first tries always look a little wonky. π
Again, thanks Ken. That is a very clear step by step process and I will have to try it. I have some other ideas as well that fit with the animation.