I am just begging to look at a very early start at scenes and have fallen on the first hurdle. I have treied to solve it myself…sadly failed.
Any chance anyone could have a look.
Trying to create a series of scenes the first being with front theatre tabs down, second scene with them up! The thumbnails seem to look right but when I click on the tabs on the main page the Theatre tabs dont move but the camera angle and eveyrhting else does.???
Also, any top tips for animating as ideally i would show the curtain rising ebtween scenes?
This model is looking good. You have raw geometry well organized in groups and components and everything is looking square and clean, congratulations. I see you have shadows on, this is great for making images that have some depth but be aware that they take significant computational resources to render on your screen, leaving shadows on will greatly slow your computer, depending on the complexity of your model they can bring it to a standstill. It’s best to work on the model with them off and only turn them on when it’s time to output an image. Also I would go into Window>model info>units and uncheck enable length snapping, it’s known to cause errors and should be off. Unfortunately it’s on by default in new files so the best thing to do is to make yourself a template with it off and resave that as your default template.
Now about scenes, I think this there is some confusion about what they do. Scenes do not animate geometry. Objects in your model do not move from scene to scene. A scene is a list of view options including where the camera is located, what the style is, which tags/objects are visible, sections planes, shadows and more. This collection of attributes is all saved together so you can return to it easily and quickly. You can expand the scenes window to see the list of attributes included and toggle them on or off to be “remembered” or not in that particular scene.
Since one of the attributes that is saved in a scene is the visibility state of tags, you can have different scenes showing different sets of geometry. So, for instance if you had two instances of your tabs in the model, one positioned at high trim and one at low, each set assigned to it’s own tag. In scene 1 you have the Tabs Low tag visible and the Tabs High tag invisible, in scene two you have the opposite. Then switching between these two scenes will show your model in those two states, one with the lower taps visible and one with the upper tabs visible. The camera position move is animated (if you want it to be, the setting is in Window>Model info>Animation) but geometry on the screen is not “animated”.
The native way to achieve movement in an animation is to have many different versions of your objects present along the path of movement and to switch the visibility from one to the next along a series of quick scenes, like stop motion photography. This works but is a cumbersome process for complex animations. There are also some extensions that can animate, with their own learning curve.
Thanks so much for your reply. It is great to hear that the model is looking good. it takes a lot of tijme to even grasp the basics but its so rewarding when it starts to click into place. I appreciate your comments.
Yes! the screen was gltivhing and everything very slow with shadows. I didnt know why so this is great.
I turned off the snap function (not sure why but Im going with your advice!)
Thanks too for the notes on scenes and animation. I am still having trouble though with updating scenes. For example. I press the + and then the update arrows. I then press the +_ again and move the tabs up and then press the update arrows. When I move between scenes though the camera moves but the component I moved does not change between scenes it stays in the last position I saved in scenes? So the tabs are always up in every scene???
Unlike, for example, Photoshop, where you can also save the position of each layer in Layer Comps, in SU the positions of entities are not saved individually for each scene.
If you want to make it possible for the model to raise and lower the house curtain, then it must be designed as a dynamic component.
In the attached video, both the curtain position (X) and the curtain length (LenX) change at the same time.
It doesn’t do what you probably think it does - act as an invisible ‘grid’ for objects in your model.
Instead, it rounds the lengths of things as you draw them, along whatever direction your mouse directs them.
If instead you want to inference to an endpoint or midpoint, edge, or face, you will throw the inference off as it rounds to whatever unit you have set for snapping.
There’s a thread elsewhere which goes into some length about what it might be used for, and the conclusion was ‘almost nothing that’s actually useful - TURN IT OFF - permanently.’ And change and save your templates so that new models based on them start with it off. (It’s on by default in most if not all of the shipped templates.)
Good. It just gets faster and better. Sometimes I think all the hype about how intuitive SketchUp is is misleading a bit. It is more intuitive than some other modelers, but it’s still a very complex and unique program that does not behave like others and to get good still takes time and effort. Understanding some of the core concepts from the beginning can save a lot of frustration. Certainly the more you do it the more fun it becomes.
Whatever position you place the tabs in, or anything else in the model space, it will always stay there, geometry does not move. Check the previous short gif I posted carefully. The first thing I do is to Move/Copy the existing curtain downward. So now there are two complete separate instances of the curtain in the model, each in a different location. It’s a good idea to make sure the object is a component so if you need to make changes later both instances will update. Now that there are two curtains, I assign each one a tag that will allow me to control their visibility individually. Then I turn one tag visibility off, leaving only one curtain visible on the screen. I right click on the scene tab overhead and choose update (you can also update from the scenes window). Then I make the other instance of the curtain visible and update the second scene. When you update you are recording the current state of your screen. For every different position of objects in your scenes you need a separate copy of that object.
There are extensions that can animate, and native tricks like moving section planes and dynamic components, but these are all more advanced options and it’s important to first understand the fundamentals of how scenes work.
Thank you, like your model and demo. Is it wise to leave dynamic compnents for a while…this looks a little complicated for a bigger…X and LenX sound scary!
If you do want ‘parameterised’ components, see if any of the new, pre-made, Live Components from the 3D Warehouse are of use to you.
Unless you have a repeated use for one, it’s usually quicker to draw a new component for yourself than to work out how to make one into a Dynamic Component. I’ve made a modest number, and published a few, but the first was years after learning to be reasonably competent in SU itself.
However, if you are drawing stage sets as I have been for many years, you might find a couple of mine of some use to you - a straight staircase DC, and a Spiral Staircase DC.
In fact, Dynamic Components are not as complex as we can use them in stage design. Opening and closing curtains, doors and windows, lifting, lowering and rotating platforms - these are things that pleasantly complement the scenery models. It is worth learning the basics of DC to use in modeling and especially in presentations when you need to show all the scene changes in a short time.
By the way, I can also recommend you use the Tags more boldly. I use several types of tags: one tags for materials and parts (such as square pipes, glass, plastic, wood, plywood, MDF, wheels and casters, etc.), another tags for structural parts (such as carcasses, facing, video projection, paintings, etc.), third - for marking different types of objects (walls, floor, ceiling, curtains, doors, windows, screens, podiums, eaves, furniture, light fixtures, etc.).
