I am creating a walk through animation of my complete model and am putting it together using scenes and the walk and look around tools. As I come to each room I was thinking it would be nice if I could get the doors to open as I walk around from room to room. The simplest suggestion I have found is to have two copies of the doors on different layers which I can hide and turn on on each scene.
Is this the best/ simplest/ standard practice way that most users present their models or are there any developments in the software since this method was suggested? I am combining this walk through with a presentation that I have put together in Layout, also using scenes which I have copied and pasted into Layout.
The wording of this raises a red flag for me. You shouldnât be copying scenes from SketchUp and pasting them into LayOut. You should send the SketchUp model to LayOut once and then copy the viewport in LayOut and changing the scene as needed for the additional copies.
Iâm thinking of creating doors as Dynamic Components with rotation about their respective Z axis (the hinge axis)
When applying âWalkâ and reaching a door, you could then temporarily switch tools to the âInteract with Dynamic Componentsâ (little hand icon). Once the door is open, you can return to the âWalkâ tool again to continue.
If the animation is to be exported to send to a client, youâd need to create it in short segments breaking where you stop to open the doors, correct? Then combine the segments in a video editor?
With multiple copies of the door and different scenes, the animation of the doors can be included in the walkthrough animation and exported in one file.
Aha, yes I did âsend the model to layoutâ, but then couldnât figure out how to insert more viewports. The only way I got it to work was to use the windows snippet tool and take a snippet of each scene in sketchup, then copy paste them into layout.
Interestingly, each viewport (pasted snippet) did actually behave just like the original viewport that I had created when I sent the model to layout. I figured that this is clearly not how it is meant to be done, but was desperate and needed to present it. Of course! Why didnât I just copy the first one I had created and change the scene!? My brain must have been napping! Haha!
Copying and pasting like that will make problems for you down the line because it will create references to temporary files that will be deleted eventually.
Also make sure that you arenât modifying the scenes for the viewports in LayOut. If you need to change the camera position or the style, shadows, etc., do so in SketchUp and update the reference in LayOut.
If itâs not an interactive version that you need but a final output video, you could also use Fredoâs animator to plot a path and have doors open and close. Timing moves from position to position is then not as limited by the SU scene transitions.
Regular Polygonâs keyframe animator is also another option.
