This is a tutorial on how to create a walkthrough video in Sketchup and export it as an .avi file. The idea is to create what sketchup calls pages. These pages capture the view position and view settings at the time the page is created. So you will look at your model how you want to see it first in your video, then add a page. Then move to where you want the video to see next and add another page. Keep moving through your model adding pages until you think it is ready to create a video that moves through the pages in the order they are created. Below are screen shots and instructions. Hopefully this will be at least mildly helpful to someone. At the end, I also include the video that I created in this tutorial and the sketchup model file that I used to create the video.
So this is the view that I want when my video starts. Click on Window>Pages> This will open the pages menu. Go ahead and hit "Add".
This is where I want the camera to move to next. So I click "Add" again. This will add a page 2 to my model.
Again, this is where I want the camera to move to next. so I hit "Add". This puts in a 3rd page. I keep adding pages until I have walked through my model how I want.
This simply shows my screen after having added all the pages I want. There are a total of 16.
After you have created your pages (or anytime in the process....I remembered when i was on page 8), you need to look at the "Tourguide" menu. Click on the blue circle with the i in it. This is the model info button. Then click on the tourguide bar. This will open a menu for the tool that controls the speed that the camera will move from page to page in your video. You need to leave the "Enable Page Transitions" box ckecked. This will create a smooth video from page to page, otherwise it will output a video that is more like a still frame slideshow. Below that it asks for seconds. I have 1.5 specified in the screenshot. I changed it to 2.5 for the video I made. That tells Sketchup how many seconds to create between each page. In other words, it is the speed the camera seems to fly through your model. If it is flying too fast, you need to have more seconds between pages, etc. The "Page Delay" box indicates how many seconds the video will pause at each page. Set it to zero if you want a smooth video that doesn't have pauses all the time. My video is set at zero.
After I have the tourguide set and all my pages in place, I run File>Export>Animation> This option is only available after you have pages added to your model.
The box in the backgroud pops up first. Down on the bottom right you can hit options. That will bring up the box in the foreground. Here is where you control the quality of the video. Normally the settings shown are ok for a video that you would create for test purposes. These are the settings that I created the video on this page with. It is small in size and poor in quality, but it shows me what my final video is going to look like. After being sure that it looks good, go ahead and export a higher quality video. 800x600 or 1024x768. You can go higher, but it gets slower and slower to generate the higher resolution you use. "Frame Rate" refers to how many frames it will create per second. 10 is ok, but it runs just a little choppy. I believe that televisions and movies only generate 24 frames per second. So if you set it higher than that, it really just goes to waste and makes it hard for your computer to keep up on playback. I generally recommend leaving "Anti-alias" checked. It seems to give a smoother render of each frame, making a more refined looking final product. It adds to the time it takes for your computer to create the video though.
There you have it. That should be enough to get a video put together. Don't be afraid to play around. There is lots that can be done. This is just what I've been able to figure out, I'm sure there's lots more.
If you have 10 pages and have 1 second on each page transition, your video will be 10 seconds long. If you chose 10 frames per second, your computer will create a total of 100 frames. If the video is small resolution like 320x240, each frame will render quickly. It won't take long to render that video at all, maybe about 30 seconds. However, be careful. A model with 30 pages, and 3 second page transitions will create a video 1 minute and 30 seconds long. If you want a nice quality and set it up to 1024x768 resolution and had 24 frames per second, you will generate 720 frames. Each frame at that resolution is about 9 times the size of a frame at 320x240 and takes a LOT longer for each frame to render. A video this size will take maybe around an hour to render, perhaps much longer. It is possible and quite common to have videos that take hours to render entirely.
Video I created in this tutorial - over 6 megs
Sketchup model file - over 1 meg
Chris Fullmer