Chris Fullmer's Perpendicular Face Tools are great for this.
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=17396

Great! I'm glad it worked for you.

I read that interview the other day, and I couldn't agree more: very inspiring work.

I've had some luck using Shapebender for this. It won't handle superelevation, but theoretically will handle a single cross-section. One problem with this method that I've not been able to solve is how to handle intersecting cross-streets.

Vali Architect's Instant Road maybe starts to do more of what you desire (although I think it uses a terrain surface, not a centerline profile to generate the elevations).

If you want to export the camera view using Sketchy Replay you need to look at the file the industrious Mr. K posted in this topic:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=36029

Do you have a different mouse at home? I've run into problems with other software where a wireless mouse totally messed with a program. (Don't ask me how that's possible, but as soon as we installed a mouse with a cord the problem was solved.)

Hey Eric. I recently used BSR Screen Recorder to capture a Sketchy Physics animation. I only needed the animation, not mouse movements or anything like that, but I believe it has those features. It was free and relatively easy to use so it fit what I needed perfectly. You can check it out here if you're interested: http://www.thesilver.net/

Here's the completed animation. Thank you so much for your help, Mr. K.

I think I just got it to work! I got rid of the car and the second curve entirely and added this code to the camera On Tick dialogue:

@RedAxis=1
@GreenAxis=0
@BlueAxis=00

target=$curEvalGroup.bounds.center
eye=[$curEvalGroup.bounds.center[0]-@RedAxis,$curEvalGroup.bounds.center[1]+@GreenAxis,$curEvalGroup.bounds.center[2]+@BlueAxis]
up=[0,0,1]
Sketchup.active_model.active_view.camera.set eye,target,up

I'll post the video once I get it cut. Crossing my fingers that there are no more big hiccups.

Alright, this is just bizarre. I downloaded the file again, copied everything to a new file, and the simulation seems to run ok now. The only thing this doesn't do is give me the first-person view that I need. I need the camera view to be coming from the box looking straight down the curve.

I copied everything into a new file and it works, but I'm not sure what it's doing. The car travels the right direction down the curve, but the camera watches the car as it goes by from about ground level. Should the camera be moved to the curve, or joined in some way to the car/box? If I read the script correctly, I thought the camera would get the car location whereever it was and follow it.

The new SP code seems to work fine on a test model. I can't run the simulation on the cameracurve.skp though. I get the attached error. I'll try to download SU7 if you think that might be causing the problem.

Yeah, recording the camera view is really important. I have a screen recorder so if I can get the camera and curves working properly, I think I can get something usable, even if the files can't be modified.

I attached a file with the curve reversed. The model actually contains two curves, an "original" that follows the terrain and a "simplified" that is a roughly straight-line approximation of the original. My first intention was to have the camera follow the actual terrain so I would have a constant 5' eye height, but the one time I actually got everything to work correctly that seemed to create jitters in the camera that I didn't like. So if the simplified curve will be smoother, I'm fine with the relatively constant eye height. I replaced the camera script I had tried previously with the one you wrote for softsoap. I only need the camera to move along the curve. The box pulling the car is only there because I want the view angle of the camera to adjust to the curve as it wiggles near the end, and to help achieve the more accurate eye height described above. Using the steering column is the only way I've been able to get the camera angle to adjust in that manner. Other than that, I have no need for the "car" itself.

I am using your "speed control" script with the max_distance-frame lines added to try and reverse the curve. When I switched the equation to read distance=(frame-max_distance) the camera stayed at the proper end of the curve, but did not actually move as desired.

CameraCurve.skp

Soapstar, I'm sure Mr. K's script is better than the mods I made. Hopefully that works for you.

I know you may not have much experience with exporting, but I can't find much on Sketchy Replay in the forums. Is there a reason that the exported images using Sketchy Replay wouldn't follow the camera? Yesterday I had everything working perfectly, recorded the animation and exported to jpgs. But when I opened the jpgs this morning I see the objects moving, but the camera is located in a random position off to one side, not following the desired object as the on-screen animation showed. Maybe I need to try a screen-capture program to get the animation.

For some reason after that export fiasco, without saving the model, the curve I want the camera to follow has now reversed. Is there a way to force a curve to reverse? It doesn't seem to matter which way I draw it, SP always assumes the opposite end is the beginning. I have tried modifying the speed control script to use the max_distance-frame script you wrote earlier, but adding those lines seems to disable the script altogether.

I'm new to SP so I probably can't explain much about why this works, but you might try the script in this model:
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=c6b08284201f14bb423e37f4d1e691e8
I was able to modify it to achieve the result you describe for a very similar animation I'm working on.
Wyatt

You might try setting a skylight portal on the glass fence if you want light to shine through it. Or set your glass material to thin glass. The grass texture seems washed out. Can you adjust global illumination or modify the texture to make it darker?

Is it possible to run an SP animation with Sketchup shadows on?
Wyatt

I've inserted the truck into my base model, set the base terrain group to static mesh and all the other objects (buildings, light poles, cars) to ignore (I've also tried static), an when I press play nothing happens. SU just locks up. After about 10 minutes of waiting I close out and try again. The model is only 108K faces. I've tried freezing all layers except the static mesh and the truck, as well, but that doesn't seem to have any effect. Is there something I'm forgetting to do?

This is beautiful Mr. K! Thank you for all the examples, and for your patience as I attempt to learn the plugin. I greatly appreciate all your help.

One question about integrating this with the rest of my model... The final animation I am making needs to have the camera drive down the road towards the truck as it pulls off a side street, comes toward the camera, and passes by it. I want the camera to remain looking straight ahead and not track the truck as it goes by. I have other plugins that animate the camera and create scenes. I have read that in previous versions SP was not scene-based but it might be in the future. I see that I can export animations from SP to skp's and it will create a series of skp files with the truck moving incrementally. Without a scene-based export, it seems that I could manually create the animation by copying the truck into each scene of my base model, but that seems difficult. I know you included a camera script earlier. Would modifying that be the best way to create my animation? When I started this project I had always envisioned doing a scene-based animation; but now that I've gone the SP route I guess I may need to go totally SP to finish it.