Did you see my 2015 Christmas card tree image on this site? In case you were wondering how I modeled and rendered it, here is a video that explains that process. It's a bit of a minimalistic design, but as you can see in the video, I used a bunch of SketchUp extensions and the Twilight Renderer to make it happen. I hope you find the tips and tricks useful for your own projects.
Covered topics: studio setup, materials, Erode extension, components, scale tool, Fredoscale extension, Selection Toys extension, Profile Builder extension, Twilight extension, Twilight materials, Twilight lights, Twilight rendering options.
Tutorial Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMBhhXavm48&feature=youtu.be
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For this year’s Christmas post, I went back to a simple rendering approach. Mixing some extruded shapes, eroded boxes, basic materials and a few lights makes for a nice, moody image. As always, all done in SketchUp (and Twilight).
To you and your loved ones a peaceful and joyful holiday season and a happy and successful new year 2016. Merry Christmas!
Cheers,
Alex...
I am very excited to be announcing the release of the second edition of my book "Architectural Design with SketchUp" today!
For this edition, I went back through the text and updated and improved a lot of content. As before, my main goal was to keep it relevant for as large a variety of SketchUp users as possible and at the same time provide thorough yet easy to follow examples and tutorials.
I am also very excited to announce a completely new chapter on physically making things with SketchUp that includes 3D printing, CNC cutting, and other techniques. Lots of fun stuff!
As before, this second edition will use the companion website at http://sketchupfordesign.com/the-book where you can find free sample chapters, videos, references, 3D models, and tutorials.There are also now over 30 videos that accompany the book and can be accessed using the instructions in the book.
Interested in getting the book? Check out Amazon or Wiley.
Here's the official press release:
3D Modeling in SketchUp and Digital Making Come Together in Second Edition of “Architectural...
As I describe in chapter 3 of my book, a component-based modeling workflow makes a lot of sense. It allows you to use a hierarchical model organization, work with attributes, dynamic components and - most recently - Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). I covered this approach at Trimble's SketchUp 3D Basecamp in Vail earlier this year. You can view the entire presentation as a video below:
Tutorial Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWUyyP9v6hw
If you are interested in Dynamic Components, also watch Eric Schimelpfenig's presentation on "Dynamic Components, Greatest Hits, Vol. 1".
P.S. This a similar presentation to what I gave at Trimble's Dimensions 2014 conference last week.
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This is What's New...
Depending on who you ask and how those people use SketchUp, it is quite likely that they will hone in on different favorite elements in the 2015 release of SketchUp, which came out just this week and parallel to Trimble's Dimensions user conference in Las Vegas (which I attended, hence the late post). High on many people's wishlist was 64 Bit support, so that is likely what will get mentioned most. Others will find the new IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) importer extremely useful. Here is my perspective on the new features:
The performance improvements from 64 Bit support, face-finder improvements, and the "fast styles" labels are significant. Even with a thorough, component-based workflow (as I described in Chapter 3 and in my Basecamp presentation) especially large models could in the past bog SketchUp down quite a bit. Things should now get much smoother, especially on powerful machines.
The now built-in IFC importer is a tremendous addition! This allows SketchUp to at least...
