Exporting to Sketchup

[hawkmoon36]

I've tried it once and it didn't seem to turn out too well. I'm always up for trying out new stuff, but I'm still using POV for the moment. I've read about this Kerkythea rendering engine, but it requires that you export the chief model in to SU. I'm still on 10.04.

Any tips?

[sutcac]

I have been exporting models to Sketchup for quite awhile now and have just started with Kerkythea but am pretty excited about it.

Here is my first large-scale exterior rendering in Kerky-

http://www.engstromarchitecture.com/Larwood%20Large.htm

Tips on the Sketchup export-

Keep your model as simple as possible for whatever view you wish to render. For exteriors, uncheck all the interior stuff in your 3D column, etc. For interiors, consider an "Edit Area" copy of just one area of the model to export.

When you export to DWG, make sure you check "ft" for your scale, as I believe "in" is the default but is read by Sketchup as feet so your model will end up 12x too big and will subsequently chew up a lot more resources and slow your model way down.

Once you export, then import into SU, first thing to do is to get all your faces oriented properly. Which faces get exported which way is a bit of a mystery to me but getting them reversed quickly can be learned and I think they are working on a plugin to do that automatically. The faces thing isn't as important for texturing, etc. within Sketchup but it's critical for rendering in Kerky.

At first the re-texturing and face reversing can seem tedious, but the advantages will be apparent quickly, at least that's the way I feel about it, as I have posted about numerous times.

Kerky (all their stuff is 100% free) has a special exporter plug-in for SU that works very well.

Hopefully that will get you started. There are lots of free tutorials and a great forum for both SU and Kerky, they made me feel very welcome as a newbie there and have a category specifically for SU users.

Look for my new thread on "Sketchup for Dummies"

Why haven't you upgraded to 10.08? It's free, do it.

[woody18428]

GOD HOW I WHISH I COULD GET THAT GOOD RENDERING LOOKS SO GREAT !!!!!!!!!!!!! However what about that one window fascia and gutter will go right into it

[IRISH]

Very nice Bryce. Good work!

[ARCHIJEF2000]

I would recommend exporting a VRML file, as these carry all the texture imformation. Open the VRML in Accutrans and convert to a 3DS, make sure you save this to the same directory. The 3ds can now be imported with textures intact. Mind you, Ver X1 should be able to make a 3DS directly.

[sutcac]

However what about that one window fascia and gutter will go right into it

Good eye! This was not the final version that went to CD's, I did address that little issue somewhat, but the owner really wanted a window there.

[sutcac]

I would recommend exporting a VRML file, as these carry all the texture imformation. Open the VRML in Accutrans and convert to a 3DS, make sure you save this to the same directory. The 3ds can now be imported with textures intact. Mind you, Ver X1 should be able to make a 3DS directly.

Thanks for that advice, I will definitely give that a try and see if it saves some time. Does this procedure have all the faces in the correct orientation or do yo have to go around reversing them?

But as far as my work process goes, I tend to use the Sketchup rendering itself for preliminary presentations prior to rendering only more finalized versions. So I like that intermediate step for the look you can't get in CA or VRML, etc. Once in Sketchup and textured, I also like that I can easily change or replace the texture on all surfaces sharing that texture regardless of layer and can see that change on the fly, also not possible in CA, VRML.

I am looking forward to experimenting with the X1 3DS export feature though.