I kind of see what the OP was getting at, but I really hope google doesn't take any cues from Pixologic/Zbrush:

Include loads of features that demo really well, but are more or less useless in practice
Have a tricky, unfamiliar UI for no good reason
Consistently miss promised release dates
Add new features before fixing existing bugs (oh, hang on...)

I know I'm just software bashing here, and I do actually like (and use) some features of Zbrush. But other than 'Google should do something new and impressive with SketchUp', I'm not sure what they could really learn.

I presume feature film work would come under 'digital entertainment'. I'd never really thought of the film industry under that banner before, but I guess it's quite a fitting description.

I guess that means that 3ds Max is like this:

I work in a large VFX studio. I've got unlimited access to Maya/Renderman, Houdini, Massive - you name it, it's all there!

They also, on my request, own a copy of SketchUp.

Sometimes, SU it all you need. And if it's all you need, it's probably the fastest solution too.

You don't need a ferrari to round up sheep - you need a sheepdog.

AJ

(And just to be really pedantic, 3ds Max wasn't used on Avatar, maya was, but I realise that's sort of beside the point for this argument)

I had looked into it, but the materials used for 3D printing tended to be quite fragile/brittle, as far as I could tell. CNC milling from real materials (i.e. aluminium) seemed the way to go, although more expensive.

I also couldn't find anyone capable of printing semi-flexible 3D models (i.e. hard rubber), instead of solid resin. Is this because it is impossible?

Thanks for the help

AJ

Thanks for the reply. I guess just 'giving it a go' isn't a bad idea. I just wondered if anyone had used SU for this sort of thing before, and whether there were any major schoolboy errors I should try to avoid...

Cheers!

AJ

The blue things are the banners that furl down in the final video, and show video clips of various teams as the camera pans past them.

I was working for a visual effects house, so I got to have a lot of input into the design of the sequence and layout of the shorts, but not the overall concept of the video. The art director from the agency gave me the brief for the stadium design - it had to have the Champions League logo as a roof (totally impractical), it had to have some very large banners around the pitch (totally impractical, as you point out), and it had to be the biggest, most impressive stadium ever (again, probably totally impractical).

I sat down and did the rest. The 3D model was then done in maya by the 3D modeling and texturing team at 'Rushes', based on my SketchUp model.

Thanks for your comments. I don't usually get any feedback on these kind of images after the job is finished - basically because it doesn't make any difference, and the client is long gone...

If there is anything bothering you about any of the images, chuck it out there, feedback is great.

I also forgot these, a rush job for the Macy's Christmas Special 'Yes, Veronica' (produced by 'Bitstate'). It's a steampunk-style heartrate monitor, a bit like a victorian ECG:

SU:

Are you sure it's Sketchup? I remember lego instructions looking like this in the early 90's, and always assumed they had some kind of in-house tool to produce them. That or someone really, really good with a technical pen...

Here's some examples of how I've been using SketchUp in my professional work. Some of these are pretty old, but I don't think I've posted them before.

UEFA champions league promo concept art:

SU:

Concept:

SU:

Storyboard:

SU:

Matte painting:

Detail:

The cityscape was modeled in 'blocks' in sketchup - I think I did about 4 or 5. The 'blocks' were then seeded to Vue as an ecosystem, and 'grown' into a fully fledged city. This is what the render looked like before processing:

'The Day of the Triffids' matte painting

Plate:

Paired with 'Vue', I'm actually using Sketchup quite a lot for photo-real matte paintings. I'm working on 'Narnia' using it at the moment, and it was used extensively on matte paintings for 'Leap Year'. Hopefully I can show some of that work later this year.

Here are the Sketchup elements for the above matte, based on a 'Camera Match' to get a correct camera, and then rendered in 'Vue' using my 'Camera2Vue' script. The buildings weren't SU (though I think they could have been) - they were already rendered in C4D and provided to me in advance.

Hope people like seeing these - I know SketchUp only played a small part in the creation of each one, but it proves it is a serious tool, capable of being used on the biggest projects...

Take care

AJ

I've got some product protoypes I would like to get made, probably on a CNC milling machine, since the runs will be in the 1-10 range. I'm thinking that a specialist CNC protoyping company will probably be the way to go, something like 'First Cut' (http://www.firstcut.eu/gb)

I don't have any experience with this kind of thing at all (I normally paint pretty pictures ), so I thought I would ask here for some advice. I don't have any pics to post (these are prototypes, after all), but examples of the kind of things I have in mind would be 1)an aluminium belt-buckle, all straight geometric shapes (no curved surfaces) and 2)a shaped shoulder pad, probably to be made from some kind of rubber

From the company website:

@unknownuser said:

At First Cut, we accept native Solidworks (.sldprt) and ProE (.prt) files as well as files from other CAD systems output in IGES (.igs), STEP (.stp), Parasolid (.x_t or .x_b), ACIS (.sat) and AutoCAD (.ipt and .dwg, 3D only) format.

What would be the recommended workflow, particularly if anyone has used 'First Cut' themselves?
Can I get away with modelling in SketchUp (which I know very well) and using an exporter?
What about the organic shapes - I'm capable of modelling them in SU, but would they work well for CNC milling?
If it's not recommended to use SU for this sort of thing, is there are cheap-ish Mac alternative to Solidworks/Shark/etc.?

I thought there would be a lot of info hanging around about this sort of thing, but a search didn't turn up anything. Apologies if I'm going over old ground.

Thanks for the help

AJ

Have you tried the 'SU2Vue' ruby script?

Vue is a great companion render to Sketchup, and it's even better when you can match cameras perfectly.

There's an old thread on this forum somewhere, but it's a script with (understandably) rather limited appeal, so it's pretty well buried. You can get it from my site, along with a very good tutorial pdf by solo:

Page not found – aj-concepts.net

(www.aj-concepts.net)

AJ

Really nice stuff - your work gets better every time you post...

I was interested by this comment, though:

@unknownuser said:

Keeping the opacity down around the 50% mark means that you can gradually build up colour in smoother transitions.

While this is true, I think it's a good way to hold yourself back in your painting, as well. I used to paint with really transparent brushes a lot, and it makes you work like a (really) old school painter, building up layers of colour in stages. Problem is that it tends to make the work a little bit 'muddier' than it might otherwise be - there are few areas of pure colour (if that makes sense).

I forced myself to stop using tranparent brushes for a while, and sometimes even worked with no opacity control at all on the tablet. My work got a lot worse for a while, and then a lot better than it was before once I'd learnt to paint a bit bolder. If you don't have any pressing client deadlines on a piece, I'd highly recommend trying this out. It'll be frustrating as hell, but it might let you push your painting to another level once you get your head around it.

Hope that helps. Thanks for posting...

AJ

It's a real gorillia - his name is Jonte...

It's sort of based on a little sketch I did a while ago of a couple of characters for a story:

But the commissioning editor wanted something 'a bit more sci-fi', hence the hover-car.

Took about 4 days to do the illustration in total - 2 days SU, 2 days paint. I'd normally spend a bit less time in SketchUp, and not really care how messy the geometry was - but this was for a step-by-step workshop, so I had to make sure it looked presentable at each stage.

Oh, and they were painted at twice HD - 3840 x 2160 px

Thanks for the comments everyone...

AJ

Thanks Solo!

Thanks should go to Chris Phillips for letting me include his 'SketchyFFD' script with the workshop, too.

I tried to give a couple of sites a mention in my article - Sketchucation, smustard and formfonts should all be in there.

AJ

I was commissioned to write a workshop tutorial for the digital art magazine 'ImagineFX' on using SketchUp as a tool when planning 2D concept paintings and illustrations. Since I could choose to paint absolutely anything I wanted, it was pretty good fun!

It's just been published in ImagineFX#47 in the UK - the rest of the world will get it in a few weeks time.

This painting is now out of NDA as well - done for the UK studio 'paintingpractice'. Not that advanced in terms of SketchUp usage, but I thought I'd share anyway...

Take care all

AJ

Oh dear - maybe I had misjudged this one slightly.

I've been putting this on my invoice ever since I started freelancing (and I looked up 'official recommendations' on how to word invoices). Not good to know I might have been 'rubbing companies the wrong way' for years...

I'm assuming all accounts departments know that invoices should be paid within 30 days, it's just that lots of them.... don't.

I sent an invoice through to a studio recently for some work I'd just completed.

It was laid out in what I understand to be a 'standard' way:

Invoice code
Tax reference number (proves I'm self employed, in the UK anyway)

My address

Client address

Itemised list of work completed

Agreed rate

Total amount due

At the bottom of my invoices, I then include the following:

"This invoice is due by 13th August 2009
Prompt payment is appreciated
Late payment can incur statutory penalty charges"

If the invoice is paid within 7 days, I deduct 5% from my NEXT invoice.

The studio manager approached me, and said that they had 'never heard of this before', and this it was 'a bit aggressive', and even 'a little unprofessional' and could 'scare off companies by looking like potential trouble'.

This worries me. What here could be construed as 'unprofessional'? Do you agree with this assessment? And how do you word your own invoices? Is it aggressive / unprofessional to expect to be paid on time?

(Note for US / folks outside the UK): Under UK law, if there is no contract to specify otherwise, an invoice is due within 30 days of receipt. After 30 days, you have the legal right to charge a late penalty charge (about £50), as well as interest. Most freelancers in my industry (media/VFX) don't do this, and wait for several months to be paid. Apparently 'this is how the game is played', which I have to say annoys me intensely.

Thanks for reading this mini essay / rant. Any suggestions?

AJ

Most of the post houses I've worked for in London who do TV work (idents, commercials, bumpers etc.) use Maya as their 3D solution, and then send the renders for compositing in Inferno or Flame.

Long-form TV tends to have the same pipeline as film - 3D in Maya, followed by compositing in Shake / Nuke.

Cinema4D seems reasonably common for motion graphics / logo work in TV, usually supported by After Effects for compositing.

Note that this is only based on my own experience - but as a (rough) rule of thumb:

3D applications:

Film / TV: Maya (occasionally Houdini or XSI)
Games / Arch-vis: mainly 3DS Max (occasionally Lightwave or Maya)
Motion graphics / Pre-vis: Cinema4D (occasionally Lightwave)

Compositing:

Commercials / Idents: Inferno or Flame
Film / TV long form: Shake / Nuke (occasionally Fusion)
Motion Graphics: After Effects
Games / Arch-vis: Don't really do compositing

There's neat little 'matte painters' trick to selecting trees. It works best when the tree is against the sky, so it might not solve all of your problem, but it's a good trick to know anyway...

1. Have a look in the colour channels of your image. It is likely that the tree silhouette is more visible (and less grainy) in one particular channel, rather than the colour image itself. It's usually the blue one, but not always.

2. Click on the chosen channel to highlight it.

3. Select all (cntrl-A or apple-A depending on platform) and copy this channel (cntrl-C / apple-C)

4. Click on the RGB channel

5. Paste your image. It should appear in a new layer, but still in B+W

6. Do a levels adjustment on this image to make the tree black, and as much of the background as you can white. It needs a bit of tweaking - maybe some curves / contrast adjustment, maybe even some dodge/burn, but it's usually possible. This image I will call the 'mask image'

7. Copy your original colour image into a new layer (this I will call 'layer 2'), and create a layer mask for it.

8. Select your mask image, and copy it.

9. alt-click on the layer mask for layer 2. This will being it up in the main image window (your image window will go white)

10. Paste your mask image

11. Click on your colour image to stop editing the layer mask.

I know that sounds a bit complicated, but I've tried to include ALL the steps, rather than assuming everyone knows every last command in photoshop.

Basically, you are using one of the image channels (usually the blue one) as a layer mask to extract the tree from the background.

There's a tutorial explaining (most) of this HERE:

http://www.phong.com/tutorials/mask.tree/

AJ