Animation unusable

KathrynG

Call me determined call me stubbon but I will NOT GIVE UP! AUUUUUGH!

Still consider myself a newbie after all this time, not enough of which to practice, but getting better. Using Sketchup now a lot more in the initial prep of my event drawings, but I tried to put together an animation this weekend and the result was just plain disastrous. So pixelated that it was totally unusable.

No offense, but what's the point of having the option to animate to have it look so terrible? I tried every possible setting and gave up frustrated. My only other option was to export the scenes as individual jpegs into Photoshop and then create a nice smooth crisp looking animation in there. But surely that should not be necessary? Any tips or ideas as to why the problem with the migraine causing animation please?

sfto1

Kathryn,

When you click export animation, a dialog box pops up. In the lower right hand corner is an options button. This will give you several different options for things like aspect ratio, resolution, frame rate, etc...

Also, the model info box has an animation tab which allows you to set the scene delay and transition rate.

Please post the video you are not happy about as the above may not be what will help.

I am using PC version, so the options might be located differently on mac. Just hunt and peck, but most importantly, practice.

Gaieus

With all due respect to animation options, one thing really sucks in SketchUp: antialiasing. No matter what option you select, the video exported (with any of your installed codecs) will look horrible, jagged and all that is ugly.

The same goes for native tools like "make unique texture" - if you then load your texture in a real texture editor, you will find all edges like a saw.

Until these basic things are fixed in SU, the best option is to

export as image sequence
at (say) double size than what you finally need
batch convert (resize and apply "normal" antialiasing methods) in your preferred image editor software
Put the video together from those processed image sequences in a 3rd (or now 4th) party video editor.

sfto1

Kathryn and Gai,

I would prefer much cleaner and smoother animations too, and am wishing that SU's animating would be vastly improved. In the meantime, it works for rough blocking. With that said, I am in the camp that wants more from SU.

Can I say that without seeming greedy.

KathrynG

Thank you all,

Actually Gaieus, even with my regular 2D exports I have been choosing 600 rather than 300 ppi and the results are pretty good. Pity about the animation, and so will have to do as mentioned previously and create the animation in PS.

Attached is one such export. Remember I am still a newbie so don't be too hard on me please. Although criticism can only foster improvement.

This is an export done at 600 ppi. Very happy with it. :)