Question about adding details?
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hi. ive been modeling in sketchup for a while now and im getting a bit better. something that i don't understand is adding details to a model. or rather, how much details? if you look at the image, the space ship has a left and right engine. now, if you look closer, you will see that the engine on the left has so much detail that when its looked at in normal size, all you see is small white lines, now if you look at the engine on the right, you can make out the engine details much more easy as there a lot less detail. so how much detail is enough?
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@honoluludesktop said:
even the engine on the right might be considered as having too much detail.
im not sure i understand? are you saying its not good to add details? what about this guy
http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=15765 is it a matter of monitor size? i mean surely there has to be some detail? -
This is a question about composition. A good rule of thumb is to detail everything to the same level, unless you are trying to focus attention on something. Unless you are going to add detail to the rest of the model, even the engine on the right might be considered as having too much detail. Good start.
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Yeah, it is a matter of balance. If the ship in general won't have more details, either of your engines may be considered "over-detailed" unless the aim is to showcase the engine itself and model the rest only to put the engines into context.
Many details never hurt actually. If you plan to end up with some 2D renderings of your project, a straight SU output can be made in a higher resolution then when resampling, the edges will be thinner thus not seem to congest so much. If you use a PR renderer, details will only ad to the model.
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And notice that the tank example is showing very few lines. It either has all lines turned off, or he has hidden/smoothed all the lines. So if you want to model like him with lots of detail, then accurate form becomes important, therefore more detail is important and you should plan on hiding most of the linework.
Chris - I don't know if that made much sense.......
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Sorry, you misunderstand. For example you detail the engine with a spiked ring, but the rest of your model doesn't have the same amount of detail. Unless, as I said, you want to call attention to the engine. then its alright.
I just looked at my last post, and noted that it was miss worded. Have corrected it.
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Seems in this particular case not a problem
It's symmetricSo delete one of it and continue your modeling
And made a copy or a mirror at the end! -
nice start
Good thing you could look at is components. I can have an object that is 10mb big, make a component of it and put it in the scene a couple of times. You will notice the file size stays still low. So best to take the model, cut it in 2, make a component of it, and flip it. Sketchup can take quite a punch in polygons, but will slow down your work on the model quite heavily. I recently made a model, over 2 million poly count and su still go fine. If your model get too slow, copy the part out you want to detail up into a new drawing and paste in place. Work it up and just copy it back to your model. By this method it will allow you to work on a complex model easier.
Hope this helps -
if your aim is straight SketchUp export with edges switched on, it makes sense to keep the detail reasonably low (set yourself a limit of e.g. 5cm and never draw anything smaller than that, if possible). and then, as the others said, keep the same level of detail throughout the whole model.
if you go for rendered images, as Gaieus said, the more detail the better, because you won't have any lines and therefore you won't have the problem of too many lines creating one dark mess in the distance.
silver_shadow just mentioned his 2 million polygons model. I guess he referred to his 'eye candy 2' model. thats a perfect example, how high detail is beneficial for rendering
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