Animation of Sketchup Model

jmac

I saw no where to search for previous posts on this topic so I apologize if it's been discussed before...I am trying to animate a walk thru of a crime scene model. The exported animation needs to be seen in court on a large TV monitor and it needs to be clear. I have exported an animation at 1280 x 853, 15 fps, H.264 compression. I am on a Mac running SU 8. The animation at this size looks mediocre at full screen. I would expect on a large monitor it will look much worse. Bumping up the frame rate should solve the jittery motion but is there a way to get a high resolution animation?

Thanks for any suggestions.

mitcorb

Hi, jmac:
I do not have an immediate answer for you. However, this article may have some possibilities in it. I was searching for any available info with "courtroom animations using sketchup". I realize the importance of clear communication in these situations and I thought there may be something in that article to help enhance your project.

SketchUp for crime scene reconstruction

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otb designworks

I would try the following:

Export out at 2560x1440 (twice the resolution of 1280x720)

30 fps (I know everyone says anything over 24 is overkill, but I get better results at 30 YMMV)

antialias on

png image sequence. (no compression and relatively small file sizes)

Open the image sequence in Quicktime 7 Pro and export out at high quality, H.264, 30fps, 1280x720HD.

Exporting at twice the resolution and using Quicktime to scale it down will give you much crisper linework. If you are using a style without edges, then you can probably get by with just 1280x720.

I would use a scratch disk as we are talking 10's of gig of raw images. MAKE SURE you save the images into a new folder (I call mine source images) or you will end up with thousands of images in a folder or the desktop (yikes!)

Also, try to minimize big camera moves with lots of side to side head movement as this will cause jaggies. Nice, smooth choreography with gentle pans will give you smoother and cleaner final output.