Can I create a simulation of a European city square in SkUp?
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Dear SketchUp Users, I wonder if you could offer me some guidance and help to point me in the right direction please. First of all, I have to point out that I have zero experience with 3D software - a total newbie. I am a Delphi programmer however, so I'm not totally computer illiterate - I do have some computer acumen. What I'd like to do is create a 3D-rendered simulation of the market square of the city of Bruges, Belgium... right down to each building. An ambitious project, I know... since I'm not really experienced at all in 3D computer-aided design softwares or techniques. Could it be as simple as taking photos of each individual building in the square (from different angles), and importing these somehow into SketchUp to render a 3D object of the building? Could it be even easier than that??
Having said that, it's not really important that the rendering be exact, so in that way I would actually be quite okay to have a "2.5D" rendering, so to speak. It doesn't need to be perfect from ALL angles - I just want the user/viewer to be able to "walk through" my city square at street level and see the facades of the buildings all around him. So what they look like from the rear or inside, I don't care! And since there is literally zero space between individual buildings in the real-life square in Bruges, I really don't care about rendering the proper "depth" of them.... I just care about the front "facade" of the building that is visible when the viewer is placed in the middle of the square and "walking" through it.
The other little twist to this, is that I'd like to "re-arrange" some of these individual buildings in the square. For instance, I'd like to take a few buildings from the central square of Brussels or Ghent and fit those in too... just to be annoying
You could think of it as basically building a "composite" square of buildings from different Belgian cities. Hence the desire/need to render each building individually.Now, I've been doing some googling around and I came across some interesting stuff regarding Sketchup. From there I happened upon this site:
http://sketchupdate.blogspot.ca/2010_05_01_archive.html
About 1/2 way down that page is an article called "Announcing the Google Model Your Town Competition winner". Here it shows a 3D rendering of the town of Barranco, Peru by a fellow named Jorge De Albertis Bettocchi... with links to his blog. As soon as I saw this, I thought "This is EXACTLY what I'm looking for!!!" and got all excited thinking I'd found the solution. I did some more research about Sketchup and then because rather confused about some things:
- how did Mr. Bettochi actually render all these individual buildings so perfectly? Did he walk around the town and take a million photos of each and every one... or are all these buildings already within Google Earth, and he just scooped them from there? (I have never used Google Earth and really know nothing about it... could all my desired Belgian buildings be residing, already-made, in Google Earth??).
- About 1/5th of the way down that same site I mention above, is an article called "Use your own photos in Building Maker". Upon reading about this "Building maker" plugin, this really seemed to confirm that Sketchup should do the job for me regarding applying flat photos to facades of buildings - and rather easily too. Only to find out that this plugin seems to be discontinued
So although it seemed that Sketchup might be the way to go, I'm now a bit confused about it. Could some kind souls shed some light on this for me please?
Thanks!
Shawn -
Hello:
Look at this, and other tutorials by Aidan Chopra:
Youtube Video -
Somebody already started with making your model...
see here: https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model.html?redirect=1%26amp;mid=b3487055a862b7d9876ecc0057b01177
edit: and here: https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/search.html?q=brugge%26amp;backendClass=entity
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Mitcorb & kaas, that is fantastic, thank you very much! So to create my model (or at least to get started), could it be as simple as downloading these already-created buildings, and plop them down individually into my own "square" in SketchUp?
Also Mitcorb, regarding the video from Aidan Chopra, is this how Mr. Bettochi from Peru created his models of the buildings in his hometown of Barranco?
Lastly, is the "Building Maker" tool still alive?
Thanks!!
Shawn -
Hi guys... are you still with me?
Cheers
Shawn -
@shawnh said:
So to create my model (or at least to get started), could it be as simple as downloading these already-created buildings, and plop them down individually into my own "square" in SketchUp?
Yes, it's that easy.
@shawnh said:
Lastly, is the "Building Maker" tool still alive?
No, Google retired it.
Why don't you do some research and look at some videos to see how people model buildings in Sketchup by using photos (Sketchup feature called 'Photo Match'). This video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSuDoX8SPtU, might be a good start.
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I'd reccommend doing some tutorials first, so as you know your way around sketchup before you start breaking things. The official tutorials are decent, so I'd suggest you start with them.
In order to produce results like you found for Barranco, you need only model simple geometry, and apply photos/streetview as textures. You can absolutely just drop the exiting models into your own - as far as I know, all warehouse models are in the public domain.
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It takes some imagination. It's hard to model / texture every building, but you can just look at various pictures of the town, download some buildings off the SU warehouse (there are hundreds of free models of buildings there) and place them in a convincing manner. You might want to use google earth, or google search a satellite photo of your town square. Drag the photo into SU, and use it to place the buildings. Enable shadows and you are done!
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Thanks Oceanembers, kaas and Lz! I think now my last question is - So to make a decent render of a building's facade, on average how many photos (from different angles) are needed? 3? 5? more?
Thanks!
Shawn -
@shawnh said:
So to make a decent render of a building's facade, on average how many photos (from different angles) are needed? 3? 5? more?
It all depends on the buildings you want to make into 3d models. For a 60-ies modern 'box' with a flat facade, one photo for each facade already could be enough. For a church you might need 50. It also depends on what level of detail you're trying to achieve.
Start modelling with Photomatch and you will soon find out all this information (and much more) yourself.
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You can just import buildings from the warehouse, or you can build them yourself.
It's generally a good idea to have the most detailed buildings in the front, and the most simplistic in the back. The simplest buildings (box models) need only one or two textures (one for the facade and one for the roof)
You can build very detailed buildings and add 3 or 4 textures (one wall texture, one roof, one wood, one glass texture, etc) http://i1308.photobucket.com/albums/s613/Lzoli18/Tiger%20Tank/final2_zpsc4bc61b1.jpg and http://i1308.photobucket.com/albums/s613/Lzoli18/Tiger%20Tank/final1_zps5e1ee45a.jpg
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Thanks kaas and Lz - I didn't know you could apply multiple textures... that's encouraging to know.
Cheers
Shawn
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