Exporting or duplicating line styles in another app

cdde

Hello!

Sooo... I've created a very simple model (the most basic of basic house) and have applied a fancy line style to it. I would love to be able to export the 3d model with the line style (possibly as a texture) but have not been able to do that... That has lead me to exporting the model, opening up in 3DS and seeing if I can duplicate the effect.

I tried exporting a mesh and adding squirrelly lines manually and then reapplying... failed.
I duplicated the house and then stuck a shrunken copy of it inside the original, applied the mesh I created before to the outside... but made all 'white' space invisible. Closer, but still... failed.
My third attempt was wrapping the house in invisible walls... and then apply the mesh to those walls. This allowed me to get those lines extensions you would be able to get within Sketchup. Better again, but still not what I want.

While I would love for someone to give me a solution, I don't think it's available... Just wondering what other people have done and attempted to do in order to duplicate line styles outside of Sketchup.

Thank you! I wasn't sure where to put this thread... I am a newb... but I see possible sections this could also fit in.

Gaieus

Hi Craig,

One thing you need to understand with those fancy line styles in SU: they are all just visual effects. A line (edge) has two, separate functions;

to act as a vector (to define faces enclosed by these vectors)
and to be displayed in various ways in SU (if you like anythingmore than the very basic style).
Now while the first function can be exported to various formats, the second, visual effect is rather special and particular to SU itself. Some sketchy styles even go further; they are made of raster images (thin lines made in some image editor) and since this feature is not supported in other applications, it is obvious it cannot be exported.

Then I see you are trying to solve this with workarounds. Those may work more or less but since I am not an expert at 3DS Max, I cannot advise here.

IF you are going for some static images only, tweaked/rendered outside SU AND IF you are able to export the same camera view from SU and Max, you may be able to overlay the edges with the rendered building.

Just an example (not Max but the technique is the same) here:
http://twilightrender.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=18211#p18211

Dave R

Further to Csaba's comments, the sketchy or 'squirrelly' lines you see in SketchUp are only PNG images that SketchUp aligns with vector lines you have created. Those sketchy lines are not geometry and they aren't material images either.

If you want to go to another application for rendering or something, you could create an image export from SketchUp using the sketchy line style in Hidden Line mode and then use this for an overlay on your rendered image. Here's an example of what I mean

Hidden Line Sketchy image export

The image above as an overlay on a rendered view of the same scene.

Unfortunately, unless the other application supports the application of sketchy line styles and does it the same way SketchUp does, you won't have any luck exporting them.

cdde

Thanks for confirming that I wouldn't be able to export... Appreciate the reply's.

Now I'm just stuck with trying to duplicate it... I'm sure I can, computers are magical after all It's just figuring out how to do it... easier said then done.