Hello! And I have a question
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Hello, I'm new to sketchup. I bought sketchup pro because I would like to create 3d anatomy tutorials (I figure it will take me a few years, I want them to be accurate).
I have a problem: None of the solid tools work for me. I create simple objects like a cylinder intersecting a cube. When I try to click on any of them it says 'not a solid'
What is going on here!I want to use the solid tools mostly for the eraser function, some of the anatomy I realize would be faster to create if I could 'sculpt' by erasing bits of other shapes, I'm hoping the solid tool will do this.
Thanks for any help -
Hello and welcome.
The solid tool only work if you group your shapes first (or make components).
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Well, I'm still a newbie so I have to ask: how do I group my shapes?
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Select all that you want to group > right click on the selection > Make group...
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While SU is a great and simple 3D app, it is not the best for anatomical drawings. I would recommend using DAZ or POSER for such drawings. I think, but I'm not sure, there is a way to import DAZ models into SU and vice-versa.
The main advantages of DAZ/Poser are: anatomically correct base models; anatomically correct poseable joints and realistic skin tones. These are very difficult to model in SU.
Now if you wish to stay with SU for your models, get a few plugins to make life easier doing curvy surfaces. Primarily, Fredos CURVILOFT. There are several other surface and mesh tools also available.
Another tip is to work in 10X scale to achieve the finer polygons without getting near SU's small entity rendering problems.
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Thanks for the help!
How different is Tgi3D's from Fredo's what are the advantages/disadvantages to each (I don't know anything about either one)?
I'd like to stick with sketchup mostly for the ease of use. I'm just beginning to use sketchup and I estimate this project won't start for a while since I'm just learning how to use sketchup and I want to make sure I understand everything before beginning so I don't make an error that would require me to restart.
DAZ and Poser look nice but what I'm really looking for is to make models for dissection to help medical and human anatomy students so the skin tones won't be too important. What will be important is the ease of going between layers to understand the relations. I figure I will just make separate layers (different layers of muscle, skin, nerves, fascia etc.). This will definitely end up being probably around 10-20 layers for each section of the body (head, thorax, abdomen, upper and lower extremities).
There is already good 3d anatomy software out there (primal 3d I believe may be one of the better ones, but it is close to 1,000$ for the whole body) but I want to make one that is freely available and I think sketchup may be able to do that. How much of a problem is the rendering of small objects? I don't know too much about this problem.
This is all planning right now while I learn about sketchup. Hopefully once I feel comfortable I'll post a game plan so I can get a good idea of the best way to organize this from more experienced users -
Hi, Architeuthis:
I think most folks around here would suggest that you get used to the native toolset and fundamental techniques before plunging into some of the more complex scripts. However, that is your choice.
I would recommend Fredo6's Curviloft before TGI3d, considering your level of experience. However, you may be a quick study. Both are great. And believe me, nobody wants to hold you back. But nobody wants you to experience too much frustration, either. Be sure to look at the threads in this forum on both of those toolsets. Visit TGI3d website.
As far as I know, there is almost nothing in Sketchup or any plugin that ends up being a one way path. Esc, Ctrl Z, Edit>Undo, reopen file no save, are all methods to back out of an unwanted action.
Now, I can see your subject choice and what you describe getting to be really heavy files. Many folks here handle files with hundreds of megabytes of data. To do that requires the right hardware, information you can also find in this forum. -
Hey thanks for the feedback.
I'm definitely going to practice a lot before I start undertaking this project, looking at some of the models it looks like there is a lot of nuances to creating good models. I've been watching the google videos on using sketchup, is there any book or resource that you can recommend for learning some of these nuances? These forums are a great but I'd rather get something a little more straightforward that explains things in more detail. Not so much an instructional but something more about making the choices in 3d modeling and explaining the nuances like why some people prefer quads when smoothing meshes and why in some meshes arrays of small polygons are used instead of larger ones which to me would seem to make it faster. I'd love to read more about this if there is a resource or are these personal choices?
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it! -
Like you, I am a student, not a professor in Sketchup. I think I will remain that way.
The stuff you are asking comes both with time in the trenches, actual modeling, seeking out info on specific questions, reading on topics here in the forum, even topics which seem not to have direct bearing on the question at hand.
In particular, regarding the "quads", "tri's", and the density in a mesh, some rendering programs prefer one over the other for texturing, or placing image samples of real materials. This can really show up when using materials with directional patterns, such as wood grain. This may not be a problem for you, however. The density of the mesh, or number of polygons per unit area, is a balancing act. The more you got, the more accurate the mesh in "depicting" the object. The downside is that the file becomes heavy with more vertices, edges and faces. Vertices in Sketchup, however, appear not to be the problem.
There was a book on Sketchup by Bonnie Roskes which helped me in the beginning. The text had a fairly conversational tone, and it introduced increasingly advanced concepts.
Again, in my case, I started with Sketchup, Blender, and Rhino at about the same time. This helped me understand a lot about modeling programs. I did a lot of googling, and reading topics in Wikipedia, Blender related blogs, and so forth.
I think I will stop here for now. -
Hi, Architeuthis:
Here is a current topic with links to learning. See the response from Gaieus: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=36926&p=325388#p325336
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