How to rotate something...

pilou

Ok so that was just for the drawing
For animation Sketchyphysics can make the trick!
It's a very versatile plug for anything!
You can put any sort of Joints (rotate, motor etc)on any blocks, groups, nodes of elements etc...
Load this file for example

The only default (till now) is that you can't use in the same time the "Animation Scene" of SU
But as you can move normally all the SU screen with the mouse(+wheel, zoom rotate etc...) you can record the screen with prog like Camstasia

But of course a little training is necessary
Of course look the section Sketchyphysics

pilou

@unknownuser said:

that you could also animate the sun movement

An another solution will be rendering the traditional Su animation (as said by Gaieus) in Kerkythea ;
So you will have a very nice video (but surely very consuming machine time rendering)

Maverick83

@Pilou
Is that possible?

Gaieus

Yes, with SU2KT you can export your scenes as cameras (and sun settings also) and export a series of images you can compile into an animation later.
It won't save your time to set up the layers and scenes just like in a SU animation however (plus of course, render time will be longer).

Maverick83

Where can i find some information about SU animations?

Gaieus

This is what the SU Guide tells about it: http://download.sketchup.com/OnlineDoc/gsu6_win/Content/K-Input_and_Output/Presentations/IO-ScenesAndAnimations.htm and here are some tutorials from SCF: http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?p=52655#p52655

pilou

@unknownuser said:

the only "traditional" way would be to make copies of the rotated components on different layers and make them visible%invisible on different scenes

That is sufficent as "documentation" but you will see that is a nightmare to make with a big project!

Gaieus

That's true

pilou

Else I remember of something!
That can works for you!
Normally that is free!
That should be suffisent for shematic animations!
You can make research on the forum with "antics" in the search engine box
I don't know if someone use it here?

Alan Fraser

Antics will probably do the job. As for animating within SU itself, I have posted some ideas in the tutorials section, utilising workarounds with layers and Face Me components.
Such methods are probably nearing their sell-by date.