The biggest issue I have with the animations in sketchup is the little bug where if you move the camera into a shadow, it tends to (or at least it did in Sketchup 6) invert the lit and shadowed areas, making it look like there was some sort of crazy lighting storm.
In terms of frame rate, exporting individual frames will give you the same smoothness if you use the same framerate. I try to stay 20+ frames per second, if not 30+.
I was never able to find what codec works best, so I’m not going to be super helpful there.
In terms of other options, if you have the resources, exporting the file and having 3DS Max/Viz or Maya or Rhino do the work might work better, as it will give you better lighting/materials, better camera control, and likely a smoother export. They, however, are not cheap or quick to pick up, so in the short term you might want to keep looking for another rubyscript that can help (Thats the one thing in SketchUp I never got that into). You might also shoot a message on the SketchUp group here at Land8. Daniel Tal frequents, and if anyone knows, its him.
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