@glenn at home said:

There was a 'wink" in there Chip. Here's another one

Here's a wink AND I raise you a smile!

@glenn at home said:

Nice video and good points for sure. Your computer must be a dog SU Pro 2018 launches in 7 sec on my Dell OptiPlex 9020 (Intel i7-4770, GTX 645, 16 gb ram and 520 gb SSD) but yes Blender does it in 3.5 sec
Yes, I wish someone would but build a SU like interface on top of Blender.

My computer is plenty fast, plus I'm using SSDs as well. It has to do with the type and number of plugins you have installed.

@nickchun said:

Very interesting Chipp and well timed. I have dabbled with Blender on and off and like most people have struggled with the steep learning curve and UI. You make a good case for both, but how do you think you could replicate having a library of SU components in Blender that can be dragged and dropped as easily? This functionality has prevented me from trying to move to Blender. I have looked at the 'append' function but it still seems a bit long winded. I design kitchens so I have a large collection of cabinets saved as components which are dropped into models very quickly in SU. I would be happy to invest the time in learning Blender if I could find a few workarounds.
Nicely put together video by the way.

There are plugins for Blender that allow you to create and access your own libraries of "components" (Blender calls them instances) and add them just like you can do in SketchUp.

This guy has a pretty good interface that rides on top of Blender, making things much easier. It will be updated so it works with Blender 2.8 as well.

It would be cool to build a "SketchUp" like GUI for Blender. There are already push/pull plugins which work surprisingly well.

Hey gang

I'm working on a set of videos to help SketchUp artists learn how to use Blender. After spending some time with Blender, I've come up with 20 reasons why to switch, and a bunch of reasons why you may not want to switch.

This does not mean I will quit using SketchUp, it's just it won't be my go to modeler anymore.

Great stuff! Just found out about this plugin. Look forward to trying it

@jql said:

Well I guess most of us aren't happy with sketchup, yet I find it very useful and am happy with it, even with all the limitations it has.

Most insightful comment

@jql said:

So, we could reverse all this discourse and say: why aren't the other 3d modellers intuitive like sketchup?

Having taught a few workshops lately in using SU with VR, I can tell you the interface, while "intuitive" to you, isn't for others. An example: just having to Group objects before creating new ones touching them is confusing.

I routinely watch a good friend model in Blender and he's lightning fast and believes it has a superb interface-- which of course it does not. Everyone's baby is the best looking one.

You might want to check out the jitter plugin:

Stinkie, you need to review the difference between socialism and a free market capitalist society. There is no "law" that SU has to conform, other than the law of free people making up their own mind whether to use it or not. They are welcome to provide whatever product they want, just like Visicalc, Lotus 123, Kodak and many other companies who didn't shift with the times and customer needs.

To me, that's a bit like saying, "Asking my flip phone to be able to view emails adds too much complexity to a simple product and will eventually make it more difficult for everyone."

Times change. Products evolve. People's needs evolve. Asking SketchUp to do beveling on objects or work smoothly with large poly scenes shouldn't be asking for too much.

@fredo6 said:

I'll probably release my version in a few months, just need to have enough free time to concentrate on resolving a few issues to run the last mile(s).

Fredo

I look forward to that day.

Sadly, I have to agree with what's posted here. SketchUp keeps falling further and further behind as a real 3D modeler. It's now firmly in the "not going to change" mode with all the brain power for upgrades going into how to move it to the web as a hobbyist web 3D application.

I frankly believe the old data architecture model is flawed, and much like Adobe Muse (which Adobe recently end of lifed), there just isn't anywhere to go to fix it without a huge overhaul.

I've had several lengthy conversations with a couple of the top plugin developers here, offering $1000 to develop a community distributable filleting plugin which actually works correctly with non coplanar faces with the conclusion it's just not possible to do in SketchUp because of the internal architecture. ALL OTHER 3D POLY APPS HAVE SUCH A CAPABILITY-- just not SketchUp.

From where I sit, and as a very long time (also @Last) user, the core competencies of the SU dev team now pretty much reside in learning javascript and building web interfaces. I would even posit the real 3D dev talent for SU is in the plugin community, not with the dev team. Based on this, I doubt there will ever be any catching up done other than some slick web demos, like the recent one on how to create a screw using the web based version and no plugins.

Thank you Alejandro, I stand corrected!

Also, you can export frames as OBJ files for use in another program as well. Pretty snazzy.

Still, animations are not the primary use of this tool. It is certainly not at this time worked into any sort of animation workflow within SketchUp, which is understandable given it's nature.

I spend a bunch of time converting SU models for use in Unity. I really like SketchUp as an input modeler for Unity for a bunch of reasons:

• It has great smoothing control of polys which transfers nicely to Unity
• It has native Unity import (but I prefer OBJ export from SU)
• It is very accurate and can create water tight rooms which are great for not showing "light leaks" in GI renders.
• Instancing and local axis support in SU is superb for architectural work.
• Works well with 3D Coat (my UVMapper of choice) as well as Substance Painter.

I need to do some more 3D Coat tutorials for SU -> UVmapping -> Unity (or back to SU). I finished one recently, which is pretty basic:

But the real power in 3DC's UVmapper comes in when you need to unwrap complicated models. It has one of the best auto unwrapper's in the business.

I used it to unwrap the rolled up geometry (after being Flowified) in the image below. Unfortunately, Flowify cannot maintain UVs when Flowifying. The unwrap was done in only 3 mouseclicks. Pretty awesome.

I've had good luck with the Unwrap and Flatten Faces plugin.
https://extensions.sketchup.com/en/content/flatten-faces

Used it just yesterday with Flowify to create the rolled up reality board in this pic:

Just so everyone understands, Anton's plugin is not intended as an animation tool. Animating cloth is part of the simulation to achieve proper draping and is used in pretty much all cloth draping toolsets I know of.

So, if you've ever used Marvelous Designer, Blender, or even Poser, you'll find a similar workflow where you position the cloth and then let the affectors act on it (like gravity, wind, elasticity, density, etc..) until it comes to a final resting position (or before if you stop the simulation).

The animations seen above are just screen captures of the simulation as it happens. Sometimes, depending on the complexity of the simulation, the frames go by very slow-- and in those cases the screen capture video is later sped up. Hope that helps.

Been playing with the beta this evening and there are a couple of things worth noting:

Anton has done a great job, not only with the tech, but also with the interface AND manual (perhaps Rich helped!?) There are a number of great step-by-step tutes and anyone should be able to pick this up and begin draping cloth in under 10 minutes. It's really that easy. A truly stunning addition to SketchUp's rich extension library.

Here's a quick render of a chair with a towel (literally) thrown across it:

and one with laplacian smoothing turned on:

Using Anton's plugin.

And these latrine curtains in the Alamo Reality project (rendered in Unity)