Detailing Models Computer Very Slow
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I am a garden designer primarily working in Sketchup. I want to produce detailed models for presentation, but when I start adding more than a few trees and plants Skecthup gets really sluggish and / or freezes.
I have a 2Hz Intel Macbook with 2Gb of RAM. Is this just too old and slow, or are there tips and tricks anyone can suggest? I do not use high poly trees or shrubs where possible.
Is there also any way of 'roughening the edges' of sketchup to make landscapes look more natural? The standard face and edges I find too crisp and bland. Is this something I need to find in Styles?
Thanks so much,
stan
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Hi Stan,
Indeed your system is not very strong but even with a 3GHz+ processor and 4Gb RAM (that SU can use on a 64 bit OS), you will always "suffer" from this sluggishness when it comes to those ultra high-poly 2D trees.
The only solution would be to use 2D "face me" components or do the design in SketchUp and do the presentation / export images/videos in another program which does not have these kinds of problems.
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@stanbalder said:
but when I start adding more than a few trees and plants Skecthup gets really sluggish and / or freezes.
What kind of trees? How detailed are they?
Trees, bushes and other organic model can quickly turn out to have very high poly-count. I often come across models where a single tree had more faces than the rest of the model itself.
Always beware of how complex the components you add to your model are. If you are going to have a lot of them, find models with less polygons. Don't add more details than you need - if you're doing a big overview image then don't add tiny details. Always make sure you're aware of the scale you're working on (scale in terms of how far your camera will be from the objects).
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@stanbalder said:
Is there also any way of 'roughening the edges' of sketchup to make landscapes look more natural? The standard face and edges I find too crisp and bland. Is this something I need to find in Styles?
Edge styles eats up performance just as quick as having shadows enabled. Even colouring edges by color makes the model slower.
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Use several Scene tabs to remember views, layers, shadows and styles etc.
When modeling use one with a simple style - with no fancy edge effects, no textures, no shadows, no fog etc and with any layers containing unneeded entourage set 'off'.
You can also have a tab for 'troubleshooting' showing hidden geometry, in Monochrome mode etc.
You can have style that keep the current camera, so toggling between two tabs needn't change the view, just the rendering settings, visible layers etc...
Have other scenes set up for your actual 'presentation', using fancy edge detailing, full texturing, shadows, fog, entourage layers 'on' etc...
When you have a SKP set up that suits your needs then save a version of it [with its entities deleted etc] as the 'default Template'. That way you always have the same set up when you open a new SKP. You will also need to remove unwanted/unused components from the Browser [delete individual ones, or purge_all if you want to keep none], also unwanted scene-tabs, layers, materials and styles can be removed from the Template before the final save: you can have a Template [or even several Templates!] with your own customized preset scene-tabs[with view/shadows/etc], layer-sets, styles, materials and components; even if they are unused initially...
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