SketchUp users et al.

[SketchUp Guru]

Just thought I'd share a drawing I did in SU yesterday. The cabinet is from an article in the current issue of FWW and the vase was added just for fun. It was rendered in Kerkythea, a free and simple application. This was one of my first renders.

SU users might want to investigate Kerkythea.

 

[Shady]

Very nice indeed: is that a 'stock' wood grain, or one you've made yourself?

 

[Scott]

Wow! :shock:

 

[SketchUp Guru]

Thank you.

the grain is the stock cherry. I edit the directional textures from SU or other found textures to create both a horizontal and vertical version. This saves me from adjusting the textures in SU later. The editing is simply a matter of opening the image in a photo editor, rotating it 90° and saving it again.

 

[Chris Knight]

Dave,
That is terrific - you have really got SU licked!

 

[Neil]

Very nice, Dave - I'll definitely check out Kerkythea if this is the quality of work that you (with a big emphasis on 'you' :lol can produce. Thanks!

Cheers,
Neil

 

[tim]

the grain is the stock cherry. I edit the directional textures from SU or other found textures to create both a horizontal and vertical version. This saves me from adjusting the textures in SU later. The editing is simply a matter of opening the image in a photo editor, rotating it 90° and saving it again.

Good thinking Dave - I must do that.

I haven't used this but a quick search reveals a tutorial vid at the su forum:



tutorial

and links to the main site:

site

Cheers

Tim

 

[SketchUp Guru]

Thanks again for the compliments guys.

Neil, you should be able to do the same or better. I'm not doing anything too amazing. It's just a matter of having the right tools.

Tim, thanks too for posting those links.

Dave

 

[tim]

I had a look at the video thinking it can't be so complicated to do this render thing. :shock: :shock:

Looks pretty convoluted to me although judging by Dave's pic, well worth the effort. I think it will require a good few hours to get used to the process.

Dave, how long did it take you to get to grips with it? Did you have any previous experience of this type of stuff?

Cheers

Tim

 

[SketchUp Guru]

Tim, I just downloaded Kerkythea on Friday evening. I played with it a little without making much sense of it. Then I looked at a PDF tutorial from the site which made some sense. After that I started playing with it a little more on Sunday.

I still don't quite understand all the settings and what they do but I did figure out a couple of important things. They were mainly covered in that video tutorial as well.

1. Make "lights" in SU. For the cabinet, I drew a wall behind it and a ceiling. the ceiling acts as a bit of a reflector. I drew a rectangle on the ceiling above the cabinet to act as a light. I also drew a couple of rectangle out in space in front of the cabinet that became light sources. You can see the reflection of the larger one in the vase. Rather than naming colors as emitters as shown in the video, I just painted them with colors that I didn't use elsewhere. That made them easy to identify when editing the materials in K. I gave each light source a different color in SU so I could edit them independently in K.

2. When rendering, start with a small image size. When you press the Render button you get a little dialog box. I use current view for the camera, 200x 200 for early render tests saves time. Then I set the third drop down box to .05 ( I think) which is a very simple render. It gives a kind of grainy image but once you're happy with where shadows are and how bright things are, toy can make changes.

3. Make only one or two changes at a time so you can keep track.

The cabinet was drawn in about 45 minutes in SU, then over the course of an hour and a half, I played with rendering. Once you get to where you are doing higher quality renders you can start the process and walk away for a while.

 

[martyn2]

dave you seem to have a good grasps on the software being in Rochester, MN USA
you would be near that little known computer company (IBM) would you :?:

Martyn

 

[SketchUp Guru]

Martyn, I only live about a mile from Big Blue's front door but I work for the larger employer in Rochester.

 

[LyNx]

Nice job Dave.

Best excuse in the book that one, "it's just rendering" whilst he looks over the magazines :wink:

Andy

 

[Alf]

Coo, I dunno, is it worth even putting plane to wood any more? Virtual woodworking - in the warm and dry! Brilliant, Dave.

Cheers, Alf

 

[martyn2]

Martyn, I only live about a mile from Big Blue's front door but I work for the larger employer in Rochester.

hope to get there one day (IBM AS400 tech) but must lookup the software package as alf says wood working in the dry

Martyn

 

[SketchUp Guru]

Alf, as I was sitting drawing the dovetails for this cabinet in the warm of the house, I was thinking it would be nice to cut them in wood as easily. Especially because as I was 'cutting' the tails on one side, they were being cut on the other side simultaneously.

It's also nice when you make a mistake because you can erase it. I don't end up with piles of scrap drawings laying around but I sure have a lot of little pieces of wood too short to save.

Martyn, if you do get to come over for a visit, let me know. We'll have to meet up.

 

[Steve Maskery]

Hi Dave,
I'm impressed, not least because I can't make head nor tail of it. I can follow the tutorial OK, I've set up my lights in SU, but when I export everything is black, and it only exports 3 materials, even though my model contails a dozen or more. Beats me. Shame, really, as it obviously has great potential.
Are you using SU4 or SU5? I'm using 5. I wonder if that makes a difference?

Frustrated Steve.

 

[tim]

Steve

Did you upgrade from 4 or start off with SU5? If the former, have you noticed any huge benefits that make the upgrade really worthwhile?

Cheers

Tim

 

[Steve Maskery]

Hi Tim
The icons are prettier, and that's about it, as far as I can tell. I won't be buying 5 after my trial hours are up. maybe it's worth it if you are some sort of geo-architect, but otherwise I don't see the benefit. And the way Layers are now handles is very annoying; unless you have a huge screen at high resolution, the Layers dialogue box is always in the way, it doesn't even roll up. There has been a lot of moaning on the SU website about that, which one of the SU staff (presumably the lady most resposible for that particular decision) has been defending vociferously.

On the plus side of SU, and there are many, I've recently discovered the Bezier.rb script, which, whilst it is not as powerful as Autocad, is, nevertheless, a pretty good tool of use to us woodies.
Cheers
Steve

 

[tim]

Thanks Steve

I find the menus annoying in 4 - why they don't roll up is beyond me. If you are using layers and filling/ painting there is almost no room for the drawing!

Cheers

Tim