Dutch colonial? Look closely. This is a Craftsman four-square with faux gambrel detailing, a common variant. Craftsman four-square with faux gambrel details, Warwick, NY, c. 1920.

Chapter 10—Showing It Off

In this chapter we're going to use the Position Camera tool. It does just what the name promises. After you Position Camera you are immediately switched to the Look Around tool. Then we learn how to Walk, and Look Around while we Walk. Saving the best for last, we will create an animated tour of our carriage house.

This Chapter covers standard Sketchup animation, which controls layer visibility and animates the camera. Chapters 15 and 16 cover Ruby-based animation, with which you actually move, rotate and scale your geometry, as well as moving, panning and zooming the camera. The biplane here is the star of the movie Airshow!. He does aeronautic tricks.

First, though, let's come back down to earth. There's a problem to solved.

Defining Your Own Keyboard Shortcuts

These are the keyboard shortcuts predefined by Google and a handful that I've added. We'll get you adding your own in a minute.

SketchUp (and Added) Keyboard Shortcuts

Key	Default	Shift+Key	Ctrl+Key	Alt+Key
Spacebar	Select
Delete	Edit/Delete	Edit/Delete Guides
A	Arc		Edit/Select All
B	Bucket
C	Circle		Edit/Copy
D	Window/Hide(Show) Dialogs
E	Eraser
F	oFFset
G	Edit/Make Component	Edit/Make Group
H	Hand
I	File/Import...
J
K
L	Line
M	Move
N	File/New		File/New
O	Orbit		File/Open
P	PushPull		File/Print
Q	Qrotate
R	Rectangle
S	Scale		File/Save
T	Tape Measure		Edit/Select None	Camera/Std Views/Top
U	Edit/Unhide/All	Edit/Hide
V			Edit/Paste
W	Camera/Walk	Camera/Look Around		Camera/Position Camera
X			Edit/Cut
Y			Edit/Redo
Z	Zoom	Camera/Zoom Extents	Edit/Undo	Camera/Zoom Window

Also:
  Ctrl+Shift+E: Camera/Zoom Extents
  Ctrl+Shift+W: Camera/Zoom Window

Here are some suggestions for assigning your own effectively.

• Don't assign too many. You won't remember them.
• Don't assign to infrequently used tools. If you don't use a shortcut often, you won't remember it.
• Don't change Google's assignments. You want another SketchUp enthusiast to be able to use your SketchUp. You want to be able to use another SketchUp enthusiast's SketchUp.
• Don't use triple-key (Ctrl+Shift+E) "shortcuts".
• Don't use Alt+ combinations unless you can type them with one hand.
• Do create a one-key shortcut to Window/Hide(Show) Dialogs. It's priceless.
• Assign one or two at a time.

Assigning "D" as the keyboard shortcut for Window/Show Dialogs.

This whole system is great. It's easy to use. It's empowering. What you use often gets shortcuts. What you use infrequently is available from logical menus. It would be rude to complain.

I used to recommend that you keep an organized list of all your shortcuts. Then I made a more permanent solution: a Ruby plugin that pops up a list like the one you saw above. Only it looks at the shortcuts on your machine, classifies them as Google originals or your custom keystrokes, and pops them up as a webpage.

It's in Tutorial AR. Take a moment to go there, look at another list, download the Ruby plugin and install it properly. Close and reopen Sketchup. Assign the K key to the Plugins/Keyboard Shortcuts command. Tap K and voila! Tap K again and your list dialog is closed. Assign another shortcut and tap K again. Magic!

Positioning the Camera

• Click somewhere. The camera is positioned 66 inches above your click facing into the model (the same way you, the SketchUpper, were looking).
• Mouse down somewhere, drag and release somewhere else. The camera is positioned somewhere looking at somewhere else.

The first time you clicked on the livingroom floor the camera was 66 inches above the floor. With the drag method, the camera was on the livingroom floor. Try it again, paying attention to the VCB (now labelled "Eye Height"). I get 14'10" with a click; 9'4" with a drag.

You can, as always, type and your new height will be implemented and reported in the VCB. Remember this if you want a really high-speed elevator trip in a skyscraper.

Looking Around

Walking Around

Position the camera by clicking on the ground. That's problematic. There is no ground. SketchUp does not default to using the rg plane. Drag out a Rectangle where you would like to stand. Position the camera by clicking on the rectangle. Much better, no?

Take a look around and then tap W, to Walk. You get the walking feet mouse pointer, but go nowhere. Click somewhere. A crosshair appears where you click. Drag to walk. Before reading on, do some more "drag to walk". Try above the crosshair, left and right of the crosshair and below the crosshair. Spend a few minutes getting used to it.

Got it? Good. Now read, try to remember and actually test some of the following:

• The farther you are from the crosshair, the faster you go.
• Walk+Shift goes up and down. Watch the VCB.
• Walk+Ctrl is for running. Good for Xtreme sports types.
• You cannot walk through things.
• Walk+Alt lets you walk through things.
• Walking goes up and down stairs very sensibly.

When you think you have learned to walk, try starting outdoors, walk in through the half-open apartment door, up the stairs, through the livingroom and into the bedroom, where you can stop to admire the bed. Do you think you can do this on the first try? (Walk+Alt is cheating.)

Animation Basics

In the first scene, which we see through the heroine's eyes, our star will walk from outside the carriage house to and through the door, up the stairs and into the livingroom. (Who or what will she meet there? Haven't got that part of the script written. We'll think of something.)

One way to make animations is to use the Walk tool. Start way back from your carriage house. Tap W. Type an eye height, Enter.

Perfect? Click View/Animation/Add Scene.

I've assigned keyboard shortcut "x" to View/Animation/Add Scene. We'll be using Add Scene a lot in this part of the chapter. For me, "x" stands for "whatever I'm doing a lot of at the moment".

One great thing about a keyboard shortcut for View/Animation/Add Scene is that you can click it while you are walking. Yes, you can walk and create scenes at the same time.

Here we've walked part of the way toward the house. Click View/Animation/Add Scene again. (Hereinafter shortened to just "Add Scene".)

Add Scene

Now that you've got three scenes, it's time to take a look. Click View/Animation/Play. You'll have your walk toward the carriage house playing in a continuous loop (that means there will be a quick walk back to the starting point, too).

You also have this little control window. Stop would be a good idea.

You now have a transition between scenes and a stop at each scene. Stopping at scenes is a good idea for touring an art gallery or a zoo. It's not a good idea for our movie. Click View/Animations/Settings.

This is our old friend, Model Info. These settings will be stored with the carriage house model.

You can extend this movie (if you don't mind the lack of script) on up and into the apartment. Go as far as you like.

Add Scene

Add Scene

Time to View/Animation/Play again. Looking like a movie? Where are those writers? What's coming next? (The great movie classic Casablanca was actually shot this way.)

Animation and Scenes

If you right-click any of your Scene tabs, you get a menu of everything you need to make and edit your movies.

• Move Left
• Move Right
• Add...—inserts the current scene here, opens the Scenes manager window
• Update—replace with current scene
• Delete
• Play Animation
• Scene Manager—for total control

The Scenes window, aka the Scene Manager.

If your movie is a keeper, you'll at least want proper scene names.

The degree of control here is more than I need, by far. Maybe one of you with sun angles, shadows and fog playing nicely together would be kind enough to share a good movie?

Animation and Layers

I'd say more, but this chapter is already long enough. Think about the story you want to tell. Write a decent script! Fly faster and slower, higher and lower. Dazzle your friends and clients.

We've come to the end of Part I of this tutorial, the almost-Ruby-free part. I've made no attempt to be thorough or provide good reference material. Instead, I've attempted to get you SketchingUp a lot faster than I got to SketchingUp and with much smarter technique. You can learn more as your projects require more.

We are going on to the scary, geek-like field of Ruby programming. If you think you've got some power now, you don't know what lies ahead! You'll get powers that no superhero even dreamed of. Power to fly along side the speeding bullet. Power to SketchUp a steam locomotive or a whole bullet train. Power to create tall buildings at a single bound.

No programming background is needed. You may, however, want a cape.