The Key Frame Animation plugin created by Regular Polygon is an extremely useful plugin to show movement. The plugin works with Google SketchUp 8 and allows you to create movements based on screens.

Use of this plugin is tricky at first, though by following directions given in the user guide it becomes very easy to use. Basically create scenes (either with or without camera mode selected) and then go scene by scene by first clicking the “record” button. Then click the next scene and then click record again. Repeat these steps until your motion has been completed.

At first the movements are very robotic going from scene to scene. Though this can be eliminated by adjusting the delay time to zero. This can be found by going to the SketchUp menu bar and clicking through Plugins > Keyframe Animation > Delay Time. This option is not available on the toolbar for this plugin which is a drawback.

The plugin also allows you to export to AVI movie file. Which is a great feature. First the “make tweens” button is to be selected and then the plugin creates more scenes based on the frame rate. The frame rate is not on the toolbar and needs to be accessed in the same way as the transition time. Once you create all your scenes you can then export as an AVI movie file. The major drawback is that the resolution of your movie is quite low. It is almost not even worth exporting. A work around to this, though being tedious, is to create all your scenes using the tween button. Then use a rendering engine of your choice and export and render each scene (making sure animation is clicked on). Once you have all your scenes rendered it is just a matter of stringing them together in flash or an animated GIF and voila you have a high resolution high quality animation!

Overall, the Key Frame Animation plugin created by Regular Polygon is a great plugin and is much recommended. At the time of this review this plugin has a free 10 day trial and after the trial period cost is $19, which is well worth it! The plugin is available at regularpolygon.blogspot.com. I give this plugin 4.5 out 5 stars.

Download Notes: Installs like any other software, no need to move files. Just make sure to install to the plugin directory within your SketchUp program file.

Click to view a sample online!

The 3D PDF plugin created by SimLab Soft is an amazing plugin to bring the interactivity of SketchUp to the PDF platform. Meaning that now it is easy to present your work with the features of 3D on an easy to view PDF document. A feature missing in Google’s Layout for SketchUp.

The plugin allows you to export your model as a PDF and even allows you to adjust settings such as the background, lighting, passwords and much more. The plugin is extremely easy to use and very useful to present your models. Though a drawback in uploading a complicated model is that it can freeze up computers using browsers. These type of files are best viewed off of the computer using Acrobat and not inside a browser. Also some of the features that I expected to be incorporated into this plugin were not there. A big feature I expected was a walk through animation capability, the plugin does not allow for a user controlled walk through. Rather it only allows you to import scenes in which the user can control which scene they wish to go to.

Overall, the 3D PDF plugin created by SimLab Soft is a very useful plugin, hopefully future versions will come with more options to enhance the user’s experience. At the time of this review this plugin costs $95 per license (though they do offer a trial version) and is available at SimLab-Soft.com. I give this plugin 4.5 out 5 stars.

The Smooth Step Animation plugin created by user Whaat on SketchUcation.com is a simple plugin allowing you to create smooth scene transitions from one scene to another. It is quick and easy to use and works very well. You will need a program to stitch the images together in an animation.

The Smooth Step Animation gives you the option of image size, frame rate, image format (jpeg and png) and the compression settings. Also allowing you to view the animation on your screen with a separate plugin option. The plugin could be improved if there was a progress bar available to see where you are at in the process. And it would be very beneficial to have a toolbar. Maybe in a version down the road there could be an option to set the plugin to go on a particular path from scene to scene.

Overall, the Smooth Step Animation plugin is a great plugin and definitely saves you time from creating your own scenes one scene at a time. At the time of this review this plugin is free and is available at SketchUcation.com. I give this plugin 3.5 out 5 stars.

Download Notes: Need to be registered with SketchUcation.com to download

The Nudge Orbit plugin created by TIG on SketchUcation.com

Aside from not creating scenes the Nudge plugin also does not allow you to reverse directions or rotate along different axis’. These upgrades should be considered as well as even designating your own axis at which to revolve. If this and the creating scenes options were added, than this plugin would be much more useful.

Overall, the Nudge Orbit plugin created by TIG is a a good plugin, though it needs some work. At the time of this review this plugin is free and is available at SketchUcation.com. I give this plugin 3 out 5 stars.

The Add Pages plugin by Rick Wilson on Smustard.com is a useful plugin to control your scenes. Add Pages creates any amount of scenes you like at different user controlled locations, allowing you to capture the same angles of multiple designs.

Add Pages is particularly useful when, lets say, you have two models of a particular house. And you would like to view these houses at the same angle but they are separated by a distance of 100 feet. Add Pages will place a camera location at the exact angle 100′ in the x direction. This plugin allows you to control the x, y and z directions so this can also be used to create a full circle animation around an object using simple math.

Though this plugin has a drawback, when using it does not include the original scene. So be sure to first create a scene of the initial view (suggest using name “scene 0″) and then create the rest of your scenes. It would also be beneficial if this plugin in the future allows you to input more dynamic parameters to scenes. Such as the ability to use formulas for each of the variables to allow for controlled animations.

Overall, The Add Pages plugin by Rick Wilson is a simple and useful tool when using Google SketchUp. At the time of this review this plugin is free and is available at Smustard.com. I give this plugin 4 out 5 stars.

Note that when using the plugins that the sun shadow should be considered. Sometimes the shadow changes the images and they do not fit together perfectly. And it can be tough at times to indicate the point at which the center will be placed. The plugin works well though it only creates images with the render quality that SketchUp offers. But, the plugin does created scenes for each of the images (if you choose true on this option) so you can go back and render the scenes with your favorite renderer and create amazing photorealistic cubic panoramas. But it is quite difficult to match the rendered scenes up, you need to make sure that the resolution is the same and that your renderer doesn’t distort the scene up even more. You may need to play with the images in photoshop to get this looking right.

Overall, the Cubic Pano Out plugin created by John Wehby is a great solution to create amazing 3D panoramas. At the time of this review this plugin is free and is available at Smustard.com. I give this plugin 4 out 5 stars.

Extra Resource:
Cad-Addict.com

Finally a SketchyPhysics review. I know, you have been waiting a while for this one. But for the most part we all already know how amazing Sketchy physics is! First let me mention that this is going to be one of many posts on SketchyPhysics, this plugin will undoubtedly be growing as fast as (if not faster than) Google SketchUp. There are so many topics to cover with Sketchy Physics, but I first want to start off with the basics.

Sketchy Physics was credited to Chris Phillips as the creator but according to Google the project owners are DarthGak and danisla83 , and committer jim.foltz. Currently the most recent version is available at code.google.com of the program is version 3.

This plugin works great to show movement of objects and how they interact with one another. A great feature is that you can create a menu or controller to virtually control all your movements within your model. The tools offered cover all the basic movements such as hinging, rotation, falling due to gravity, springs, motors, etc. They all work pretty nicely and in the new version of SketchyPhysics 3 magnetism and buoyancy are also introduced. This plugin also allows you to record movements for presentations.

Some of the drawbacks of this young and increasingly popular plugin is that it does have a learning curve. But there are some great tutorials out there, see some below! When using SketchyPhysics it is important to note that you can only use grouped objects in your model to be used in the SketchyPhysics aspect. And also important to note that even if an object is grouped there still needs to have some adjustments made to make the object behave as you wish. For example, if the object moves or is stationary, and if the object will actually take the physics of its shape. Also SketchyPhysics is based off of real physics but does not allow you to really input specific forces and masses of objects. In other words the practical use of this plugin isn’t there YET. Hopefully this will be incorporated into future versions of the plugin. Some other drawbacks to note is that shadows are not displayed while the physics is being played out, which for those that want to study shadows and their effect with movements will be disappointed. And finally, it is fairly difficult to control objects while in the physics mode to place them where you would like.

Overall, Sketchy Physics is an amazing program! And we mean that despite all our criticisms. We feel like this is one of those plugins to keep an eye out for and will be doing some amazing things in the future. At the time of this review this plugin is free and is available at code.google.com. I give this plugin 4 out 5 stars.

Additional Links:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewforum.php?f=61
http://3dvinci.blogspot.com/2010/02/classroom-rage-with-sketchup-physics.html
http://sites.google.com/site/sketchyphysicstutorial/home

Tutorials:

The Camera Recorder plugin created by Chris Fullmer is a great tool to quickly create walk-throughs for your model just by using the walking tool. It works really well to make simple animations but it only animates what you see on on your SketchUp screen. So sorry to those that would like to create high quality renders with this tool. And for those that have slower computers this will take forever, if not freeze your computer, to create a walk-through with all the shadow effects and textures.

This tool is easy to use and allows you to export the scenes as images in many of the already accepted image formats such as JPEGs or PNGs among others. You can also choose the amount of frames per second to export to. But once you export it you will need an additional software to put the images together into a movie. Flash, Quicktime Pro, or any other similar programs will allow you to do this. See below for a great tutorial.

In future versions of this plugin, there should be a browse button to help you search for where you would like the images to end up. As of now you can only type in the destinations manually, but for those with Windows when you just use your file explorer and find the location you want to put it, you can copy and paste the destination url from the file explorer into the plugin window.

Overall, the Camera Recorder plugin created by Chris Fullmer is definately worth the download. It is a very handy tool to have for simple demonstrations, but its not going to win you a grammy. At the time of this review this plugin is free and is available at SketchUcation.com. I give this plugin 4 out 5 stars.

Extra Resource:
www.cad-addict.com/2009/12/sketchup-plugin-camera-recorder.html