Creating Structures with Google Sketchup

[moodflow]

I've been playing with the 'free' version of Google Sketchup.  It takes about an hour or two to figure out, but its perfect for creating buildings and such.  Unfortunately, the free version does not allow file export (though you can save your work). 

But, I found out there is an application called "Flux Studio" that will open the Sketchup files, to which you can then export them as .obj files (though not sure how ethical this is - though Flux Studio appears to be a fully legitimate application affiliated with Sketchup).  Then you can use PoseRay to convert the .obj files to TGTP ready format, and then import them to TGTP. 

For even more flexibility, I've been creating complex 'parts' in Sketchup, and then using Vue 6 infinite to easily assemble these parts into working structures.  Here is a castle I just created for use in one of the images I am rendering...

[Mavcat]

Sketchup is a powerful program with the easiest UI to use ever,just check google warehouse and you'll find lots of nice modeled things,although simple. Great that you found a way to use it for terragen

[old_blaggard]

I might have to get around to looking at that sometime....

[bigben]

Thanks for passing it on..definitely worth a look.. 

[bigben]

Definitely a gem of a find    It was a "crisp" morning so I fired up the second core on my lap warmer (the first was busy rendering an  image from last night). Here's a quick test of a white object while exploring the outer reaches of my Ben Nevis terrain (that's Ben Nevis in the background) I'm not sure if Sketchup 6 requires it but I also downloaded the Google Earth/3D warehouse plugin for exporting .kmz files which are the supported format for Flux.

I've made a basic model of our building at work a while back and found Sketchup to be very easy to use compared to many other 3D programs.

Haven't tested the raw obj output from Flux (paranoia made me use PoseRay for a second conversion), but it would be worth trying.  There seem to be far fewer tweaks required from Sketchup.  Model was at the right height, and scale seemd OK (which you'd expect from Sketchup since it's integrated with Google Earth for placing real scale models... TG2 - uncheck "Source in cm" in the OBJ options). How materials/groups are handled will be interesting.

[mrwho]

I've been using Google SketchUp for a while, and the models work great. textures/mats work fine as well

[bigben]

The only thing I found with the workflow described above is that materials are derived from the groups in the Sketchup file. If you're making your own stuff this is simply a case of selecting all surfaces with the same texture and grouping them.  If you're looking at using other people's models then you may be in some difficulty. I found a reasonable model of the MCG (apart from the light towers) but in Poseray it ended up iwth 8000+ materials...

[MooseDog]

the whole google warehouse concept-thing is great! i use it as reference pretty frequently.

it's heartening to see some of the models come into tg2, but looking ahead be very careful with those sketch-up models.  in my experience, as models, they suck.  they're simply not clean, well-made meshes.  i've never taken one and just plopped it somewhere, but instead used it as reference to build a clean mesh.  i mention this as tg2 is atm touchy about meshes.