Google SketchUp® 7 For Dummies®

Chapter 13. Exporting Images and Animations

In This Chapter

• Creating 2D views of your model as TIFFs, JPEGs, and PNGs

• Learning about pixels and resolution

• Making sure that you export the right kind of image

• Exporting the kind of movie file you need

Want to e-mail a JPEG of your new patio to your parents? How about a movie that shows what it's like to walk out onto that new patio? If you need an image or a movie of your model, forget about viewing or printing within SketchUp. Exporting is the way to go.

SketchUp can export both still images and animations in most of the major graphics and movie formats. Here's the part that's a little bit confusing: Which file formats you can export depend on the version of SketchUp you have. If you have regular ol' Google SketchUp (the free one), you can create raster image files as well as movies. If you've sprung for Google SketchUp Pro, you can also export vector files and a whole bunch of 3D formats; I talk about all of them in the online Bonus Chapter for this book. (See the Introduction for details about what's online and where to find it.)

In this chapter, I talk about the export file formats that are common to both versions of Google SketchUp. Just in case you're not familiar with the terms raster and vector, I give brief definitions of each. Then I go into some detail about the 2D raster image formats that you can create with SketchUp. I spend the last part of this chapter talking about exporting animations as movie files that anyone can open ...