Hello,
I am trying to create an animated Rubik’s cube in SketchUp Pro 2015. I have the Rubik’s cube done and it is ready to animate, so I have created scenes for each step of the animation. Except when I want to animate the sides moving, it affects all the scenes instead of just the one I’m working on.
Long story short, I need to know how to include object changes in a single scene without it affecting the others. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks!
Hmm, animating using SketchUp’s native tools isn’t my specialty (though I suspect there’s a way to do this). However, there are several really good animation plugins. Keyframe Animation comes to mind (especially because their logo is a Rubik’s Cube!. Here’s a video of their animation extension in action… (and you can download a 10-day trial from Extension Warehouse).
Scene animation in SketchUp typically involves changing the Camera Location from Scene > Scene to create a walk-through or fly-through.
In such animation the objects in the model are stationary; only the Camera moves.
The camera is in fact the only thing that can move as SketchUp has no native ability to animate objects.
You can create the illusion of an object moving by creating multiple copies of the object positioned incrementally along the intended path.
In many ways the method is akin to Flip Book animation.
Each instance of the object is assigned to a unique Layer.
The visibility of each Layer is controlled by the Saved Properties of each Scene you create.
Camera Location remains static from Scene > Scene.
Take a look at the animation models below.
Open the Entity Info, Layers and Scenes mangers to see the relationship of Scene, Layer and Entity as you click through the Scene tabs.
I have tried Keyframe Animation, but it keeps crashing SketchUp.
Thanks for your help, I guess I’ll have to look for a suitable extension.
You basically need a separate group or component for each configuration of the cube involved in the solution. If it takes, say, ten steps to solve the puzzle, you need ten separate groups, which you display in sequence. You can either spread them out along an axis and fly to each step in turn or simply superimpose them all in the same spot and incrementally turn them on and off one at a time. Either way, you use scenes to step through the solution.
-Gully