@ntxdave said:

@tk0001 said:

Dave,

I think the technique I used here would work well for you, as long as the views are relatively close to the camera. The further you pull away, the more the dark edges jumble up the background "unhighlighted" information. The model I'm working on is of a facility that is rather large, so I want to try to dampen the background stuff as much as possible.

What I really wanted to do was replicate the view SketchUp gives when you double click on a group, but with transparency in the surrounding information. I'm close. Hopefully I can get there.

Yes, it probably would however, that means all of my groups would have to be duplicated plus there is the camera distance issue. The car wash runs anywhere from 135' to 155' long. Therefore, the lines could be an issue.

My other point is that everything is centered around presenting in a paper driven environment (which I fully understand since a one of the primary uses is for the builders and etc.). However, today's environment also needs to be a little more multimedia focused as well. As you described about the monitor, we also present our proposed layouts from time to time with touch screen monitors. One of my dreams would be somewhat similar to what you were describing/wanting. It would be really neat if I could bring up one of my models/layouts, double click on a piece of equipment (component/group) and have it highlighted or the rest of the equipment hidden (like double-clicking on a group).

I have looked at some presentation tools that support 3D models but they do not give me the capability to "cycle through" the various pieces of equipment in my model/layout.

Guess I am just living in a dream world Wish I was a good enough coder to go off and develop something on my own.

Good luck in your pursuit, Dave. Hopefully an adequate solution will be presented in this thread one of these days.

FYI, to give you some perspective, if you refer to the "Highlighted" image above, the outside dimension of the blue highlighted equipment is about 300'.

@unknownuser said:

@unknownuser said:

Is there a way to control the edge color of different groups within a model?

Color edges by Cplassay ?

Thanks for the suggestion, Pilou. I gave this a try, and whenever I tried to utilize the program, it switched the colors in the model from "all same" to "by material" and the model looked washed out and impossible to make sense of. I am not educated on the difference between "all same" and "by material" but I'm guessing "all same" is a relatively new functionality and this plugin was built around "by material" being the default. From what I recall in the older versions of SketchUp, there were only two selections for coloring: by material an by layer.

Regardless, back to the drawing board.

@ntxdave said:

I love the concept of this. I do models of car washes. I would like to be able to highlight each piece of equipment so we could discuss it with the client. I have built a model that has each piece of equipment on a separate layer. I can then click on one scene at a time and it then reveals that piece of equipment. Thus you can go from the front to the back of the car was revealing one piece of equipment at a time but it would be neat if I could do something like you are suggesting where I have one scene that is the full car wash and then each of the other scenes having just that piece of equipment highlighted.

I though of creating some "overlays" that are semitransparent on each scene that covered everything but the piece of equipment I wanted to highlight.

I also built an animated movie that displayed the scenes one at a time, thus making it look like I was "building" the model but with a movie, I can not really pause it at each scene to discuss it. I want a "presentation" that will allow me to navigate through the scenes one at a time. I have actually tried that as a thread on a couple of occasions but got zero responses.

I never thought of the ability to control the percentage of visibility for a layer but I could see some really interesting usages for that. Think of this whole concept inside of the 3D PDF as well.

Dave,

I think the technique I used here would work well for you, as long as the views are relatively close to the camera. The further you pull away, the more the dark edges jumble up the background "unhighlighted" information. The model I'm working on is of a facility that is rather large, so I want to try to dampen the background stuff as much as possible.

What I really wanted to do was replicate the view SketchUp gives when you double click on a group, but with transparency in the surrounding information. I'm close. Hopefully I can get there.

Okay, I have created "ghost" outlines of the equipment that I want to be in the background and all my "highlighted" that I want shown more prominently. I am close. Right now, I think this would work as-is, but in the back of my head I think I can make it better. In other words, it's not quite matching the image in my head.

Images will certainly help illustrate the point:

Overall:

Phantom view:

Highlighted component:

This model is an assemblage of about 15 groups. There are two instances of each group - one "real" and one "phantom" - placed directly on top of each other. Each has a layer assigned to it, and I control the visibility through layer manager. I have 16 scenes set
up - one overall (as seen above), and each group highlighted.

I like the phantom groups - they do their part to make the highlighted groups "pop" nicely. HOWEVER, what I would really like is to make the edges of the phantom groups a light gray, so they would fade into the background even more.

Is there a way to control the edge color of different groups within a model? I checked into the Fredo ghostcomp extension, but it doesn't appear to have this capability.

@cotty said:

@tk0001 said:

Seriously, how cool would that be?

Yes, but the answer to this request is hidden in this statement:

@tig said:

There is little in the layer methods to help...

Well, supposedly it's a continuously improving software with plenty of third party applications. Here's to hoping someone sees this and finds it worthy of exploring.

@tig said:

That background image watermark overlay idea is valid for a fixed view point, but not if you are going to move around in a Scene ! Hence the eye-roll

Ah, okay. Sorry.

@tig said:

The only way to have ghost-parts is to make ghost-parts and then use dedicated layers to control the visibility of the real-parts/ghost-parts in different scene tabs...

I'll use this as a backup plan in case someone hasn't invented layer visibility percentage by then.

Seriously, how cool would that be? To be able to highlight certain groups but keep their context within the bigger picture?

@tig said:

That works fine for images but the OP wants to do it in real time when viewing model scene tabs...

Why the eyeroll, TIG? Is this a dumb request?

Regardless, yes, I would like it to be as you describe. I would like to be able to navigate within each scene with only one group highlighted, zooming in and out, rotating the model, etc. Then I click the "Overall" scene tab and the model returns to a "home" position with all subsystems fully visible. If there were a layer "visibility percentage" and it was able to be saved per scene within Scene Manager, I think it would be perfect.

Hope this makes sense.

@box said:

It sounds like what you are after is the ability to set layer visibility at a percentage rather than on or off.

I think that would work. Anything that would make the highlighted group or layer "pop out" and be save-able to a scene. Is this a current function of any plugin that you know of?

@tig said:

Within the constraints you gave I can only think to make copies of the everything [all made unique]...
Alternatively make simplified 'boxes' for these 'ghosts' ? A lot less effort !!
Then edit each 'ghost' in turn, hide its edges and give its faces a semi-transparent material: layer these 'ghost' parts on their own layers A == layerA while the 'ghost' Ax == layerAx etc.
Let's call the parts A and the 'ghost' Ax, and the corresponding layers layerA and layerAx...
Now redo the scenes' layers... so that when part A layer is ON, the other parts B, C, D etc and part Ax layers are OFF, BUT parts Bx, Cx, Dx etc layers are ON. So the part A appears within 'ghosts'...
Then for other parts you adjust what's on/off so those ghosts appear - e.g. when part B layer is ON, the other parts A, C, D etc and part Bx layers are OFF, BUT parts Ax, Cx, Dx etc layers are ON

I actually thought of this method as well, but I was really hoping there was some plugin available. Copying everything would be unfeasible, because the file size would be astronomical. I'll have to contemplate making "ghost boxes". Might looks alright, but I'll have to see if I have the time. I could just create a corresponding "ghost box" for each subsystem and adjust visibility per scene.

Thank you for the reply. Also, if anyone is a plugin developer, I would pay money to have this capability!

I am working on a large industrial facility with a lot of conveyor in it. The end result of this project will be the model of this large facility displayed in the lobby of this building on a big computer monitor with SketchUp Viewer. I will have several scenes saved, and the thought is the facility management can click on the different scenes and view the different conveyor subsystems. This will aid in tours and sales and just be an impressive thing to have in general.

So far, not a problem, using layer viewability associated with the different scenes. I have groups of conveyor grouped by subsystems and each subsystem group is on it's own layer.

However, what I would really like to do is "ghost" the rest of the larger conveyor system and building when highlighting a particular subsystem. Basically, I want the same effect you see when you edit a group in SketchUp. You see the group highlighted with the rest of the model ghosted.

Is there any way to accomplish this?

Okay, I figured it out. In a test file, I got a the camera to orbit a small piece of equipment exactly like I wanted. The key was being able to position the camera...AND aim it at a common fixed point. I knew you could position the camera and create a scene, but I was not aware that you could click, then drag the view of the camera to a fixed point. That was the piece I was missing. Once I figured that out, everything fell into place. No plugins were necessary, as was mentioned.

Thanks for the help, and if you were trying to get me to see the point above and I just missed it, my apologies.

Thanks for spending the time on this with me, guys. Unfortunately, the two examples you provided are not what I'm looking for. I know I can achieve this through setting up scenes in SU. I need a continuous orbiting view with no "bouncing" or hesitation.

What I have is a 3D model of a large parcel sortation facility (see attached image). The manager of the facility wants me to animate the model and have it displayed on a monitor. There is more to it, but essentially I need a tool that can record a video of a camera slowly orbiting the model. This will essentially be the "screensaver" mode.

There is a plugin I downloaded recently from the plugin store called "animation 2". It provides exactly what I need but I can't seem to record the animation and export it. But if you were to download this plugin, then go to Camera --> Animations --> Spin View, this is exactly what I'm looking for. It starts at the ground, then does a spiraling orbit around the model.

@dave r said:

@tk0001 said:

I also just tried to simply use Sketchup's animation using scenes, but the animation zooms in and out between scenes, and I want it smoother.

It shouldn't do that unless you change camera positions and zoom when setting up the scenes. You can also set up Updating of scenes to not change or record camera setting parameters. The example I posted doesn't show any camera changes at all.

I believe Dave addressed my issue here, but I'm afraid I need a little more of an in-depth explanation in order to grasp it.

@box said:

As I said in my first post to this thread, the normal SU tools will do that.

Place your model centered on the origin and use the camera standard views (front, left, right.......) to set up four scenes to create a simple rotation and export the animation.
You can export it as a vid or as images to create a gif

Forgive me for being obtuse, but I need an elevated view, not just front, sides, and back. So I created my 4 ISO views and played it back, and the view "bounced" between each view. It was not a smooth, seamless orbit of the model.

@box said:

Grabcad is another option you may want to explore if you are thinking along those lines.
http://grabcad.com/workbench

I'll look into this as well, but for now I'm looking for something simple that will give me the ability to spin the model on an axis and export the video. Do you know of a solid plugin that can accomplish this?

@dave r said:

@tk0001 said:

I also just tried to simply use Sketchup's animation using scenes, but the animation zooms in and out between scenes, and I want it smoother.

It shouldn't do that unless you change camera positions and zoom when setting up the scenes. You can also set up Updating of scenes to not change or record camera setting parameters. The example I posted doesn't show any camera changes at all.

That video is still available although I don't know why it won't run in the blog post. Try this link. Sorry about the ads. they are supposed to be disabled but they still show.

I'd do some of that animation stuff differently but the idea is there.

Ah, thanks for the new link. Now that I see the example, I understand the theory. My issue is the model may be too big for this technique to effectively work (maybe I'm wrong).

@box said:

Sounds like you need to use something like Sketchfab.
You can upload the whole model and interact with it.

Sketchfab - The best 3D viewer on the web

With a community of over one million creators, we are the world’s largest platform to publish, share, and discover 3D content on web, mobile, AR, and VR.

Sketchfab (sketchfab.com)

Woah, this may be a game changer. Thanks for sharing it. I will play around with this and see if it can do what I'm envisioning.

I want to be able to highlight certain subsystems within the entire facility by graying out the rest of the model, and then be able to interact with those as well. I hope this is something that can be handled by sketchfab, because my alternative is to pay an animator big $ to do it!

@dave r said:

I did this a long time ago showing how to animate something moving objects within SketchUp. It doesn't require any plugins.

Also, this video doesn't seem to be active any more. I would love to view it, if you still have it.

I am in the same predicament. I have a large material handling/parcel sortation system which a client is requesting be displayed upon a large monitor in his lobby, where people can interact with it. All I want to do is spin the entire facility about a central axis, and control the speed of the rotation as well as the size of the exported video.

Investigating different animation plugins is overwhelming. I want something very simple, but it seems that I need to invest a day immersing myself in a plugin just to learn the basics, and at the end of the day I don't know if it will do what I want without having to buy the entire package.

I have tried Podium and SimFonIA, and both seem buggy (the documentation for the latter doesn't seem to be originally written in English, which compounds the issue). I also just tried to simply use Sketchup's animation using scenes, but the animation zooms in and out between scenes, and I want it smoother.

I am willing to dive into a plugin, as long as I know it will do what I want at the end of the day, and I'm not spinning my wheels. That's why I need suggestions. I'd rather not spend a ton of money on it, since all I need is a simple rotation loop and all the other bells and whistles are unnecessary.

Any assistance or input would be greatly appreciated.

@wo3dan said:

@tk0001 said:

@smicha said:

Here is my solution - works prefect for me:

1. Define new shortcuts:
   F5 - parallel view. Pressing F5 twice will switch from parallel to perspective.
   Alt+1 - top view (I also have defined Alt+2 for bottom, and so on up to Alt+6)
   Z - zoom extents - it is defined as ctr+shift+e by default, but I use this function too often. So simpler Z works perfect.
2. Now select your object among many in your model. Hit F5 for parallel view, then alt+1 for top view and finally Z for zooming on your selected object.

Hope it helps.

smicha, using this method, the views are still intermittent, but I really like these shortcuts! Thanks! I will use these heavily!

They shouldn't be. The method described by smicha works if you apply the appropriate 'Zoom Extents'.
There are two different 'Zoom Extents'. One is the default Ctrl+Shift+Z or the icon.
The other 'Zoom Extents' is the one in the right click context menu. It is this one that you need to assign to a shortcut key.
It isn't displayed in the overalll shortcut list untill you have something selected.

So select something > then goto menu Window > Preferences > Shortcuts > assign 'Edit/item/Zoom Extents' to a key(-combination). Say you pick {Ctrl]+Z

With this shortcut key it always works.

Method (being in Parallel Projection):
select something you want to focus on in top view > hit Top View > hit [Ctrl]+Z

THERE IT IS!

Thanks so much. This is something that has bugged me for awhile. Glad to know the solution wasn't as easy as I feared.