You can use the attribute tagging mechanism in SketchUp to achieve some impressive effects in WalkAbout3d with very little effort.
First you need to install the Attribute Manager plugin in SketchUp, which lets you tag data to entities in SketchUp. The useful ones with respect to WalkAbout3d are Groups and Components.
To Turn off collisions on a group or component
- Select the group/component, and right click and select Attribute->Show:
- This will show the attributes dialog box; add an attribute category:
- Now you can add an attribute to this category by clicking on "Add an attribute", call the attribute Collide, and give it the value 0 and press the OK button:
- Then click on the accept, to confirm the attribute changes
- thats it, if you save the design and load it into Walkabout3d the group/component will no longer be "solid" and will allow you to walk straight through it. This is particularly useful for semi-transparent surfaces, or for doors to allow access into building (without having to open them in Sketchup).
To tag a surface as "water" in WalkAbout3d
- First you must create a flat surface in Sketchup and place it in a group. The surface can be any shape and have holes in it but it must be perfectly flat.
- Next follow the steps above to setup the WA3D attributes category.
- Now instead of adding a "Collide" attribute, add a "Water" attribute and give it the value 1:
- Save the design and load it into WalkAbout3d.There are some settings to control how water areas look in WalkAbout3d, they are in the settings dialog on the SketchUp page:
- The settings are fairly self
explanatory, and bit of experimentation will clarify them - and this is the end result (the still image doesn't do it justice!):
To animate a door to open in WalkAbout3d
- Well this is not quite ready - but it's going to use the same "tagging" principle to tag doors as things which should open as you walk up to them - there is a video on YouTube showing an early prototype - so watch this space for details.
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