Posts made by chippwalters

Hi all,

Working on a kitbash library for SketchUp and would really like to be able to make my own component icons. Sorta like this:

OR. Is there a 3rd party component palette one can use? Thanks!
Some components below...

Frenchy, I knew you would be able to find something!
I'm working on my own SU version of hardops.

Does anyone know of a plugin, like the knife tool in Artisan, only it cuts a solid into two using only a polyline? VisuHole won't do this (plus it's buggy as all, working only sporadically and Bugsplatting a lot).

@anton_s said:

I'm still trying to decide whether to include it in the upcoming release of MSPhysics or write a new plugin that will specifically focus on soft body simulations.

Regards,
Anton

Anton,

I've been waiting for a soft body plugin in SU for quite awhile. Please do make it. And I'm happy to

1. Beta Test
2. Create a YouTube Video explaining it
3. Prepay mucho $$$
4. Give you free horseback riding lessons at the ranch

Thanks, too, Rich.

Good info. Thanks.

Yeah, I should fix that. I also seem to remember something about 2017 fixing it. But alas, perhaps not. Ugh.

Hey guys,
Updated my SU on my new Surface Pro 4 and the icons are most tiny. Almost unusable. I have "Large Icons" checked but still too small. Searched Google and here. Any help on how to fix?

thx, C

Monsieur Pilou! Thanks for sharing. Didn't know that. Did you use Fredo scale to make the curved geometry? Also what to do you use to make your GIFs?

Hey guys,

Back on the PBR to Unity pipeline and workflow. Spent tonight documenting the sum of what I’ve figured out so far in three videos:

1. How to build and quickly UV map in SketchUp for Unity
2. How materials work in Unity (not the way you might think they do).
3. How to create your own PBR textures and materials from pictures you take on your phone or files you find online

Some of the images I knocked out tonight for the tute:

And here are the videos:

https://youtu.be/oxbbupOjSww

https://youtu.be/Q0G1SMaeEwI

https://youtu.be/saEmsjpzpF0

Thanks for sharing. Quick look tells me is really more of a UE4 tool than Unity. Unity has pretty nice support for SU whereas UE4 has lots of trouble importing SU native (at least it did a year ago when I last tried).

So, I've been learning more about the SketchUp > Unity workflow. Lots of interesting possibilites. The new UV Mapping program, WrapR looks to be of great help in getting mappable UVs into Unity.

Another thing of interest is the fact Unity has a direct SU import capability-- though it's only updated to SU2015 necessitating you 'Save As' a 2015 version. The really cool part is it appears SU is ideally suited for creating low poly models for the following reasons:

1. SU by nature is a low poly modeler unless you're doing SDS.
2. SU has terrific vertex smoothing and it's WYSIWYG so it displays great in Unity. This is a problem for some other programs export of OBJ
3. Unity has a restriction of 65K polys per object, which works well with SU as it's not that often one group or component has 65K.
   Unfortunately, Unity doesn't treat SU Components as Unity Prefabs (their instancing terminology), but they do have vertex snapping so it is possible to import a single SU Component and instance it (including mirroring) to specified locations.

More to follow..

I'm familiar with Thea, I actually own a copy. I have not tried it since I now have compatible GPUs installed on my machine.

Unity provides animation capabilities that neither Thea nor Octane can currently create in reasonable amount of time. And just in as important for my needs, you can output to a VR headset.

I'll be sure and check out Thea soon. Thx!

Yep. That's a really good point. I too have had trouble importing files into UE4. FWIW, I use 3Dcoat to automatically UV map SketchUp models when I need to. It has a really fast mapping algorithm that generates pretty high-quality maps for any type of obj.

I'll have to test.

Unity has a very nice INSTANCER called Prefabs and I used it to create a very quick 'space corridor' type of model. Here are a few renders using the technique described in Part 4. There's only ONE area light at the end of the corridor. The rest is lit by the emissive textures.

Spent two weeks with Octane over the holidays. Could never get it to work properly with the SU plug-in. Even they admitted as much and refunded my purchase. They are now working on a new and total rewrite. For what it's worth, Octane standalone is truly stunning and created both biased and unbiased "photographs." I so wanted it to work.

Check out my YouTube videos on SketchUp to Unity, you might find it to be a good and free solution. Also, Octane has announced they will be releasing a plug-in for Unity sometime this quarter.

Hey guys,

I've been tasked to create a VR design lab for an east coast consumer products company. So, I've had to dive into some interesting topics, including creating low poly models and scenes which render in real time on the Vive. The goal is people being able to walk around and "touch" the products.

One of the pipelines I'm working with is SketchUp direct import in Unity-- then setting it up as close to photoreal as I can. While I'm no Unity expert, I have covered quite a bit of ground in a short time and created these 4 videos to explain my workflow.

Also, I know UE4 has a better renderer, but the learning curve is significant and the workflow can be much more difficult. Plus, Octane has announced a baker for Unity which should be released sometime this quarter which should make things much more interesting!

Here's the collection of videos:

https://youtu.be/U3bN14B7nmE

https://youtu.be/Sgp5GP5oIvw

https://youtu.be/DR41M8hdHOU

https://youtu.be/VwP9ZdTyQS8

@sdmitch said:

Just the type of mindless exercises I live for. Over the weekend, I tried various scenarios and this was the best of them. Created in less than a minute under SU2016 64bit.

Usage:Extensions>SDM Tools>Misc Tool>Random Cubes

[attachment=1:1at0ardt]<!-- ia1 -->Random Cubes.jpg<!-- ia1 -->[/attachment:1at0ardt]

Wow! Amazing. Thanks so much for sharing!

And the render...

Thanks everyone who contributed. Much appreciated.

Frenchy, thanks for the Voxelize mention. I started using it, but then just couldn't figure out how to easily match the logo with the underlying grid while easily keeping things separate.

Instead I used Cotty's advice and quickly created a grid comprised of single GROUPED sqares, then placed the logo beneath it and another plane beneath it as Cotty did and projected to Infinity using the Throw It plugin. Needed to keep the squares GROUPED or else they wouldn't 'throw' correctly.

Once I had individual square poly groups in place, I then EXPLODED them and then creatde a single mesh Group-- one for the base and one for the logo.

From there it was simple to apply Greeble to the group to get the effect I wanted. On the logo, I used the 'keep top faces grouped' Greeble option so that I could then AGAIN Greeble to get a slight bevel. I would've done the same for the base, but Greeble took so long to work through it, I decided to leave as is. (I don't even know how long as finally I just went to bed).

Here's the final. Now off to create a KeyShot rendering of it.