I am looking to create an animation, including a flyover of a proposed commuter rail project.

It would include a fly over or fly through, showing the general route and close ups at the proposed stations.

Anyone have any ideas about how I can recreate scenes like this in sketchup?

I though about using google earth for the fly through.

For the closeups, I thought that I could use sketchup to create the stations, but use the sktchyphyics extension to animate the train, and use a static shot video as a background.

I am not sure how to animate people.

I am looking for a low cost solution, that i can learn with no programing or advanced animation / photo skills

I just bought a new HP optical 4 button ergo mouse for my win xp desktop (old gateway, for some reason, while SU will let me orbit while holding in the click wheel, it doesn't zoom when scrolling? the mouse works fine in other programs like firefox...any ideas????

[Planner Dude]