Complex perforated face

CokeNRumbaugh

Hey guys,
First off I appreciate the help and support this forum provides, its amazing the things one can learn from a helpful community.

Now for my problem, I am attempting to a image made up of dots (think Andy Warhol stipple) and use it to make a perforated face in sketch up, where the dots would be the perforations. I don't even know if this is possible due to the complexity of the photo (I'll try and post my example soon).

I have tried making the image a .png and rendering it from there but I cannot get the shadow to cast through the negative space of the photo. My last idea is going through and making each perforation a Block in AutoCAD and filling each Block/Component in sketchup then using these as a type of cookie cutter to make my surface.

If anyone has other opinions I'm all ears!

Thanks!

massimo

Hi, if you need a render of it a PNG image should work great. Which rendering app do you use?

CokeNRumbaugh

Podium, our only Problem is getting the shadows to cast in the negative space or the spots light would shine through in the perforations. I'm not very familiar with how sketch up reads PNGs does it let light cast through the spaces that appear transparent or read it as a uniform face?

TIG

Looks like you need to apply it as a material onto a sheet [grouped/component face - you can extrude it later if needed...] and punch the holes.
It's easy done by make the hole's outline and erasing its face, then copy the hole's perimeter in X using Move+Ctrl NNx where NN is the number of copies.
Then select the line of holes [perimeters] and repeat the copy in th Y by the required numbers.
The hole's should copy...
Now the object will cast shadows with holes.
If the holes are complex perhaps consider using my ImageTrimmer tool on a PNG based texture with transparent holes...

massimo

@unknownuser said:

I'm not very familiar with how sketch up reads PNGs does it let light cast through the spaces that appear transparent or read it as a uniform face?

In SU you have to cut the face in order to see a proper shadow, so you can follow TIG's advices. However there are integrated rendering apps (for example I know Twilight) that works fine with PNG's shadows without any cut in the face or any extra maps. Also most of the rendering studio applications works with alpha maps (or clip maps). Finally some rendering apps can automatically generate alpha maps from a PNG with transparency (e.g. Thea and Kerkythea).
I don't know Podium sorry.

CokeNRumbaugh

Thanks guys! Tig, great plugin it did its job wonderfully. Kerkythea was also something I tried which worked just as well. Thanks for help!