Assistance with a massive project
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I am independent contractor and have been using SketchUp Pro 7 to create 3D layouts of various parcel handling systems. So far it's been pretty small stuff like what you see below:
[IMAGES REMOVED]
I have now been asked to provide pricing for a job as big as this (this is not mine, and not in SketchUp):
[IMAGE REMOVED]
As you can see, I'm not currently using materials. Everything I've done so far has just been colored bylayer and only has one point of light (sun). If I were to do the job asked of me, I'm thinking I would definitely need a 3rd party program that would be able to render with different points of light. My first question is, if I were to use a program such as this, would I have to assign materials or could I just keep everything colored bylayer?
My fear is that assigning materials would make the file size much bigger.
The customer would also ask for animation in the form of a camera affixed to a box and traveling around the conveyor system. I have tinkered around with Podium and that seemed to have the ability to assign camera paths, but it's been awhile since I've played around with it.
Could someone point me in the right direction and offer opinions on which 3rd party software to get for a project such as this? Any other words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated as well.
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Also, is there a good SketchUp viewer that allows the client to rotate and zoom in and out of a model? I could just have them download SketchUp for free, but I don't want my library to be available to anyone but me.
Thanks in advance for any advice you can lend.
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@tk0001 said:
Also, is there a good SketchUp viewer that allows the client to rotate and zoom in and out of a model? I could just have them download SketchUp for free, but I don't want my library to be available to anyone but me.
Thanks in advance for any advice you can lend.
Alright, I just found SketchUp Viewer. Forgive me for not using Google prior to asking this one.
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Something tells me, as I watch this topic get lower and lower down the page, that the answer may be simple.
I'm basically a novice when it comes to the world of 3rd party applications, so can someone tell me if 1. Podium would be right for something this massive (a parcel system inside a 250,000 square foot bldg)? and 2. if I need to utilize materials when rendering (or just using different points of light).
Thanks.
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Podium would probably be a good choice to render this scene. Podium actually has the ability to render each scene created during the animation. I am not familiar with Podium's camera path feature. AFAIK you will need to apply textures, as no renderer that I'm aware of can render blank (untextured) faces. If you are using components effectively the textures probably won't increase the file size substantially. You might try downloading a Podium trial and do some experiments on one of your previous models. If you need to animate elements of this design other than the camera, you should also check out SU Animate or Proper Animation.
Best of luck to you, and be sure to post the results here when you get the job finished.
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Well, IMO colouring by layer is good while you are working on it but I am not sure any render engines can pick up that colour. No problem though as you can always actually paint those things in a layer with the colour you like.
It's a whole different thing if you really want to texture it with photo textures (rather than colour materials only). That can add to the file size considerably but not necessarily too much if you keep it with light-weight textures.
One suggestion however; if you texture the model and top of all, leave shadows on, SU can easily get sluggish. So while modelling, keep it in monochrome (or coloured by layers or shaded withOUTtextures) and shadows off.
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I believe that Sketchyphysics and Twilight will be the easiest solution (if you know Sketchyphysics that is). AFAIK Twilight is the easiest way to render an animation using SP, properanimation.rb as well as mover.rb.
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Thanks for the words of wisdom. Encouraging to know that Podium will probably be a good choice.
I do have my models pretty well component-ized, so hopefully assigning materials to them won't be too much of a task. I can stick with just using colors rather than textures for nearly the duration of this project, as the purpose of the project is to pretty much use SketchUp as a BIM tool to find interferences across the assorted phases. At the end of the project they'll be asking for a rendered picture to be plotted out and framed. I'm pretty excited to see how that will look.
They will also ask for a box animation and a forklift animation, but both include the manipulation of the static model, so I'll just need to find something that will allow me to make a camera path throughout the system and not actually make boxes zip around it. I have played around with Sketchyphysics a bit, but I think animating tens of thousands of boxes on the system with it would be a nightmare.
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Well, be careful with that "plotted" render. You may bounce into image size limitations due to SU being a 32 bit app and using limited memory.
You can get out about a 4000x3000 pixel rendered image however that would be 40 inch wide (~1m) at 100 dpi (on the wall, I believe you would not need 300 dpi).
MAYBE if only using colours, it can be a bit bigger, too. If you use Twilight as Pete suggested and export the XML, that can be opened in Thea as well and it has a 64 bit version, too, which of course could export bigger.
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@gaieus said:
Well, be careful with that "plotted" render. You may bounce into image size limitations due to SU being a 32 bit app and using limited memory.
You can get out about a 4000x3000 pixel rendered image however that would be 40 inch wide (~1m) at 100 dpi (on the wall, I believe you would not need 300 dpi).
MAYBE if only using colours, it can be a bit bigger, too. If you use Twilight as Pete suggested and export the XML, that can be opened in Thea as well and it has a 64 bit version, too, which of course could export bigger.
Excellent advice, thanks. Never considered the fact that SU is 32 bit.
I do believe that they'll want a 24 x 36 plot of the system, but I would love to see it be 36 x 48 and properly matted and framed.
So in light of this, would you suggest going with Twilight rather than Podium?
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BOTH Twiight and Podium are integrated into SU therefore have the memory limitation.
I do not suggest either (in fact, I should be unbiased here as an admin
), only Pete's idea made me think.You can download and install the trial version of both and with some limitations (this mainly means size limit at export), can test both. They both have quite competitive prices, too.
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@gaieus said:
BOTH Twiight and Podium are integrated into SU therefore have the memory limitation.
I do not suggest either (in fact, I should be unbiased here as an admin
), only Pete's idea made me think.You can download and install the trial version of both and with some limitations (this mainly means size limit at export), can test both. They both have quite competitive prices, too.
Ah, understood.
I have downloaded the trial version of Podium and have tinkered with it, thus my leanings toward it. But before taking on this task (if I'm fortunate enough to win the job), I need to know if there exists software that can do what I need within SketchUp so that I can complete the entire job and not just 99% of it. So I ask the experts who have more applicable experience with the rendering software in question.
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Well, I am sure you can finish the job with SU. Having seen your other models, this one does not really look like much different.
Since your later render does not necessarily include difficult texturing ("just" - or mostly - some shiny paints), I am sure it won't be too hard to achieve the results either.
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@gaieus said:
Well, I am sure you can finish the job with SU. Having seen your other models, this one does not really look like much different.
Since your later render does not necessarily include difficult texturing ("just" - or mostly - some shiny paints), I am sure it won't be too hard to achieve the results either.
This is a relief to hear. Thanks very much for the assistance.
Yes, the texturing will almost entirely consist of shiny paints. That's primarily why I haven't bothered with texturing and rendering up to this point. This is an industrial application, so there's no need to get complicated with texturing.
Although I still can't wait to see what it would look like textured with just paint and rendered.
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@tk0001 said:
Although I still can't wait to see what it would look like textured with just paint and rendered.
Then get stated and hurry up!
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Messing around with Podium, putting together the proposal. I plan on adding these images to it as a sampling of what is possible. By the way, there are no supports and everything is floating in the air. This is on purpose, since this is a functional layout, with the intent of finding interference, so supports aren't necessary. This is also why every detail hasn't been included.
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If you did those chutes yourself, you are a fast learner. That is no mean feat.
Impressive model. -
@mitcorb said:
If you did those chutes yourself, you are a fast learner. That is no mean feat.
Impressive model.Thank you very much!
Yes, I did do those chutes myself. Everything in the model was created by me. Those spiraling concave chutes were by far the most challenging components I've done so far. I'm pleased with how they turned out.
Thanks again for the kind words.
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Here's the other side of the building.
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