FSUT--Watermarks and Mixing Styles

[SketchUp Guru]

I haven't done a Friday SketchUp Tutorial in quite some time. It isn't Friday here but surely it must be somewhere.

Here’s a quickie tutorial showing how to make a pretty picture from your SketchUp model. This is quite simple and there is no end to the variations you can create.

This is what we’re going for. Please note, I didn't do any post SU prcessing of this image. Normally I would do some cropping and possibly some contrast correction. this tutorial isn't about that part of the image creation though so I'm showing you the output straight from SU.

First we need to create the image for the watermark. I’m just doing some simple lines but you could do anything. In this case I drew a line on the green axis. The length isn’t critical here. I used 60”. Select the line and use Ctrl+Move to make copies at some interval. I used 2”. After entering the distance, I hit *60 Enter to make 60 copies. The number isn’t critical but you want to end up with an array that is wider than the length of the lines by at least a factor of 1/3. You want to be able to fill the drawing window with the lines.

The lines.

Choose the top view and make sure the lines fill the drawing window.

Open the Styles dialog and choose a style for the lines. Here I am about to select the Sketchy Crayon style. You can play with different styles to see what you like.

Selecting a style.

I edited the line style a little under the Edit tab. In this case I turned off Depth cue and Extensions.

Editing the line style.

After I get the lines looking the way I want, I simply export a JPG file of them. It you want to use it, you could save this image and start from the next part of the tutorial.

 

[SketchUp Guru]

Next we open the model we want to make pretty. Choose a style that you want to use. Here I’m using “Straight Line .01pix”. Applying that to the model results in an untextured display so you would want to turn on that back on if needed.

Next we add the image from the last stage as a watermark. Click on the Edit tab in the Styles dialog box. Choose the cube second from the right for editing watermarks. Click on the + sign in the circle.

Navigate to the image you saved and open it.

Choose Background in the dialog box that pops up. Click Next.

Adjust the Blend slider as needed. You may need to come back and edit this later so don’t worry about the exact setting too much.

Click Finish.

Next go to the Mix tab and choose an existing watermark style. Drag it up to the Watermark settings area. I chose the Masonite watermark.

I chose to edit the overlay watermark image so I clicked on the watermark cube at the top of the dialog box. This is the same one we clicked on to add the lines watermark. Click on the Masonite overlay and then on the gear icon to edit the appearance.

At this point you have something like this:

I decided I wanted the lines to be darker so I edit the lines background by selecting it and clicking on the gear icon again.

Turn on and adjust shadows as desired. Output the JPG and you’re done.

Big note: Remember to purge unused styles before saving your model. Those styles can bloat the file size quite dramatically. You can use the Purge function found by clicking the little blue-black arrow on the right edge of the Styles dialog or use the new Purge Plugin which takes care of purging unused styles, components, materials and layers. You can get that plugin here: http://forum.sketchup.com/attachment.ph ... 1173038716