Flash Anim

tancredi

Hi all.. Beg u pardon for my use of the language (I'm Italian) ...

I need to make a flash animation with a room sketchup model.. I just need some camera moves to change point of view, but I don't know how to.. I Tried to export some frame-by-frame views, but it's not so linear.. Isn't there a tool or something for moving the camera in a linear way? Maybe something easyer to make this flash clip? Pls help me

TaffGoch

Tancredi,

You have three tasks to perform:
(1) Create your animation in SketchUp
(2) Use a screen capture utility to save the animation as a 'video'
(3) Convert the saved animation video to SWF

I've used the 'spin view' animation built-in to SketchUp, capturing the animation with the free utility, CamStudio. The animation is saved by CamStudio as an '.avi' file. CamStudio can then be used to convert the avi animation into a flash SWF file.

(There are surely many ways to achieve your goal. I used CamStudio because it's free.)

CamStudio is great for capturing the video, but not so good for editing it. For that I used 'Animation Shop' which comes with 'Paint Shop Pro.' There are other editors that will permit you to edit frames, timing, etc., as does Animation Shop.

Also, CamStudio isn't very efficient at producing the SWF. I've attached a single frame from my video. The avi file can be downloaded from: http://geodesichelp.googlegroups.com/web/WorkBee.avi While the avi is just over 4 MB, the produced SWF file was over 35 MB (Way too big!) I haven't yet searched for alternatives.

I'm sure there will be many more suggestions from SCF members. Be patient...

Regards,
Taff

yaakovraskin

@taffgoch said:

I've used the 'spin view' animation built-in to SketchUp, capturing the animation with the free utility, CamStudio

i used to have it, but with updates on SU6, it seems to have disappeared. anyone else had this? or know why?

TaffGoch

If you don't have it, the original @Last 'spin view' (animation.rb) can be downloaded from...
Ruby Library Depot

Incidentally, there are many other animation/camera utilities available, as well.

plot-paris

tancredi, if I understood your post correctly, you moved your camera, created an image export, then moved your camera again, creating another image export...

if you want a simple movement, use scenes (windows > scenes) to set up some views.
then you have to adjust the transition speed of the scenes (under View > Animation > Settings).

and finally export the animation under File > Export > Animation (under options you can choose to export it as an image sequence...)

if you already knew all this, I am sorry - shame upon me - but I mean to understand that you are looking for something simple.