Newbie question

Gaieus

Downloading... I really wonder what you managed to put in there that bloated the size to 85 Mb!

monks

Haha...well it's nothing special as you'll see- just an exercise in using Sketchup. I'm a terrain modeller, but I'm interested in learning 3D modelling more generally.

monks

Gaieus

Well, it's not hard to fix however dues to this extremely complex model (man, you have built those towers up of individual stone blocks??? ) it is hard to explain what has to be done. Also you have some serious scaling issues with those tower components but it needs some investigation. I think I will make a simple file later.

I am running a clean-up plugin ATM and will upload for you somewhere.

Gaieus

Well, uploading to DropBox. Will come back when done.

Just a couple of notes till then.

When you enter the terrain group, all the stuff that is not inside that group fades away and turns into the colour that is set as your background colour (in your case some goose-shit green). So that's what you see there.

Now inside, there is the terrain and a bunch of towers (components) that should be rather outside. You can select each one holding down the Shift key and clicking on them after each other. When done, just Ctrl+X > exit the terrain group and Edit > Paste in place.

Note however that two towers are not turned into components yet but are made of smaller groups (or components?). They need to be "extracted" a similar way but the selection is more tedious.

Gaieus

Well, here is the file. Let me know when you have downloaded.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25025526/CarnDum_castle17.skp

monks

Thanks a million! The scaling... Yes, there is a problem with the topo map reference scaling- I inherited that (the mountain is stretched way too high). The only way I can keep the building scale correct is to rescale the mountain. I'd prefer that the buildings were in correct scale. But as I said this really is an absolute noob attempt, and I figured I'd learn a lot of stuff from just assembling models and stuff (most of them are from the (warehouse). I never intended it to be anything more than a learning experience- it got a bit out of hand though heh.

I did try the cut and re-paste in place but I couldn't see any difference. But if it *is * making a difference then that's great.

I has some problem with the terrain mesh import from dem format. I use Global Mapper and it sometimes writes out of range values (or very low values) on some of the terrain edges- a product of re-projected pixels falling partially outside the export bounding box. Well I could have corrected that problem elsewhere before import but I figured I'd learn one or two basic things if I corrected it in Sketchup. I was not entirely successful in that but once I got the photo to drape I figured it was "good enough".

I just think I need to separate the models out from the terrain mesh because I need to replace the photo drape and I figure it would be projected over those buildings. But I maybe wrong about that.

monks

Gaieus

It would not be projected on the buildings but you can also replace that image in another way;

make sure that what you replace it with, has the same aspect ratio (can be bigger or smaller tho) and that the major features are in the same places.
Now go to the Material browser > In model and select the current image then the Edit tab.
Somewhere in the middle there is a "use texture image" and next to it a folder like icon - press that, pick your new image and simply reload the existing one.
And again, in SU we drape geometry but project textures.

monks

Ah Gaieus, I'm only using Sketchup 7, it won't load in mine. Sorry man. I'll try your instructions again with the objects.

monks

Gaieus

Sorry, and now I remember that it warned me. Uploading again - do not know when it finishes...

monks

The texture replacement from the materials editor is the perfect solution. Thanks Gaieus!

monks