Keyframe Animation

Keyframe Animation is a Ruby plugin for SketchUp. It runs on both Windows and the Mac for both the Free and Pro versions of SketchUp. You can easy to add movement to any object in your model. Move it from A to B, rotate it about any point, or even change its size. You can move the camera too, which makes it ideal for walk-throughs. Best of all, the animation you create can be exported to a movie, directly from SketchUp.

The approach is simple and intutive. Ordinary SketchUp scenes act as key frames. You just move the objects where you want them to be on each scene, and click a button to record their position. When each scene is selected, the objects will move to their prerecorded positions, as if by magic. Keyframe Animation interpolates the objects between key frames by translation, rotation, scaling, or a combination -- whatever is required. The end result is object animation in SketchUp, quick and easy.

Rotating Gears Tutorial: Runtime 3:46 | Watch | YouTube

This is an introductory tutorial. It shows how to set up a simple animation that rotates two gears.

Download Keyframe Animation

News Flash - Keyframe Animation 1.8 Released

Version 1.8 has a great new feature. Now you can animate the size of objects. Make them grow, shrink, or stretch them in different directions.

Basically, any change in the scale of objects will now be interpolated between key frames. The scaling can be uniform, or non-uniform. You can combine a translation and a scaling, so that the object moves and changes size at the same time. Rotations and scaling can be combined if you rotate and scale about the same point. The tweens can interpolate changes in scale too, so the animation can be exported to a movie.

Scaling Demo 1: Runtime 0:16 | Watch | YouTube

This demo shows a quick example of a non-uniform scaling.

Scaling Demo 2: Runtime 0:40 | Watch | YouTube

This demo shows an animated tiling. The individual tiles change their size, but continue to fit together with no gaps or overlaping. The result is a continually changing tiling that oscillates between triangles and hexagons.

Main Features

Translates Objects: Animates objects by interpolating their position along a straight line.
Rotates Objects: Animates objects by interpolating rotations about any point, axis, and angle.
Scales Objects: Animates the size of objects by interpolating their scale between key frames.
Animate Subgroups/Subcomponents: Any group or component can be animated. If it is contained inside another group or component, it is animated relative to its parent. This allows you to combine translations, rotations, and scaling, to create complex types of motion.
Key Frame Transition Times: The transition time is the amount of time it takes for the animation to transition from the previous key frame to the current key frame. This value can be set for each key frame.
Key Frame Delay Times: Adds a pause to the animation after it has transitioned to a key frame, and before it starts the transition to the next key frame. This value can be set for each key frame.
Insert/Reorder/Delete Key Frames: Insert new key frames anywhere in the key frame sequence. Move individual key frames to change the order of the sequence. Any key frame can be deleted.
Animate Layer Visibility: You can make objects appear and disappear by putting them on a layer and adjusting the layer visibility property for each key frame.
Export Animation to a Movie: There is a feature that will generate all the intermediate scenes in between the key frames. These tweens, as they are called, can be exported to a movie, directly from SketchUp.

To find out how SU Animate and Proper Animation compare with Keyframe Animation, for each of these features, please read this review: Three Animation Plugins Compared.

The User Guide has more detailed documentation about the features in Keyframe Animation.