SketchUp 2024 is Out!

SketchUp 2024 is Out!

by Alex SchreyerNo Comments
A New Graphics Engine, Ambient Occlusion, Improved Trimble Connect Integration, Modeling and File Format Improvements, and Better Error Handling What's New in SketchUp? Introducing a cleaner UI, and Teddy! As of yesterday, the latest version of SketchUp (2024) is available. And as it turns out, this one has several nice & visible new features and others that are more "under the hood". On the first impression side (see image above) there is a cleaner UI: Look at the panels in the default tray and their headings and you can see how the flat graphics now look much cleaner and modern (and more consistent with the web and iPad versions). Now if we could only also have dark mode... There is also a new scale figure, Teddy! Hi There! New Graphics Engine & Ambient Occlusion SketchUp's new graphics engine The new graphics engine is one of these features that - I am guessing - takes a lot of work to implement and then when everything goes right, things...
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The Cube – A Fun SketchUp Diffusion AI Experiment

The Cube – A Fun SketchUp Diffusion AI Experiment

by Alex SchreyerNo Comments
In this video I am having a bit of fun with the new SketchUp Diffusion tool… Give this a try: Add only a single cube to your modeling space and then try to create an interesting visualization from that using only the prompts and the styles in SketchUp Diffusion. This is actually a great way to explore prompt engineering. It is interesting how the AI is able to capture the general orientation of the scene from just the cube and the horizon line behind it. You can find my original forum post about this on the SketchUp forums here. And admittedly I based this on a competition that the Blender community has been doing for a while. Check those out, too. For more on what you can do with SketchUp and Diffusion, take a look at my initial post about this topic. Video https://youtu.be/dQmV58Jlq4c Examples Here are some of my own examples: Prompt: "A treasure in a luxurious space." Prompt: “A floating, death star spacecraft over a...
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AI Rendering with SketchUp Diffusion – First Impressions

AI Rendering with SketchUp Diffusion – First Impressions

by Alex SchreyerNo Comments
In this video tutorial I give a first glance overview of the new SketchUp Diffusion tool. Throughout, I am combining a basic how-to tutorial for SketchUp Diffusion with my various thoughts on the tool (given several different use case scenarios) and the general usability of AI for visualization and ideation. While it is indeed still early days for this technology, it is already quite impressive what it can do. Good looking first renderings can be done quickly, even from minimal geometry. However, there are some caveats and I am very curious how the next iterations of this and similar tools will impact the AEC industry. Tutorial Video https://youtu.be/CIzSw98WBaw Examples You can see some of my example images below. Original model views (as submitted) are on the left and the SketchUp Diffusion AI results are on the right. The respective prompt is in the image caption. Prompt: "A rendering of campus buildings at sunset" Prompt: "An exterior entrance to a campus dining hall" Prompt: "A bench sculpture in a...
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Joyful Holidays, Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year 2024!

Joyful Holidays, Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year 2024!

by Alex SchreyerNo Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61MgpvHfowg To my readers, viewers, friends and colleagues: I wish you and your loved ones a peaceful and joyous holiday season, Merry Christmas (to those that celebrate it), and a healthy, happy, and successful New Year 2024! And just to reiterate what I said in last year's post: A little bit more peace on earth would also go a long way! As usual, I made this video "card" completely in SketchUp. Want to see how I did this? I’ll post a tutorial soon to sketchupfordesign.com and my YouTube channel. Cheers,Alex ...
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GPT-3.5-Turbo vs. GPT-4 with the SketchUp OpenAI Explorer extension

GPT-3.5-Turbo vs. GPT-4 with the SketchUp OpenAI Explorer extension

by Alex SchreyerNo Comments
Now that version 2.1 of the SketchUp OpenAI Explorer extension is available, it is easier to test the AI's capabilities when using the most recent GPT-4 model. In this post, I will be comparing side-by-side the gpt-3.5-turbo and the gpt-4 models with a few common examples. If you want to give this a try, too, make sure you have access to the gpt-4 model and then simply replace the model name in my SketchUp extension's settings dialog. The extension page on my other website features a longer list of successful prompts than what I am able to cover here. Feel free to give those a try, too. Example1: Draw a Box For this example, I asked the AI to draw a 2' (i.e. "two foot") box. I wanted to test not only whether the box would get drawn correctly, but also if the foot tick mark would be interpreted correctly as the foot unit. The images below show what I got with that...
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