There are two outputs that show animations:

• Rendered movies, which can be exported from SimLab Composer as AVI, MP4 or flash (Those videos can be easily sent in emails, embedded inside a webstie, or shared in youtube)
• Interactive 3D PDF files, all what the recipient will need is the free Acrobat reader which is already available on most machines (Windows and Mac)

In both cases the recipient of the file should not need to download anything.

Regarding a free edition, there is nothing we would love more than having a free edition to allow everybody able to use SimLab Composer, but I do not see this happening in the near future.
Students can get SimLab Composer 2.2 Animation edition for $39, a professional license of 3D PDF edition will cost $99 and for animation edition it is $249.

If you are tight in budget now, download the trial; send me a message, I will make sure to send you an extended trial that you can use for some time.

I uploaded two movies created from from SketchUp models to you tube, they can be found at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cHgvVa3zas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvYt6-W90MY

Regarding the 3D PDF animation, did you try the orange arrows near the button of the PDF, they will move you from one camera to another. for example from main view, to dining or piano rooms. Those cameras can be animated but they are static in this example.

When the user starts interacting with the scene the animated camera automatically stops to give the user control over the navigation.

Following is another example showing assembly animation of the model

animated_3d_pdf_motor.pdf

The current plugin is capable of importing FBX files from Revit 2010.
Soon it will be update to included support for FBX files from Revit 2011.

Autodesk starting from Revit 2011 switched the material types used in FBX files exported from Revit, so instead of usual FBX materials it is using Autodesk internal description.
This is special for Revit 2011. We are investigating a solution for this.

With the release of the latest version of SimLab Composer 2.2 (Animation edition), SketchUp designers will be able to create great walkthroughs and animations of their Sketchup models.

Animations created in SimLab Composer 2.2 can be shared as animated 3D PDF files or rendered movies.

Following examples were created from SketchUp models using SimLab Composer 2.2

walkthrough.pdf

SketchUp_lego.avi

More information about the new release can be found at http://www.simlab-soft.com/3d-products/simlab-composer-main.aspx

I sent you all the information, waiting for the translation

I will look into those issues.
We had requests from some users to be able to make every view capable of showing different parts of the model.

Hopefully they will be available in the next update

By the way, where is the Hungarian translation ?

Best Regards,

Ashraf

I will be glad to listen, please let me know what features do you need?

No it does not,

Unicode Support will be added to SimLab Composer in version 2.3, though the PDF engine used is similar it is not exactly the same

Thanks for Andrea Pertosa and hebeijianke for providing Italian and Chinese (Simple) translation for the plugin.

Soon we will update the installer to include supported languages, if you want to add support for an additional language please send an email to support@simlab-soft.com and we will send you the process for creating a new translation.

The new release of the SimLab 3D PDF plugin for Google SketchUp enables the user to use Unicode characters in header/footer texts, component, and scene names.

The new release also implements a smarter algorithm to provide the file recipient with easier 3D navigation.

In addition to the English interface the plugin now also includes a German translatin, more translations to be provided in future versions of the plugin.

Note: This is a free upgrade for current users of the plugin.

More information can be found at http://www.simlab-soft.com/3d-plugins/3D-PDF-from-sketchup-main.aspx

@pdonner said:

1. Are there any solutions to these shortcomings?

SimLab Composer and 3D PDF plugin only supports Acrobat reader 9.0 or newer on Windows and Mac.
Version 9.0 introduced new features that we are using in Automatic Camera mode, and has better support for animation, which are working on.
So we decided instead of limiting the functionality, to support Acrobat reader 9.0 or newer.
Upgrading Acrobat reader is a free, fast, and simple process that can be performed from inside acrobat reader itself, which by default will encourage the user to upgrade to the latest version.

With this version we discontinued the free version as we described in the previous post.

@pdonner said:

2. How does Simlab's software compare to the PDF export function of the SU 8 Pro version?

In addition to the 3D PDF creation capability available in the plugin, SimLab Composer adds Rendering, supports many file formats including SketchUp, has 3D Scene building, and exoirts 3D scenes to different file formats.

Users who use SketchUp as their main Design application will feel more comfortable with the plugin, while users who need the additional functionality and use different design applications in addition to SketchUp will prefer SimLab Composer.

SimLab Composer at this point only support importing SketchUp 7 files and prior, only the plugin supports version 8.
support for version 8 will be added in the next update of SimLab Composer

@gaieus said:

Any chance I could put my hand on that unicode beta? We (Hungarians) have two special characters that even broke LayOut's dwg/dxf exporter (although full unicode support should fix it)!

Sure, I will be glad to send you the new version, we should have it ready in the coming two weeks, as soon as it is ready I will send you an email.

You may also volunteer to create a Hungarian translation, the new version will not only support using Unicode in header and footer texts, it will support translating the interface to any language.

Regarding the margins and the size of the PDF, the values shown in the dialog are in pixels, and they are the values used when the view is set to 100%

@anssi said:

was this only a feature of the Free version (that seems to have disappeared in the newest one)? The earlier version had no documentation about enabled/disabled features between the paid/free versions.

Anssi, you are right, the free version was stopped in this release, the reason for that is that many users did not understand the intension of the free version, which was intended only for students and hobbyists, we had a large number of commercial users using the free version, the support needed for the free version was larger than what we were able to handle.
We still hope to be able to offer a free version in the future, but we need to rethink the subject really well.

The good part is that fewer people will be annoyed with un stoppable rotating camera.

@gaieus said:

Hi Ashraf and thanks for the new upgrade.
One question for the time being; the last version did not support UTF-8 characters - does this new version support them?

Gaieus,

I was expecting this question, this verison does not included Unicode support, but the development team already has Unicode capable version of the plugin, tested with many European and Asian languages.

Because we had many requests from current users to provide a version that works with SketchUp 8, we decided to go ahead and keep the Unicode for the next update which is coming soon, this update and the next one with Unicode support are free for all registered users of the plugin.

@unknownuser said:

Looked at the upgrade page, no where can I find an upgrade section. If I am a registered owner, are you requiring me to pay $95 to upgrade to Ver 2.2 so my copy will work with Sketchup V8?
Ken

Sorry for not clarifying this point, This is a free upgrade to all registered owners of the plugin
All what you need to do is to install the plugin, and send an email to license@simlab-soft.com and we will send you the key.

SimLab Soft released today the new version of SimLab 3D PDF plugin for Google SketchUp. The new version adds support for Google SketchUp 8, in addition to that it adds the following new features:

Exporting component names to the model tree

The model tree in the generated 3D PDF file now shows the components names used in the SketchUp model, which makes it easy for the user to Hide/Show different parts of the model.

Control camera transition

The user now has the ability to determine the static time and effect time, and the type of effect used when switching between cameras in the automatic camera mode.

Select cameras to be included in the 3D PDF file

The new camera dialog allows the user to select the set of scenes to be included in the 3D PDF file, the user can changes the names of the cameras and to select their order.

New Documentation

The Mac version will be available soon; we are currently waiting for Google to fix an issue with the Mac version of the SDK to release the new plugin on Mac.

More information about the plugin is available at http://www.simlab-soft.com/3d-plugins/3D-PDF-from-sketchup-main.aspx

Thanks for the great testing and feedback from all the beta testers, the plugins were released today, and the work on the first update release to incorporate the feedback and suggestions we received had already started.

In this release SimLab added progress bar to inform the user that importers are working, added support for OBJ files with negative index values, and updated the plugins to work with SketchUp 8.

The plugins are now supported to work with SketchUp 8, 7.1 and 7

With the public beta we were looking for two main things:

1- Problematic models that the importer fails to import
2- Enactment suggestions

In the release coming after the public beta we will only address the import problems which were reported, the percentage of the problematic models compared to the number of installations was really low, and we are working on fixing those importing problems before the release.

Regarding enchantments, most of the requested enhancements will be available in the next minor releases which will be available free for all users (usually we provide 2 minor releases)

It is understandable that some users will not want to use the plugins until it meets their own requirements, the plugins will always support a trial license.

Encasements coming in the next minor release will include:

Upgrading FBX to 2011 (current FBX version in the plugin is 2010.2).
A new unit system that automatically scales imported models to SketchUp units automatically.
Progress Bar, giving the user an indication about the progress of the import process

Best Regards,

Ashraf

SimLab team is really thankful for the great feedback and suggestions, for downloading and testing the importers.

We are working on finalizing the plugins based on this feedback. The beta period for the plugins will end by the end of the month, and we plan for a release early in September.

@notareal said:

For that you would need installed Max

Yes this is correct and I believe that this reduces the value of the solution, if you have MAX already installed, then you can convert the files to OBJ or FBX.