Following on from this discussion in pak128.Britain: http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=3648.new#new
I know there are some people out there who have succesfully set up sketchup to render the 8 rotations needed for simutrans at the right scale (from my forum search at least). However I can't see anywhere where it is explained. Would anyone be able to give a quick explanation / tutorial of how to get camera and lighting set up for rendering simutrans objects from sketchup? Thanks.
I don't know about lighting, but I did figure out how to get the camera in the right angle.
Sketchup's isometric view uses a 45 degree angle (or 1:1), while Simutrans needs 30 degrees (or 2:1). I was able to get it working by following this tutorial:
http://www.dianej.com/tutorial1.php
There was also a post on the forum with a similar idea:
http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=1849.0
Basically, you need to create a prop using a 30-60-90 degree triangular prism. If set up right, all you need to do for each rotation is to select the appropriate side of the prism, and use "Align view".
Hope this helps you get in the right direction (no pun intended).
You only need to set up a camera view once - you can then save it for later use:
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/making-a-scene-in-google-sketchup.html
http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=39656
You can either save the file as a template for future use, or get the script referenced here:
http://www.cad-addict.com/2008/12/sketchup-import-and-export-scenes.html
To produce the eight rotations needed in sketchup, you must change the camera settings. Go to the menu bar, click "Camera" then select "Parallel projection". With that, you can use the views icons (the "house" icons) to rotate the model for rendering.