My environments based on SketchUp models

**Tonic** · January 8th, 2009

First of all, glad to see such subforum. I'm sure it will expand in no time and prove it's one of the greatest software for fast modelling, setting camera view and overpainting!

I only hope they won't turn it into paid version, as (if I'm not mistaken), the Pro version costs a lot!

Anyway, there are my works:

1).

WIPs:

Video:

2).

WIPs:

Video:

3).

**MattGamer** · January 8th, 2009

very cool usage of sketchup. ;]

**dorian** · January 11th, 2009

sweet! thanks for sharing!

**THUNDERCOCK** · January 15th, 2009

outstanding sir!! very excellent example on how modeling in sketchup can aid in painting. Rock on!!

**Tyson** · January 16th, 2009

It's fantastic that you create pretty simple models but in your painting you add great details and life. Thanks for sharing.

**Trimmer82** · February 2nd, 2009

oh lordy I am loving what you are doing with that. This is the first Ive heard of sketchup before, it looks very cool!

**Brashen** · February 3rd, 2009

Great work, if a little too saturated for my taste. But excellent.

**Tonic** · March 9th, 2009

Thanks to you for such kind comments

Originally Posted by Brashen

Great work, if a little too saturated for my taste. But excellent.

Yeah, the second work is over saturated, but it's nothing weird as I didn't made any serious values/colours studies, it's just faking

Not long time ago I've took a few days of experimenting and reading tuorials/manual for Kerkythea renderer. I'm liking it very much. I was afraid that being a zero in 3D terms will make learning a tedious, but it wasn't that hard. And it paid

There are few renderers, nothing so special, but in future I should give more complex and interesting models.

This one was done with Depth Render rendering profile. Interesting effect.

15 minutes of over painting for fun:

There I've found how to make intersecting lines between irregular shapes - just select objects (or everything with Ctrl+A shortcut), click the right mouse button, then Intersect > Intersect with Model). With that, the model is much clearer and it avoids the risk of bad lightning in renderer

And there I've tested Photoshop's Lens Correction (or something) to obtain this effect. It may come handy in illustrating or comics:

**JanDegler** · April 4th, 2009

Really nice!!!!!!

Keep on posting!

**Tesla** · April 10th, 2009

Woow, i didn't know that program, but is wonderfull what you can do

**shade1012** · April 30th, 2009

very cool man I gotta check out sketchup

**nakirush** · May 1st, 2009

Wow. Just wow.

I really have to give SketchUp a try.

**Tonic** · May 20th, 2009

Wow, five stars, I'm flattered. Now my ego is going to burst out. Just kidding

Thujon, Tesla, shade1012, nakirush, thanks so much!

Now I feel so stupid with only few update images. Sorry, guys, next time I promise to make much bigger update!

Two renderers, made for fun:

Copper thingy - a bit badly rendered because you can see white dots, which aren't allowed to exist:

UFO thingy:

And few of my roundabout projects. First, the 3D SketchUp model with enabled pen style:

Overpainted:

And projects of roundabout islands:

**rattus** · May 20th, 2009

really cool stuff, loving the roundabout islands!!

**Tonic** · July 21st, 2009

Thanks, rattus!

I've spent a lot of time on SketchUp education using video/text tutorials, example models, plugins, my own experiments and sketchucation.com forum. I can't believe that SketchUp is much more greater software with simpler interface than I thought previously. And I found few disadvantages, but it can't be helped as there are no any perfect softwares and SU is free

Anyway, after this education, I wanted to make a rough 3D model for over paint, but I thought I'd reuse what I've learned and make a more serious model. Since it takes quite time (much more than I could in 2D), I will post WIPs there. The theme is a science fiction geek's room

The whole hall:

Kerkythea's quick render

The column:

As the rough hall was done, I've started creating components for interior, such as lamps, cases, flowers, toys, machines. As so far, I did a halogen lamp and electric box:

Again, Kerkythea

**grid_gunner** · July 22nd, 2009

Great way of using Sketchup!! I like the mecha hanger scene especially.

**Tonic** · July 27th, 2009

Originally Posted by grid_gunner

Great way of using Sketchup!! I like the mecha hanger scene especially.

To be honest, it hadn't to be a mecha hangar, but nonetheless it's interesting idea. We will see

Little update - storage case (right word?) :

I need to work on presentation.. meaning I need to tweak lighting so model could be read easily. In first render there was too much of white and I couldn't difference forms. Enabling Normal outlining in Kerkythea (right mouse button click on material name (if all materials are same, it should be named as FrontFace and you will have Outline option there)) helps a lot, but there are stray lines as well on coplanar areas

They could be erased in Photoshop with Healing brush, though.

After this, I've added new elements to hall. It was done randomly, just to get the glimpse of feeling of hall. Now it looks much more alive

And messy

Unfortunately, this render has few errors and I've marked them with transparent grey circles. I thought my rendering settings were quite high (Fuzzy Tracing on High, Soft Shadows on High, 300 000 Photons, enabled Specularities and 1600 Rays). Do you think these settings must be higher? I will ask at Kerkythea forum, too.

And SketchUp laggy, too. 150 000 of edges and 60 000 of faces in total as so far. Any ideas how to optimize performance?

**Chirp Chirp** · July 27th, 2009

I don't have any help for you on Kerkythea since I've never used it. But at its current resolution, I can't even see the mistakes you are talking about. Its looking good though!

SketchUp performance and scene management.... There is one area you could get a HUGE performance boon but its more of a personal choice. I would recommend reducing the excessive faces on tiny little objects. I've been following your thread and kept asking myself "what the hell is he making and what for?" =D

For example, the storage shelf. Those mounting holes, they could probably be smoothed hexagons and at the distance you are rendering everything nobody would notice the difference. All the bevels on your electric box thing? I am betting you could gotten away with 3 to 4 segments instead and it would have looked the same in your render. If your final composition is going to be a close up of the electric box then yours kicks ass! But if its just going to be on the wall in a giant warehouse with lots of other stuff around, is it really worth the extra faces? Try to keep in mind a face number to size ratio. Instead of putting the faces in the mounting bolt put them in the big details. Like you could ding up the metal in the light, puts some gashes in the shelves, bend some pipes. Its fun to put detail in things and sketchup makes it super easy, especially with the offset tool and components but it comes at a cost.

Its tempting to model everything as realistic as possible but most of the time its not necessary. Always take into consideration the final product you are putting together and its final medium. I am usually extremely conscious of this since most of my stuff makes it into a game engine but you should also be aware. I don't know about you but I've never had a computer I didn't choke at some point and I never have enough money to upgrade. So something has to give. That being said, only you can decide whats too much.

In case you didn't know the sketchup defaults for circles is 24 segments and 12 for arcs. Most of the time for circles 8 to 16 does the trick but don't rule out using 3.

Some other general performance tips:
* Use Layers - Always leave raw geometry on layer 0 (just trust me on this) organize the scene by moving components and groups to various layers and flip them on and off to remove objects in the scene.
* Run a simple style, and under styles, edit, turn off profiles. Don't turn on shadows but that should be obvious
* Bind the hide / unhide to good keys
* Bind view / component edit / hide rest of model and similar components to keys
* If you are using textures flip to the mode that turns them off.
* Make new objects in its own file and import them to your scene as a component. This will help with making new things. Although this can be a pain later on when updating.
* Turn off Anti Aliasing - I can't make myself do this though..
* Faster vid card / cpu. (note sketchup is not multithreaded so high speed cpu = better) I have a 2.4 quad at home with 8800 gts, 4 gigs ram, at work I have 2.1 dual core with 9800 gtx with 2 gigs of crap ram. At home I chug, at work my files are really smooth and fast. Video card seems to make the biggest difference.

Hope this helps.

**Tonic** · July 28th, 2009

Wow, thanks so much for such reply! I've learned few things. You're right with details on details, they're not practical, but since I'm refining what I've learned, I'm doing it. Also, I'm going to do few zooms and over paint, so these little details might be useful. And I enjoy it a bit

Anyway, I've started modeling a spider robot. It's a long way to end, but nonetheless it's going nicely

I've tested a new way of rendering and it looks great. In Kerkythea, I've applied a Dark Mirror to ground, set background to Sky Colour with gray (about 50% of brightness), decreased the brightness of sun and finally rendered it at 1500x1500px with Ambient Occlusion preset. After that, I've resized to 1000x1000px and sharpened image a little.

Yep, few elements have too much of faces, I will redo it

**Tonic** · July 30th, 2009

A little update. Modeled spider legs. Still not finished and the bottom part (that rotates horizontally) looks ugly, so I'm going to remodel it a bit. And feet are missing, too.

**Tonic** · September 1st, 2009

Sorry for so long break. Just yesterday and today I've returned to S-F hall project. I'm willing to work on it for next one month as a part of another project. Anyway, two little renders. Played in Photoshop as well. I like these styles, I must explore it.

Spider robot feet:

Robot's pilot seat:

**Dr_Rendesvous** · September 1st, 2009

very nice chair. good curves, the little tufts and imperfections in the upholstery of the seat. well done.

**Tonic** · September 1st, 2009

Thanks, I'm digging this seat, too

Especially when it was rendered in one minute and colours were quickly adjusted in Photoshop.

Anyway, I've attached these new parts to robot and started modelling pilot cabin and few little things. Still, a lot of work is waiting, including proportions. And this is only a part of S-F room!

**Chirp Chirp** · September 1st, 2009

Thats one wacky looking robot. You've totally changed my expectations based on your earlier posts.

Something I am not sure if you have considered. Right now I noticed you have a flat plain below your bot. Have you thought about doing a curved surface instead to remove the edge of the world horizon line effect?

**Tonic** · September 1st, 2009

Curved surface - I didn't consider, since it's supposed to be placed in this S-F hall on flat floor. But maybe adding small boxes? We will see

Right now, I'm thinking how to rotate leg parts. The whole leg is a component that contains other component parts. Any ideas how to rotate them separately from other legs, keeping the possibility to modify their structure? I hate the static pose - no feeling of mass and it's symmetric.

**Chirp Chirp** · September 1st, 2009

Well I didn't mean the robot is standing on a curved surface. More like if you extend the surface out kinda far then arc it up at the end. The hard edge doesn't become part of the composition and it gives you better control over the light behind the object of focus.

I would explain it but this guy has a good write up and a downloadable example. Posing hack tutorial can be found here http://www.giantmonster.tv/giant/?p=110

**Chirp Chirp** · September 5th, 2009

Not sure why I was thinking of this post on the way home but another way to create a posing rig you might be interested in trying is using sketchy physics.

Check out these video examples and I think you will see the potential:
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyH0b...eature=related
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxGdfwv2NdE
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRsx97EpDM4&NR=1
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiUQCrT_9Fs

The hand video I posted looks pretty complicated but keep in mind with sketchy physics 3.0 you can duplicate physics components and nest controllers inside of other controllers. That can make things look more complicated than they really are.

I've done tests making vehicles with controllers then hooking them up to a joystick. It was easy to do and worked pretty damn good. The catch is that your design will have to physically work and it might be harder to hide or fake design flaws. Also it can start to have its own performance impact especially with the outliner open. On the other hand it seems like your robot here might be a good trial candidate for sketchyphysics.

You can find sketchy physics 3.0 here http://code.google.com/p/sketchyphys.../LatestVersion

And most importantly its addictively fun and FREE!