CAD + SU + Image Ready = AWESOME!

[bbankston]

As some of you may know my job requires plenty of CAD drawings for work done in the glass industry. Some of our clients require visual aids to understand what we're designing for them. And some of those clients don't really see it clearly with 2D drawings. Then I found SketchUp in these forums here! (Thank you CADTutor) The other day we were making some offset doors for a client so that the doors would open 180 degrees and I thought to myself that maybe the 3D model doesn't truly show how these doors open so I exported JPGs from SU of the doors swinging open every 5 degrees until it hit 180. I then took those JPGs into Image Ready and created a pretty sweet animated GIF. What do you folks think and do you think there's an easier way to achieve this?

 

Sorry about the small image but CADTutor won't allow me to upload the actual file which is a freakin' 2MB GIF file. Which brings to another question; how do I keep the file at about 800 px width and still have it in the Kilobyte area?

[ReMark]

It looks good. Nice job. Now, if you added a young lady walking through those same doors it would undoubtedly get your client's attention.

[bbankston]

Thanks ReMark. Do you have any suggestions to drop the file size so I can upload to our website?

[bbankston]

Or maybe an easier way to make this? In SU you can save the animation as an AVI file but that only works if you have different scenes of the same object from different angles or if I have a scene for every 5 degrees but then the export adds a lot of stagnant frames in there. Also the only AVI to GIF converter I could find was $30. You can use the trial version but you get a watermark on your animated GIF and you still have to remove all of the unwanted "stagnant" frames.

 

Hmmmm... Maybe I'm just being cheap and lazy here.

[f700es]

There are TONS of video converters out there.

Oh your image is KILLER! Good job!

[bbankston]

'Preciate it, f700es. We is always on these SU boards together.

[f700es]

See if this can convert your video

 

http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

[bbankston]

See if this can convert your video

 

http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

 

 

Wow! Looks pretty impressive. I'll let you know how it works out. Thanks again, f700es!

[bbankston]

Hey, not too shabby. A bit grainy but I'm sure I'll figure out how to fix it. It doesn't cut the file size down yet; but, again, I'm sure I'll get the hang of it.

[97catintenn]

I saw your animation and thought, wow...that is soo freaking cool! I wish I could do that!

 

The next thought that came to mind was, wow...I'm such a geek!! hehehe Nice work!

 

And I can't wait to see the lady walking through!

[bbankston]

Thanks, 97catintenn. It's okay to be a geek. Sometimes I dream of better ways of achieving things in SketchUp. Call me ubergeek!

[NBC]

Sometimes I dream of better ways of achieving things in SketchUp.

 

Aye, use a proper CAD package

[f700es]

Nothing wrong with SU, it's a good solution for a lot of problems. A very nice tool to have in the tool box

[bbankston]

NBC,

 

It'd be nice to have the full version of CAD but my company won't purchase it. SketchUp has definitely helped in the 3D world. And it really helps that it's free!

[f700es]

NBC,

 

It'd be nice to have the full version of CAD but my company won't purchase it. SketchUp has definitely helped in the 3D world. And it really helps that it's free!

 

 

I tell you, SU and that DoubleCAD XT are a nice 1-2 free punch that can do just about anything you need in 3D and CAD.

[phorest]

How did you actually made it look like the doors are rotating? Did you literally take an image when they were close, rotated them 5 degrees, take the next photo, rotate another 5 degrees, etc untill it was eventually fully open? Must have taken a while!

[bbankston]

Opening the doors was pretty easy, phorest. I just rotated one door 5 degrees and typed in the multiplier after that. I then took each opened door and put them in their own layer. Then I showed each 5 degree opening and exported a JPEG. It took maybe 10 minutes to do it.

[Zorba]

In my Masters CAD course, i am using sketchup, AutoCAD and a program called Vizard, to create Virtual Reality worlds. I just import a CAd drawing into Sketchup, 3D it up, add materials, then burn textures to it, then import it into Vizard (3D world simulation program sort of, like a games engine), write some code, then voila, can open doors at push of button and walk around. Might be better than a GIF

[bbankston]

Vizard sounds like it's not free, Zorba. I am all about the free! But I do see there's an evaluation copy you can get.

[bbankston]

Then again, I suppose Image Ready isn't exactly free either. I guess I was just getting at what you can do with what you have. And I'm guessing that most CAD folks aren't going to have Photoshop much less Creative Suites.