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...
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...
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...
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...
As you may have seen on social media or the SketchUp Blog, this year's version of the desktop (Pro) version just got an update (2023.1). Here's what's new and noteworthy from my perspective:
New icons. Given the use of new icons in the web and the iPad apps, this was definitely coming, so it should not be a surprise for anyone. While the old icons had a great run, this visual refresh was overdue.
TIP: If you feel nostalgic for the old icons and want to keep them around (e.g. for a future craft project), go to the C:\Program Files\SketchUp\SketchUp 2023\Images folder and save all of the svg files somewhere before upgrading SketchUp to the latest version.
Snaps. This is a very interesting feature because it allows you to set up snaps on objects (groups or components). Those then allow you to join those groups in an aligned fashion in one operation instead of copy-move-rotate placements. One example for where this is helpful...