SketchUp scene tabs are not a walkthrough, and clients can tell
SketchUp will tween between scene tabs, and the result reads exactly like what it is: a camera sliding between two saved positions with the model unchanged. This takes one view and produces a shot with real camera language — a dolly, an orbit, a crane — from the same export you would use for a still.
SketchUp (any recent version)
How the SketchUp plugin handles it
Compose one view worth moving through
Not a scene sequence — a single frame with depth in it. Shadows on, and a camera angle you would photograph with rather than the wide-angle SketchUp tolerates while modelling.
Send to VotexArch from the Extensions menu
The same menu command and toolbar button as a still; pick the walkthrough workspace tab when it asks where to land.
Describe the move
Say what the camera does. Clips are billed per second, which makes a short shot for a board or a social post a sensible thing to make rather than an indulgence.
What SketchUp hands over
SketchUp exports with shadows and display style baked in, so the sun position you set is the light the clip starts from — which matters more in motion than in a still, because inconsistent lighting across a moving shot is immediately obvious. The flip side is that SketchUp models are often built light on interior detail, and a camera that travels reveals the emptiness a static hero shot conceals.
The thing that goes wrong
Sending a view from a model with no interior furniture and asking for a move through the space is the reliable way to be disappointed. Motion gives the eye time to notice scale cues, and there are none in a bare shell. Place even rough furniture before exporting, or keep the move outside.
Do you preserve geometry?
Yes. Every render pass is constrained to your source geometry and camera position, so walls, proportions, and perspective stay locked instead of being reimagined by the model.
Models available for this
Every model draws from the same credit balance, and a credit is only spent on a successful generation.
- Kling 2.5 Turbo Pro7 cr / second
- Veo 3.110 cr / second
- Gemini Omni Flash 1.110 cr / second
- FLUX 3 Image to Video17 cr / second
Questions
- Do I need to set up scenes in SketchUp first?
- No. The camera move is described rather than built, so there are no scene tabs, no keyframes and no animation export. One view is the whole input.
- Is this better than SketchUp’s own animation export?
- It is a different thing. SketchUp moves a camera through your model and shows exactly what you built; this produces a cinematic clip from one frame. For verifying a design, use SketchUp. For a pitch, this reads far closer to a rendered animation.