Greetings and salutations!

thespacegamer

I'm brand new to sketchup, don't know a thing about it yet asides from the fact I've seen it do some cool stuff and, if exported to an advanced renderer, it's models can take on a photo realistic quality.

I've used sculpt animate on my old amiga from early days, I've put a lot of time into Blender and now would like to try Sktechup.

I have some newbie questions that I hope are easy to answer:

What are the best tutorials for sketchup for a newbie who does have some grasp of the 3d modeling basics?
what are the most useful add-ons for the free version of sketchup, where does one acquire them and how are they installed?
I love making detailed model starships of my own design and decided to get sketchup while waiting for the newest version of blender after seeing some amazingly good starships made and rendered in sketchup. Anyone have and good tutorials on making good looking starships?

I hope SU3D is as easy as people say it is, and that the free version works instead of being a lure.

mac1

@thespacegamer said:

I'm brand new to sketchup, don't know a thing about it yet asides from the fact I've seen it do some cool stuff and, if exported to an advanced renderer, it's models can take on a photo realistic quality.

I've used sculpt animate on my old amiga from early days, I've put a lot of time into Blender and now would like to try Sktechup.

I have some newbie questions that I hope are easy to answer:

What are the best tutorials for sketchup for a newbie who does have some grasp of the 3d modeling basics?
There are a number http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=36207 and youtube has quite a few also
http://www.youtube.com/aidanchopra do a sketchup search there for others

what are the most useful add-ons for the free version of sketchup, where does one acquire them and how are they installed?
See these links http://www.sketchucation.com/extensions-index/ http://rhin.crai.archi.fr/RubyLibraryDepot/plugins_list_az.php , http://smustard.com/ Most will give directions on how to load. Check out this link also http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewforum.php?f=262 and the plugin forum.

I love making detailed model starships of my own design and decided to get sketchup while waiting for the newest version of blender after seeing some amazingly good starships made and rendered in sketchup. Anyone have and good tutorials on making good looking starships?
Sorry not into that type of modeling check the 3d warehouse or search for them. others will probably answer

I hope SU3D is as easy as people say it is, and that the free version works instead of being a lure.

Free version gives you a lots of capability. Think you will be very happy with it

thespacegamer

BTW, I installed SU3D on my xp machine and I was pleaqsantly surprised to see that previews of the models in the files were displayed as icons.

Then I installed it on my vistugh machine and only got the regular icons. Is there any trick to getting SU3d icons to show the model in the file on a vistugh machine?

I've downed a lot of models, it's be greeat to be able to see what I was opening before I did