Thanks, Rafael. I didn't really change all that much -- talked to some video folks that I work with, and they though it looked great for youtube, so mostly I just stopped worrying. I did change the background color and exported to 1280 x 720 pngs, which helped some. It's the blue that looks the worst, and there was a lot of that in the sample I posted earlier (doesn't contrast w/the edges enough). It still looks a lot better on my computer or on drop box, but oh well.

I do appreciate your help -- definitely got me to try different things, and to get unstuck.

ps -- thumbnail seems to have updated.... hope someday I get to pick, as there are still much better choices.

Thanks! Me too....

Below is a sketchup animation of how Platonic Solids (regular polyhedra) in the same sphere fit together. It includes original music by one of my colleagues. If you turn on the closed captions in youtube you can see the name(s) of what you're looking at (black with white outline looks better than the default).

Appreciate the help I got from this site while I was making this. I'm very pleased with the result.

(Note: This is a terrible thumbnail, and youtube is not updating to the slightly better one I chose....)

ps -- I think I also need to up the frame rate, but that is easily done...

I've been playing around -- first I wanted to see whether Virtual Dub or the codec was the problem, so I exported from virtual dub without any compression at all, and it looked great. So the codec is the issue; Virtual Dub is fine. Then I tried a different codec; since my camstudio videos look good, I tried that one, and it looked great. I thought my problems were solved, but then when I uploaded to youtube, it looked the same as originally.

So a lot of the problem is conversion to youtube format.

I've been playing around with other things, and I got it better, although not as good as I'd like. I made the video from 1280 x 960 stills instead of the smaller ones and did the aspect ratio as 16:9 instead of 4:3. Below is the result (I accidentally cut off the end when I was exporting the tweens, but it doesn't matter).

It is very helpful to be able to bounce ideas around like this.

Sorry for the slow response time -- been crazy busy, but Rafael, I just checked the stills that I exported from sketchup, and they are much higher quality than the video -- so definitely the issue is either virtual dub or the codec (or both).

I looked up after effects and they do have an educator subscription rate where I could try for a month for not that much money, so that might be worth a go. Here is a forum link that you might find helpful regarding getting avi directly from after effects http://forums.adobe.com/thread/478655 (I have never used the software, so can't comment on quality, but fingers crossed that this could be a solution). I will experiment some more and post anything interesting.

I liked your first video -- those are very fun animations, plus nice to be able to get menus within sketchup. I will check out SimFonia in the future, although I do first want to figure out the next steps w/what I've already done. Yesterday I talked to my friend (another math teach, but much more musical than I am) who is going to try to compose some music to go with it.... I want to get something up for him so he can get going, even if I'm still working on improving the quality.

This has been very helpful, many thanks.... oh, and I will check out your second video later.

Thanks, glad you like the video. My plan was to edit so that viewers would have the option of showing the names of the polyhedra (in the closed caption), but to have music rather than my voice for the sound track. Do you know how hard that would be with fraps?

I have used cam studio a lot to make screen casts for my classes, although not with sketchup. I hadn't thought to use a screen capture here, appreciate the idea. I would like to understand better why the quality goes down with what I'm doing, though.... but it's good to have another option if I can't work it out.

Hello,

Below is one part (of twelve) of an animation I'm working on to show how various polyhedra fit together in a sphere. I am pleased with the geometry and how things look within sketchup, but I'd like to improve the quality of the exported video. I have been trying many different things, and would appreciate some expert input.

I'm not even sure what the main problem is -- something about the colors or the shadows or the edges.... just seems like you can't see the individual 2D shapes as well as you should be able to (and they look better within sketchup), and it's all a little blurry.

I wonder if I should be using a render application, something I don't know much about, or if there are settings I can change within sketchup that will improve things. Or is there a better way to do the animation export? Or is this just a design issue with background colors or something like that? (I'm a math teacher -- art/design is not my forte).

The animation is made with the keyframe animation plugin, at 24 fps (for tweens and export). This version was exported as 1280 x 960 png files, which I reduced to 640 x 480 using faststone resizer, and then I put the images together using virtual dub (I learned about all these things from this forum -- thanks). I did make an earlier version just using the native sketchup animation with moving the camera, but it was too jerky in places, and that part is better w/the keyframe.

I made this in parts where I rotate 90 around green, then red, then blue, then repeat .... this gets everything back to the beginning, and so I only have to rotate the layers that are in that part of the animation (there are also cubes, octahedra, etc.)

Thanks in advance.

Thank you for your reply. It's nice to know that this problem has a name.

I just realized that my problem is actually mathematical not with sketchup -- you are right, I am trying to have two planes occupy the same space! No wonder sketchup can't decide.

I started making this model because I had trouble visualizing it myself, and then what comes up with sketchup is so close to looking like something that "should" be regular that I thought I knew what it was supposed to look like -- but five wedges arranged around a point cannot alternate between two colors. Those wedges are both colors....

So I think what I will do is change the coloring to two lighter colors and then explode the model and paint the faces where they intersect a darker color.

In hindsight, the issue now seems obvious, sigh..... but I appreciate that you helped me get the answer, even if I didn't really ask the right question.... very interesting....

tetrahedra only model.skpThe attached is part of a larger model that I've been working on. It shows ten tetrahedra (triangular pyramids) arranged symmetrically. The tetrahedra are in two colors, each as a separate layer. When both layers are showing, on the inner triangles, sketchup bounces back and forth between the two colors, creating a bit of a disco ball effect. I would appreciate it if someone more expert than myself could help me figure out whether it might be possible to fix this problem and make the layers intersect correctly.

It seems possible that this is some kind of round off error and maybe there's a way to make my model more precise. It also seems possible that this is too far from what sketchup is designed to do, that the planes are just too close, and I should work around by either not showing the two layers moving together in my final animation or by looking for different software.

BTW, I created these by first making a dodecahedron (using instructions from one of Bonnie Roskes's Geometricks books). I made cubes inside the dodecahedron, and then tetrahedra inside the cubes (the two different colors of tetrahedra are the two different tetrahedra that fit in one cube). The complete model also has an icosahedron and five octahedra, all with the same radius, and it shows how the various layers look together. I've gotten positive responses to the first draft of the video, and I am working to make it better.