So whats up with Sketchup??
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The world is dying from a pandemic, people are unemployed or struggling as work is slow, not to mention the whole political shitstorm caused by racist cops, what a great time to announce they will be spending more for less and there is no other real option but to rent their beloved software, great timing.
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I was never a "full time" 3D / Sketchup user. But moving forward it's going to be harder and harder to keep paying for it. I purchased a sub license last year to work on some projects that only needed the SU style output without a 3D workflow.
Over the last few months, that has changed (the usual covid reasons) and have dug into finishing a project using Sketchup. Because I know I want to progress back into Unreal later down the line, I'm likely going to move the project in Blender and finish off all final rendering in that. Then in part 2, it will be all Unreal.
I'm staying in SU only because of my own muscle memory at this point. Great for quick visuals, but not great for any real deeper workflow (games, vr, animation). I had this very discussion with Alejandro Soriano and the Sketchup team on Youtube about this---Sketchup doesn't have the workflow leverage that exists in the environments that I work in. It can be a part of a workflow, but frankly, in most development environments, it's an option, not a requirement. Why use it when everyone else is using Maya/3D max and our target is Unreal, Unity, or proprietary engine? Level Design teams wouldn't use it, they just go straight into Maya, or better yet Unreal.
Now all that being said, I'd still use it as a modeling tool and final output render if it operated as fast and well as any other 3D tool. Any other tool I use operates 10 times faster than Sketchup with the shadows on. Sketchup also has trouble rendering clean shadows. Pretty unacceptable.
Granted, I might be pushing that limit of what Sketchup really wants to be. I get it. I use a lot of things outside their intended use. But that's fun.
Sorry, didn't mean to hijack this thread with TL/DR post, but this has been something that I've been working on daily for months, and it's been a question that I ask daily as well.
So yeah, what's up with Sketchup?
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From my posts at:
https://forums.sketchup.com/t/same-sketchup-you-love-a-new-way-to-buy/127392/59?u=chippwalters
and
https://forums.sketchup.com/t/terrible-move/127409/14?u=chippwaltersI'll c/p them here:
The newest Blender, available in beta now, has push/pull, advanced snapping modes, a crazy fabric brush where you can actually paint folds in fabric, and so much more. The released version has all those things except push/pull.
The Blender interface just keeps getting better and better. The booleans are ridiculously good and Blender has parametric modeling with modifiers, which makes edits simple and quick. And, real-time photoreal modeling and animation.
Yes, it is way more powerful than SketchUp and it does take time to learn, but with the largest installed user base in the world, and by far the most tutorials and courses of any 3D program, (on YouTube and elsewhere), you owe it to yourself to take a look. Not to mention many of the big studios are now including Blender in their production pipeline-- and some of the biggest names in 3D graphics are now supporting with millions of $$$ in yearly donations.
And it will always be free.
A caveat: if you are a big architectural firm and need the collaborative features of SketchUp and Revit, then Blender is not for you. And if you absolutely must have Layout, then Blender is not for you. And if you don’t like trying new things and still watch a CRT TV, then Blender is not for you.
AND
A personal story for those who fear Blender
A couple years ago, I was invited to teach the teachers VR at Art Center in Pasadena-- the preeminent car and concept design school in the world. I would be working with some very smart professors, but I didn’t know how much they new about 3D modeling, so I instructed SketchUp Make be placed on all the computers there-- thinking that would be the easiest way to get everyone up and running.
As a SU user, I was of course convinced it was the easiest product to learn-- if you have a hammer then every problem is a nail.
When I got there, I found out, to my surprise, how frustrated my audience was at trying to learn SketchUp. The whole “sticking to the ground unless you group it first” thing was annoying and difficult for them to quickly understand. Then there was the automatic snapping stuff, which sometimes happens and sometimes doesn’t-- again quite confusing. There were many there who had experience with more traditional poly modelers like Modo and Max, and so I said just use what your used to.
And that’s the whole point. If you have a hammer, you tend to pound nails. A screwdriver–you screw screws. It just depends on what you’re used to.
Afterwards, I came home and rethought why I liked SU so much. Well the fact is that I could just model much faster in SketchUp than I ever could in other programs. So, one night, as I worked in SU on a big interactive project, I asked one of my buddies who was a Blender expert, to have a “model-off.” I was sure I could show him I could build things faster in SketchUp with all my plugins, decades of experience and everything.We chose something simple at first while we shared a GoToMeeting screenshare.
1,2,3 GO! I was off and running and about half way through-- he said, “Done.” What? Obviously it was because the model itself was so simple-- so I next chose a more difficult model. Same results.
It was that exact moment I decided I needed to learn Blender. Took me a couple months, but I did it and would absolutely not turn back. I don’t miss SketchUp one bit. I will always use the best tool for the job-- I get paid $250/hr for my work so money’s not the point for me. In fact, truth be told, that Blender was free was IMO a detriment to me considering it.
I’m glad I did.
This does not mean Blender is the perfect tool for everyone. It worked marvelously for me.
BTW, this guy does amazing things in Blender in only 10 minutes!
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Yep that cool !
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@chippwalters said:
The newest Blender, available in beta now, has push/pull
Yes, good to see this happening. But WHY do they have this stupid handle?!? Is snapping working with push/pull? And numeric inputs? How would you snap with this unprecise handle? The videos i watched sadly didn't show any precise push/pull operations.
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Well Chip, we knew that they would edit your posts. I'd expect a ban from the forum any time now. Nice to be able to come here and "vent" if needed.
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@glenn at home said:
Well Chip, we knew that they would edit your posts. I'd expect a ban from the forum any time now.
And this is the trump world we live in. Scream and lie loud enough and people believe you.
And people wonder why I have stopped answering on all forums. -
Thanks, Chip! I don't know if I mentioned this before, but your videos on Blender and SU setups helped me progress in that direction. Glad to see push and pull are in the beta. I'll have to try that out.
Meanwhile, I'm just working on the UX interactivity and story with my project in SU, and when I'm ready to finalize rendering, I'll dig deeper into Blender. I'm already planning to rebuild one of my characters in Blender so I can properly rig him and pose him.
Stay safe everyone!
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@monsterzero said:
Why use it when everyone else is using Maya/3D max and our target is Unreal, Unity, or proprietary engine? Level Design teams wouldn't use it, they just go straight into Maya, or better yet Unreal.
Now all that being said, I'd still use it as a modeling tool and final output render if it operated as fast and well as any other 3D tool. Any other tool I use operates 10 times faster than Sketchup with the shadows on. Sketchup also has trouble rendering clean shadows. Pretty unacceptable.
Granted, I might be pushing that limit of what Sketchup really wants to be. I get it. I use a lot of things outside their intended use. But that's fun.
Man, I can fully understand your point, but I have to partly disagree.
What you say it's absolutely right if you are talking about VR gaming or character animation, but doing VR/interactive for archviz/retail stuff with Sketchup and Unity is perfectly possible (using tons of plugins and some tricks of course).I did a tutarial about a VR furniture asset unwrapped and vr-ready, I'll relase it when Thomas will relase VT2 which is still in beta (and it'heavily used in that tutorial alongside subd, qft, wrapr and substance).
That's not ideal compared to 3dsmax, but hey.. we are doing apple VS oranges if we compare a 1000€ forever Vs a 2000€ per year 3d packages.
I'm trying to propose to sketchup team support for the beloved 2nd UV channel and better uv tools (basically incorporating and evolving Wrap-r, if possible).About Blender.. sure that's free, EXTREMELY powerful and constantly growing compared to SU, but still not perfect for my workflow, because I have to deal with lot of .dwg and .skp from architects, and at least in the past that was a no-go for Blender.. I don't know if this has improved with blender 2.8 that would be awesome, let me know.
I can't show any professional work due to NDA, but here is a wip from a personal project I'm putting toghther in my spare time.. All of this is modeled in Sketchup and rendered in Unity HDRP.. I'm nearly done with the car and plan to texture it ASAP.. then I have to finish detailing and texturing the track (I plan to do a couple more tracks when I'm done with this).
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since forced subscription : SwitchUp to Blender and Rhino Grasshopper !
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@numerobis said:
@chippwalters said:
The newest Blender, available in beta now, has push/pull
Yes, good to see this happening. But WHY do they have this stupid handle?!? Is snapping working with push/pull?Yes, it is all quite easy. If you want to snap, just hold the CTRL key down and it will snap to the nearest vertex, edge, face depending on what you're trying to snap to. Or you can "enable" snap mode and it will just automatically work. Think of how great it would be to "enable" or "disable" Blender's snap mode!
I think one of the reasons they have the handle is because, unlike SketchUp, you can select multiple faces grouped together and push/pull them together-- not unlike an addon by Fredo. This way they give you somewhere to "grab."
Also, they have standardized using lot's of different widgets to do most things. These same things are instead provided by the wonderful community of addon developers for SU-- who sadly have no decent UX/UI api to be able to "standardize" on gizmos or other common interface elements. So, unfortunately everyone has to develop their own UX and interface elements for how to manipulate objects.
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Blender CAD Transform FTW!
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@panixia said:
About Blender.. sure that's free, EXTREMELY powerful and constantly growing compared to SU, but still not perfect for my workflow, because I have to deal with lot of .dwg and .skp from architects, and at least in the past that was a no-go for Blender.. I don't know if this has improved with blender 2.8 that would be awesome, let me know.
Nice post. I used SU with a Unity project a couple of years ago and it did work well, with the exception I ended up running into a problem with too many polys for SU-- but worked fine in Unity. I think the number was around 400K.
Anyway, you might be interested in this SketchUp to Blender IMPORT addon-- costs a little, but looks like it's worth it.
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@glenn at home said:
Blender CAD Transform FTW!
OOPS, I see you were referring to something else...I'll leave this for others interested. Thanks for the win
This video goes into how to import SU models at scale in Blender. It's from my EEVEE Interiors rendering course.
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@chippwalters said:
Yes, it is all quite easy. If you want to snap, just hold the CTRL key down and it will snap to the nearest vertex, edge, face depending on what you're trying to snap to.
Thanks for the info! I will try it.
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@dave r said:
@calypsoart said:
But there is no going back from Rhino.
Interesting.
[attachment=0:w22be0mk]<!-- ia0 -->Screenshot - 6_2_2020 , 3_58_41 PM.png<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:w22be0mk]What is interesting in that image. I don't get it.
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@chippwalters said:
Anyway, you might be interested in this SketchUp to Blender IMPORT addon-- costs a little, but looks like it's worth it.
Thanks for the referral. I bought BlendUp (SketchUp to Blender exporter, worked rather well) back a while ago, the add is still around on SketchUcation but the product isn't compatible with the newer versions of Blender any longer.
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@juju said:
@chippwalters said:
Anyway, you might be interested in this SketchUp to Blender IMPORT addon-- costs a little, but looks like it's worth it.
Thanks for the referral. I bought BlendUp (SketchUp to Blender exporter, worked rather well) back a while ago, the add is still around on SketchUcation but the product isn't compatible with the newer versions of Blender any longer.
Yeah, this is an entirely different one and works with current version ss
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damnit sketchup. wish I could get a 2016 license. not sure if i'll pick up a classic for the rest of time.
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