Mark,

Thanks for your comment.

The easiest way to understand how the 2nd image was made is to take a look at the model.

I've placed a copy of it at the bottom of the following web page.

Site Not Found

(dws.editme.com)

It's called klee3.skp.zip

Fred

Thanks to all of you who provided positive feedback. It is very much appreciated.

Fred

I've been working for a while now on using SketchUp to create abstract art works. I thought I'd share a couple of exports here and see if people have any reactions.

Thanks guys! Appreciate the feedback. Now here's a question. Might there be clients for houses of this peculiar design style among all the many Tolkien fans out there? I'm particularly thinking of aging boomers (my cohort) who are looking to build retirement homes, would like to go green, and wouldn't mind a few playful allusions to Middle Earth.

Of course, there are still just a few minor little tiny construction details to work out, but there are a lot of smart creative people here ...

Fred

Trees are by Alan Fraser.

Alan, Thanks! Already using it in my current model. BTW, there is a little artifact lineish thing just along the top edge of the image.

Beautiful model! The detailing is wonderful. Bring on the actors!

Interesting discussion guys. I discovered Fuller as a young teen. Might have been in a Whole Earth Catalog. It turned out my dad was a bit of a Fuller fan and had some of his books. I read/skimmed through those and found some of his work interesting but a lot either too technical or too philosophical. I tried a couple of other times in high-school and college to read more of his work but none of it really clicked with me.

I think Fuller's impact on the culture reached a high point with the building of the US pavilion geodesic dome at the Montreal Expo in 1967 and has never really recovered from the fire that burned the outer shell of that dome in 1976. I remember watching some PBS show on the history of architecture in which the host (perhaps Brendan Gill) explicitly used the fire to dismiss geodesic structures as anything more than radar domes or architectural curiosities.

As I started playing with TINs (triangular irregular networks) in SketchUp they reminded me of Fuller's work. However, I found them more compelling than the geodesic stuff because they support much more fluid, flexible and organic shapes. They are not constrained by Platonic ideals.

The more I played with TINs the more I wanted to build analog physical models out of TIN lattices. I searched for toys or building modeling kits that would support the building of TINs and found nothing of any real use. I settled on using straws and pipe cleaners and produced a number of works which confirmed my belief that a TIN building toy has a lot of potential.

When I heard about the Buckminster Fuller Challenge I decided to blow $50 and submit an entry proposal centered around developing a TIN building toy.

Some models related to this toy idea are on the warehouse here.

I also have some information on the Open Architectural Network here.

I'm also developing ideas for using a TIN roof structure which allows for non-rectilinear house shapes. Some models related to that are on the warehouse here.

So I feel that I'm working in the vein that Fuller developed but perhaps freed -thanks to computer technology and SketchUp- from some of the constraints that limited him.

TaffGoch, I've always admired the work you've share on the 3d-warehouse! It's great to have those models available to use and learn from.

Fred

Dean,

Thanks so much for the thoughtful, kind and useful feedback! Much appreciated.

That third image definitely has some depth and complexity which the eye likes exploring. The curvy follow-me shapes in some places create smaller "framed" areas that seem almost like glimpses into other spaces that would be fun to poke around in. Three of the four textures had a common element of gold colored threads/lines/tubes, and these seem to play off each other well. If I continue to experiment with these I'll put more effort into creating/choosing compatible textures.

A large version of the image is available here.

David and Jenu, Thanks for the comments!

David, the images definitely have that wild free-form energetic look of a lot of sixties art where people were throwing paint on canvas. Jackson Pollock was perhaps the premier exemplar of this style. When I'm creating the freehand lines for the Follow Me tool I'm swooping the mouse around in a way quite similar to how he would swoop a paint laden brush over his canvas. It's groovy man.

Jenu, the last image is definitely very rich with color and texture. The textures are from four models I made last summer. I put a lot of time and effort into these and it is satisfying to be able to get some additional use out of them. For anyone interested, images of these models are located here.

Fred

Tried a few new ideas this week. All these were done with the Follow-Me tool. Some of the work is visually interesting. I'm mining my old SketchUp models for most of the textures. The images below are in the sequence they were created.

Modelhead,

Thanks for the positive feedback. It always helps!

There are a bunch of issues around selling images of SketchUp models. Some of these are technical, like finding a good way to print models, but most have to do with the nature of art itself and the market for art. At the inexpensive end of this practice of hanging images on walls, there is the poster market. People purchasing posters don't really care that a poster is mass produced. Low price is crucial. At the expensive end of the art market exclusivity is key and price doesn't seem to be much of a factor. In the middle -primarily lithographs and the like- scarcity is artificially created by the artist destroying the plates after a certain quantity of numbered prints are produced. I think something similar will be necessary for SketchUp art (digital art in general) if we want to sell our work outside the poster market. One interesting possibility is to sell a certain number of unique (numbered) views into a model and then destroy the model. The same practice could apply to walkthroughs of models.

I'd love to hear what others have to think about this issue.

Fred

Jim,

Thanks for the shout out.

A couple of responses to the other posts.

I'm very consciously trying to produce art with SketchUp. I'll leave it to others to decide if I'm succeeding. (Personally, some days I think I'm getting somewhere, other days I think it's all pretty lame.)

For some reason SketchUp is a medium which I find compelling. I think it has to do with the intuitive and fluid nature of the interface. I've been playing with the program since soon after it was released, however the 3D-Warehouse has been an incredibly motivating factor for the development of my work, both as a source to learn from other models and as a source for feedback about my models. (For instance, Jim Foltz's models almost always get me thinking in new directions.)

I believe the ideal presentation medium for SketchUp art is a computer screen running a high-resolution walkthough movie. I produce 1024 x 680 walkthroughs of most of my models and display these on a 24" Apple cinema display at my school using a custom FileMaker kiosk-mode solution that randomly picks the movies. Most of us are not yet at the point where we can dedicate large flat-screen monitors - and the computers to drive them - to the display of artwork. However, given Moore's Law forces it seems possible that eventually many people will do this.

Since the ideal display medium is a few years away I thought I'd explore the idea of selling prints of models. Yes, anyone can download the models from the SketchUp warehouse and make their own prints, but few people have printers that will produce high-quality 24" x 36" prints. This past winter I downloaded a free copy of Kropotkin's "The Great French Revolution" from Google Books and after all the hassle of printing it (I just couldn't read it on the screen) I decided I'd never do that again. The cost of buying the book is much less than the cost of the time and effort of printing it myself. So, I have a little hope that a few people will opt for the simplicity of buying the prints.

Regards,

Fred

Extraordinary! If god is in the details then this is a sacred model. You've brought the WTC back to life. The renders really capture the way the site looked and felt. Very, very impressive.

@unknownuser said:

Yves Tanguy Art!

Yup, I definitely see that. Looks to me like Tanguy must have had a really early beta of SketchUp.

Thanks for pointing out Tves Tanguy. I wasn't aware of his work.

Roger,

Wind loading! Darn... I totally forgot about that... back to the ol' SketchUp file.

We (my wife, younger son and I) visited Arcosanti two years ago in March. Quite desolate and sad I felt. The bells were nice though and we have one on our deck. On the same trip we visited Taliesin West, parts of which I really liked. The walk along the raised triangular terrace that juts out to the south of the main building is one of the magical places in architecture. Wright talks a lot about the similarities between music and architecture and while walking along the path on the edge of that terrace, looking back at Taliesin, the building had an impact on me like a Beethoven symphony. Just wonderful. I've wondered since about the relationship between Soleri and Wright. I did a little searching on the web but couldn't find anything.

Where in Arizona are you located?

Fred

Dylan,

Delightful model. The sense of place is palpable. In looking at the image I feel like I could walk out back and grab two apples from what looks like an apple tree, and while eating one myself walk over to the hedge on the left and offer one to the horse over on the hill.

Fred

This are images of models in which I first created tube likes sculptural shapes by driving different faces along curved paths. Then I "painted" the resulting surfaces with projected textures. I think this approach actually has some possibilities for producing compelling abstract art.

This image is straight SketchUp. Used the scale tool to resize the projected image to be about the height of the elevations in the TIN. I hope this will help avoid the jaggy edges that mar the previous image in this thread when I merge this TIN with a second TIN.

Here is an image of the SketchUp model.

Pete,

Nice texture. I'm getting high just by looking at these things. Changing the angle of the face with the projected texture just a few degrees has a big impact on how the texture appears on the TIN. I tried a few before settling on this one.