Will SketchUp Ever Wear Big Boy Pants?
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We all hoped that SU will one day transition to a "can do" to a "do it all" software. While other pro CG artists can smile at what SU have achieved so far (credits to independent plugin writers).Being realistic about it, SU has achieved what other had about decades ago. Expecting them to jump over will be a move backwards. Many of my colleage still thinks Sketchup is a joke...and wont fit their standards.
And so we were excited about SubD and UV unwrap unveiled in the recent years which has been there 15 or 20 years ago in many 3d platforms..
SU will always be here for the ease of use. But I agree that major overhaul is needed. Having said all this.. I still love SU and would like to hear the future plans..
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Sketchup has a lot of potential but have come around to a viewpoint that there will always be a lot of things that just will not work within the original framework. Frustration is a hard task master that has led me to criticise Sketchup unfairly but the past is always 20/20. I doubt that the product will catch up with software alternatives any day soon, just too big an ask and the program shell too 'bastardised' to adapt much without a total rewrite from scratch. Perhaps that is already happening, or not.
A lot of years ago I got into computer gaming and in particular, 3d 'adventure' type games and there was a particular piece of badly written code that had five different timelines. The problem was it had more bugs than an ant farm, a cell in Colditz castle was supposed to be escapable but the hidden tool needed was no there. If you open the window leaf you ended up in another timeline. I talked to the programmers (Bullfrog in London) and the guy I spoke to said, "So? I stopped counting bugs at 200". So, the Sketchup team are way better than that approach.
I wish that Blender had a ui attachment like Sketchup so, I have to admit that Sketchup IS pretty good at what it does best, just a little too buggy from years of patching. -
I guess we wait for the day that Autodesk makes Trimble an offer they cant refuse and then we all die a little inside that day.
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@valerostudio said:
I guess we wait for the day that Autodesk makes Trimble an offer they cant refuse and then we all die a little inside that day.
Lol! You want to pay all your subscription fees to AutoDesk, don't you
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@andybot said:
@valerostudio said:
I guess we wait for the day that Autodesk makes Trimble an offer they cant refuse and then we all die a little inside that day.
Lol! You want to pay all your subscription fees to Autodesk, don't you
I's prefer to pay fees to a company with a soul, like the SketchUp team. Just really need to push things to the next level and in order to do that, I need MORE POLYS!!!
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What people seem to fail to see in this thread is that Skechup already wears big boy pants.
Sketchup is probably the most widely used 3d software on earth. There isn't a bigger boy.
So, we could reverse all this discourse and say: why aren't the other 3d modellers intuitive like sketchup?
Blender, 3DS max, Autocad, Revit, Archicad, Rhino…
They all fail much more than sketchup.
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@jql said:
What people seem to fail to see in this thread is that Skechup already wears big boy pants.
Sketchup is probably the most widely used 3d software on earth. There isn't a bigger boy.
So, we could reverse all this discourse and say: why aren't the other 3d modellers intuitive like sketchup?
Blender, 3DS max, Autocad, Revit, Archicad, Rhino…
They all fail much more than sketchup.
Wide adoption is not equivalent to high performance. I like and appreciate the intuitive interface of SU, but it would be a lot more useful for me if it were the front end of Blender. I think the point here is that SU fails to match the performance standards of other current 3D software, not about how widely it's used.
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@jql said:
So, we could reverse all this discourse and say: why aren't the other 3d modellers intuitive like sketchup?
Having taught a few workshops lately in using SU with VR, I can tell you the interface, while "intuitive" to you, isn't for others. An example: just having to Group objects before creating new ones touching them is confusing.
I routinely watch a good friend model in Blender and he's lightning fast and believes it has a superb interface-- which of course it does not. Everyone's baby is the best looking one.
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There's always several ways of looking at things.
As an architect I can use sketchup while I could never use blender or Max.
As a gerneralist modeler I can use sketchup while I could hardly use Revit or archicad.
As a render artist I can use Sketchup I could hardly use autocad.
Rhino can probably be used for all this stuff… That shuts me up but it's still less intuitive than Sketchup (for me)
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@jql said:
There's always several ways of looking at things.
As an architect I can use sketchup while I could never use blender or Max.
As a gerneralist modeler I can use sketchup while I could hardly use Revit or archicad.
As a render artist I can use Sketchup I could hardly use autocad.
Rhino can probably be used for all this stuff… That shuts me up but it's still less intuitive than Sketchup (for me)
Honestly sounds like you are using the wrong tools for those jobs.
For the architect I would use Revit or Archicad
For the render artist I would use Blender or Max
For the generalist modeler unless it very specific I would still use Max or Blender.
For mechanical models use Fusion360
Use AutoCAD for any 2D technical drawings.
My take on it anyway
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@jql said:
So, we could reverse all this discourse and say: why aren't the other 3d modellers intuitive like sketchup?
Because those are capable of doing complex stuff. Stuff that just isn't intuitive.
As per hipster law, I hereby include a picture that adds a certain ironic je ne sais quoi to my -obviously insightful- comment.
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Well Stinkie, I think you've jumped the lamprey on this thread.
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Well I guess most of us aren't happy with sketchup, yet I find it very useful and am happy with it, even with all the limitations it has.
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@jql said:
Well I guess most of us aren't happy with sketchup, yet I find it very useful and am happy with it, even with all the limitations it has.
Most insightful comment
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@jql said:
Well I guess most of us aren't happy with sketchup, yet I find it very useful and am happy with it, even with all the limitations it has.
For what I do, I am 95% happy with SketchUp and I don't ever see myself not being a user but I would like to push on the topic of why can't the viewport handle (even with the beefiest of GPUs) a high polygon model imported into it?
That's all I am asking in this thread. It has been proven by dozens of pieces of software that it can be done. Why can't SketchUp do it, and why can't that issue be fixed? Remember when we were stuck in 32bit? That was addressed (thank God).
This is the next big fix, and I say "fix", not a feature, not a plugin, not a new UI or redesign, a FIX. Because as far as I am concerned it's a bug. Without enough understanding of the technology, I honestly wonder if it is an OpenGL thing.
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I just read that Apple with deprecate OpenGL in Mojave... so maybe a rebuild will be on the way?
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A few years back I was expecting and anticipating a lot for each new release...and got very disappointed when it didn't live up to my hopes and expectations.
Now I'm not so disappointed anymore.
I came to the conclusion that I shouldn't expect anything for the next version.
SketchUp IS still a great modelling app and my preferred 3d tool for what I do but I now believe that it will never be what I had hoped.
It's not what I want, but not expecting it to become what I want has made my life a little easier. -
@pixero said:
A few years back I was expecting and anticipating a lot for each new release...and got very disappointed when it didn't live up to my hopes and expectations.
Now I'm not so disappointed anymore.
I came to the conclusion that I shouldn't expect anything for the next version.
SketchUp IS still a great modelling app and my preferred 3d tool for what I do but I now believe that it will never be what I had hoped.
It's not what I want, but not expecting it to become what I want has made my life a little easier.that's sort of where I'm at. I just feel sad sometimes I can't finish a project without the slow-downs and workarounds. And I am not at all into advanced modeling (nurbs, quads, whatever). But it has enabled me to do a lot of things over the years and I also see it is good for a lot of people who don't have the time to delve into modeling expertise, but still want some sort of 3d design.
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@pixero said:
A few years back I was expecting and anticipating a lot for each new release...and got very disappointed when it didn't live up to my hopes and expectations.
Now I'm not so disappointed anymore.
I came to the conclusion that I shouldn't expect anything for the next version.
SketchUp IS still a great modelling app and my preferred 3d tool for what I do but I now believe that it will never be what I had hoped.
It's not what I want, but not expecting it to become what I want has made my life a little easier.a lot like life.
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