He didn't respond.

Incidentally, I've now found that Windows Movie Maker has a Sketchup AVI specific limit of 1GB

I'm going to ring him now to find out any spec differences. He's a friend though and when I built mine, he pretty much copied my rig!

Thanks for that Dave, I'll check Camtasia out. It is frustrating that my colleague with virtually the same spec machine as me, can import 6GB AVI files into Movie Maker.

I'm surprised if I'm the only one that finds this a bit annoying - having spent quite a while making a nice scene based animation in Sketchup, I'm unable to show anyone unless they also have sketchup

Thanks for chipping in Dave, much appreciated. I'm currently running Windows 7 64-bit (sorry, didn't mention that).

It's strange because I have a friend who creates AVI's using After Effects, and he's had video sizes exceeding 6GB with no problem - moreover he can import them with ease into windows movie maker

I'm currently splitting up the model into scenes, ensuring they final AVI output does not exceed 2GB. If someone asked me to make a revision to the model right now, I would be very annoyed!

Hi Planet Earth,

I hope you can help.

I have a fairly basic 3D model (600Kb) with 37 scenes, and with a few active section planes.

If I create animation in MP4 format, the sections do not animate.

If I create animation in AVI format, it goes through the process of creating frames, finishes, but there is NO file or error reports. When I reduce the number of scenes to be animated, it correctly creates the AVI file with no problem.

I also tried using Animation ---> image sets, this did work but again would not animate section planes. I have also found that any AVI files that exceed 2GB in size, can't be imported into Windows Movie Maker.

My next workaround (which I'm sick of doing by the way), is to split the file to scenes containing no more than around 6 scenes. I've done this already and found that sections would sometimes not animate. It's like I can't win, and wouldn't it be great if I had to make a change to the model...I could go through the fun of splitting it up all over again

Computer Hardware / Software:

The computer spec:

i5 2500k, 8GB RAM, 256GB Intel SSD, etc.

Software:

Sketchup 2013, General software installed, but also AutoCAD, CS3, etc. It's a very reliable machine, no recent conflicts, all drivers and software is up to date.

I have deactivated old Ruby's in case they were causing a problem.

Really appreciate any responses.

@dave r said:

@bikerchris said:

You are so clever it's frightening Dave, sounds like a great solution, I'll give it a go. Thank you for thinking about it!

Just wait until I really get going!

Please report your results. I want to know if it works for you.

Hehe, I think you've already got going...and then stoppped Cheers matey, I'll let you know how I get on

@box said:

Which just goes to show, if you are frighteningly clever I must be terrifying.

Thanks for your contribution Box, I regret you're not terrifying, 'shockingly' is next...takes a lot of effort to be terrifying...few have achieved it.

You are so clever it's frightening Dave, sounds like a great solution, I'll give it a go. Thank you for thinking about it!

Hi All, thought I would return to this topic, as it seems that my prayers weren't 100% answered - pretty damn close though! Curvishear works perfectly when curves only are in use. Unfortunately the entity I wanted to extrude to different heights is a combination of straight and curved components...typical!

Anyway, just thought I'd update ye' olde thread.

Hi TechDave and Dave,

Again, thank you both for your massive amounts of help.

Dave R, I went down the route of Curvishear and it was perfect, what a find and definitely a donation going towards Fredo6 as he's incredibly worthy of it.

Mac1 - the application of the model is for proposals for new development, what helps less is the severe amount of different levels around the site, one of which is a ramped curved access road into a lower part of the site. The combination of the Fredo Curvishear and Curviloft skinning is the perfect solution to make the mapping data into 3D, when things aren't just straight lines.

TechDave, I'm still really grateful for all of your help, please don't take offense at me going to Dave R's solution, yours was great, but too complicated for my brain

dtrarch, thanks for your suggestion, I'll keep a note!

You're all great people and I'm so grateful for your help!

Hi TechDave and Dave,

Again, thank you both for your massive amounts of help.

Dave R, I went down the route of Curvishear and it was perfect, what a find and definitely a donation going towards Fredo6 as he's incredibly worthy of it.

Mac1 - the application of the model is for proposals for new development, what helps less is the severe amount of different levels around the site, one of which is a ramped curved access road into a lower part of the site. The combination of the Fredo Curvishear and Curviloft skinning is the perfect solution to make the mapping data into 3D, when things aren't just straight lines.

TechDave, I'm still really grateful for all of your help, please don't take offence at me going to Dave R's solution, yours was great, but too complicated for my brain

dtrarch, thanks for your suggestion, I'll keep a note!

You're all great people and I'm so grateful for your help!

Thanks Dave, much appreciated! I've installed it now, can you give me another hint about which tool you used? Pretty please

@techdave02 said:

sorry oops

No problem - I upload the wrong files all the time.

That is PERFECT!!!! Would you be able to give a hint about your method? Thanks so much for taking your time mate, really is appreciated.

I do look forward to your solution dave, here's another more simple scenario:

And here's the sketchup file: http://www.bikerchris.co.uk/3d/example2-connecting-a-2D-curve-to-lower-or-upper-Z.skp

So in this situation, I would like the 'floating' arc face to connect to the flat face at 0.000m. I'm sure others must face this problem, or at least I hope so!

All comments welcome!

Hi Dave,

Thanks for responding. I'm sorry but I can't see any changes within the model? Am I wrong?

Hi all,

Thanks for reading, especially as I badly named the title

Here's a problem that I and many others may come up against, when you're using mapping information by whichever company provides it (Ordnance Survey in the case of the UK).

I've created a demo situation which comes up and will come up quite often, that the creation of perfect roads (via Instant Road) and tools on surface don't seem to resolve, despite being excellent tools.

So, I have a road segment which I know two vertical details of, in this case, there is one part which we can call "0mm", and the bottom of a curve is -3000mm.

If you're interested in looking at the file yourself, here it is:

http://www.bikerchris.co.uk/3d/adding-vertical-info-sketchup.skp (right click, save target as - although I'm sure you know that!)

As you can imagine, if this was a 'ideal world' road, it would have a main part 6m wide and however long (say 20m), and then a perfect 3m radius arc, with a perfectly perpendicular road coming off it, like this:

In this scenario, as you can see, it's very easy to add a slope - the problem comes when you have to add a gradient to a surface which slowly raises/falls and is in different directions as it lowers as well as having different widths.

In my last situation, I had some great ideas from pbacot on this forum, with some wonderfully inventive workarounds (my hat off to you sir). In the end, I decided to just create rough contours for a 100 x 100m area based on 3 spot heights on the centre line of a road slither which went across the area. I then took the original mapping data, made it a block and put it above the contours and used the drape tool. This was a good enough method, but there are many features surrounding the road which have extreme differences in level height (to be surveyed or judged using google streetview, sods law).

I could easily bodge, but we know how it goes - the bodge means it takes longer to correct if someone spots an error

I do hope this all makes sense, do ask if I've described things badly!

Thanks,

Chris

Hi pdacot,

Thank you so much for putting loads of effort into resolutions, they're all great! I'll have a go at both solutions and see how I get on.

thanks again!

Chris

Sorry, forgot to attach this, which shows how non-uniform the road edge is when related to the centreline.

@pbacot said:

So you have the center line at your z-values. You need the edges at z value too. Do you know what those or are you just estimating their height as even with the center line. Is that what you mean by you want it "Flat"?

Thanks for commenting pbacot. I don't know what the road edge heights are, so I would like to say approx 0.1m lower than the centreline, to give them some sort of gradient. You've got the idea though, just imagine trying to draw a road which twists and turns up a hill and remains flat as it does so - but with no ground level for reference.

@pbacot said:

I am guessing here, but You could use the center as guide for follow-me. Make a vertical profile of the road. Though you only need the top, you need to make this profile to have a face,so enclose it on the bottom. Draw it aligned with your center line. Use follow-me to extrude it via the centerline. Use soften/smooth as required. Other choice is you may want to use "follow-me and Keep plugin.

That is a FANTASTIC work around, I love it! I would definitely use it if the road edge didn't vary from the centreline so much. I will definitely retain that method in the brain databank, thank you!

Hi Cotty, thanks for responding so quickly. I've stripped the drawing/sketchup file down so I can share it now. Here's a CAD/Sketchup copy for you to look at:

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(www.bikerchris.co.uk)

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(www.bikerchris.co.uk)

You'll note that as I only had 3 values for Z but I knew where they were, I did this (possibly an odd solution):

Using CAD I found the height difference of points to the nearest 0.5m. Then calculated how many 0.5m go into the difference, then used the CAD 'divide' command and submitted that number to the polyline. Then offset 0.5m vertically and simply made a note of each point, then created a 3D poly based on that. Hmm, that does sound complicated when I describe it!

Thanks in advance for your help.

Hi all,

Sorry to bring this up, but I have done a thorough search first with no relevant results

I'm trying to draw a road which has known Z values and is the only thing I have to go on - I'll then draw the rest of the contours based on it.

In CAD I have the extents of the road (which vary in distance from the centreline) and the centre line itself, I've converted the centre line to the correct Z values. I was hoping to import this information into sketchup and some how create the road as a flat surface, but after hours of playing am unable to do it!

As you can imagine, I'm doing this the opposite way to how a model is created - normally a nice contoured surface is created, and then road extents would be 'dropped' into it using DropGC or Instantroad. I do have both as well as Artisan, but I believe none of these can help.

Any comments welcome, thanks!