@unknownuser said:

Guzman That's very cool ...
Do you have any suggestions or tips for teaching kids in Sketchup?

Thank you!

Well, kids love sketchup,
so normally it's easy to engage them.
My main advice is to guide them with worksheets so that they have
a precise aim in each lesson.
Put great care in giving them clear and easy to read worksheets.
Introduce sketchup commands very gradually in each worksheet.

I normally follow a path that goes from simple polyhedrons (cubes ....)
to everyday objects (tables, chairs, ...) to more complex objects
(both mathematical or real objects).

You can check here what they've done last year in 18 lessons more or less.
Models are subdivided in collections according to lessons.

guzman.

thanks Puma and thanks Mike.

@bryan k said:

Does this animation use SketchUp Physics as well?

No physics ...
I forgot to mention
here's the model

and here's the drawing:

Here's a video (made by me) of Polyhedrons made by 13-year old students:

[flash=640,505:27685o0v]http://www.youtube.com/v/8TQGwBzQjag?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0[/flash:27685o0v]

@unknownuser said:

Kids must have loved that!

They're just waiting to be 13 to use sketchup in school
(I make them use it for lots of 3D geometry).
Some of them have donwloaded it and started to use it at home.
I may let them use it this year for some lessons
since they're really asking for it.
Normally I make them use Cabri and Geogebra when they're 11 and 12
for 2D geometrical constructions. You may watch a video here or here (and many more in my channel).

There are lots of things to explore about teaching math today.

guz.

@bryan k said:

Does this animation use SketchUp Physics as well?

Nope, just a fixed background and scenes, no physics.

@unknownuser said:

Always fresh style!

Merci Pilou !!

It's very simple but I thought it might be worth sharing ...

I teach math to 11-year old kids.
They also send me drawings and ideas.
So I decided to transform one of their drawings
into a 3D model
with Sketchup PhotoMatch

[flash=640,385:2bctvdmr]http://www.youtube.com/v/zM-YQ1q-qtc[/flash:2bctvdmr]

They loved the result,
and I do too.

I thought you might be interested.

guzman,
tierno.

(PS:
As you may remember
I let my students use Sketchup for math lessons
when they are 13
'cause that's when we study solid geometry in italy)

@Lobster:

That's interesting,
thank you.
I hope I'll be able to do something like that,
I still have to understand all the options of Twillight.

By carefully choosing the colors
I think that something like that would fit nicely as a forum banner.

@d12dozr said:

... Jeff's is even better

Yes, Jeff's idea it's a very nice improvement to the model and solves the problem of rendering the grid.

@unknownuser said:

We can modify the model?

Yes.

I know this isn't in the rules of a "Render This" challenge,
but in this case improvements and even bigger modifications of the model are allowed.

I uploaded Jeff's improvement here (with his name)
I've set the background color to the one it should have in the forum.
I've also set the point of view it should more or less have (but of course you can modify it).

Edit: I've told the mods in SpeedSolving.com to come check this thread.

@unknownuser said:

.
here's a skp that might make for a more interesting render ...

a quick test render showing what the model looks like.. (3D cubes keep the grid for the signage and thicker/outlined letters)

That's way better than the original, the solution is simple and effective.

@solo said:

Refering to the banner used on this rubrics cube solving website: http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/forum.php
...
best render I'm assuming will be used for that site?
...
Have fun, get creative, use lights...do your thing.

As Marcus (d12dozer) explained, I made this model as a candidate banner for the SpeedSolving.com Forum. They actually chose this banner.

I was now trying to give the banner some cool effects (some materials, some lights, some shininess) but I am completely new to renders so I really don't know how to do it.

I think that the SpeedSolving Forum will be happy to accept improvements of the banner.
I can show this thread to the mods fo SpeedSolving so that they can see what's going on and have some interaction.

I'm not interested in being the only author of the banner, so if someone comes up with a nice rendering we can share the authoring of the product.
Let me add this is a "for fun" project: no money for me or anybody.

A technical aspect: I think it would be nice if the grid in the banner also shows in the final result 'cause it recalls the squares of the Rubik's Cube, but Marcus explained me that the solution is to add the grid again after rendering.

@d12dozr said:

You can also export a Hidden Line view from Sketchup with the same view as the render, and overlay it in Photoshop (or similar software) using 'Screen' to allow only the black lines show.

Thank you, I didn't thought about that possibility,
it doesn't look to difficult to do. I'm gonna try.

@d12dozr said:

Solo has set up a 'Render This' challenge here. Hopefully this will help you get started rendering and give you some more ideas

That's awesome, Thank you.

I've succeeded in creating my first rendering
(of course it's not good at all, but at least it worked).

One problem I see is the fact that the grid in my model is made only by edges
and therefore the grid disappears in the render. Probably I should have done the black narrow stripes of the grid with narrow faces ...

thanks again for your suggestions.

@d12dozr said:

It works inside Sketchup as a plugin, no conversion necessary.

Yeah, thanks, I've downloaded it and added it to sketchup.
I'm trying to figure out how to use it ... so many options!
(I've also downloaded the manual).

Also: sorry, I dind't mean to hijack your thread
but I thought it was the right place to ask about renderings of a rubik cube.

Thanks for your suggestions Marcus,

I'm gonna try the free version of Twilight,
hope I'll understand the settings ...
btw: does it accept skp files or do I have to convert them somehow?

@d12dozr said:

since its a 'fun' project for you, maybe we could make it a 'Render This' challenge? That would give you some good ideas help you get started rendering.

That would be great ...
and ... if you come up with a nice result we could show the banner to
the SpeedSolving forum, I'm not interested in beeing the only author of the banner.

I was also thinking if the reflection effects of your rendering would fit in the banner ... I'm a total noob in this area.

@TIG:
There are lots of people that actually build the 1x1x1 Rubik Cube, just to complete the collection. But a true Rubik fan would argue that yours 1x1x1 Rubik cube has the wrong color scheme (green is not adjacent to blue in the standard color scheme)

I really like your model and rendering.

I made a simple model for the SpeedSolving.com Forum
and I would like to add some rendering effects
but I never used a render.
Do you have any suggestions ? ...
here's the model.

thank you.
guzman.

I also like the idea of Rubik Whatever for the speed modeling challenge

Some time ago the SpeedSolving Forum
(about solving the rubik's cube as fast as possible)
was looking for a new logo and forum banner.

I posted my idea there, made in sketchup:

Here

They actually chose this one
[here's the model]

I know it's a simple Sketchup model
but I just wanted to share the fact that it's being used like this.

The cube in the banner is a cube scrambled in such a way as to have an "S" on four of its faces (for SpeedSolving) [scrambling the cube like that is an idea discussed some time ago in the forum itself].

guzman.

@broomstick said:

mi ha incuriosito in particolare il guerriero con la spada enorme

Eccolo qua, durante la costruzione ...

Tutti i modelli sono disponibili in rete,

Paolo ed Enrico hanno fatto questo guerriero strano insieme.
In questi casi,
invece di riportarli alla normalità io preferisco sempre
lasciarli fare di loro fantasia:
lavorano di più, lavorano meglio, ed alla fine viene fuori
roba che risulta interessante ed espressiva.

Il guerriero l'hanno chiamato stewie perché ha la testa come stewie dei Griffin's ...

altri modelli di Enrico (44)

altri modelli di Paolo (37)

ciao,
guzman.

@broomstick said:

un lavoro molto interessante. E direi che una delle finalità didattiche è anche di dare vita a un poema che potrebbe sembrare pesante e invece è una delle storie più belle di sempre

grazie,

è vero, hai ragione,
preso dagli aspetti matematici e tecnologici
ho scordato di menzionare l'ovvio aspetto interdisciplinare,
forse anche perché è venuto fuori da solo
senza che fosse previsto in origine.
E' stata un'altra insegnante che mi ha detto:
"visto le belle cose che fate, non potreste fare un video
sulla guerra di troia così lo usiamo nello spettacolo di teatro e musica di fine anno".
Ho accettato volentieri ed eccolo li ...

guzman.

@tridem said:

:thumb: Complimenti per il lavoro...è il caso di dire epico! e complimenti per l'idea di usare sketchup, immagino risvegli parecchio la voglia di imparare nei ragazzi. Una curiosità: la finalità didattica qual è esattamente?

Ciao, scusa il ritardo nel rispondere.
Le finalità sono varie:
abituare a visualizzare ed a modellizzare oggetti 3d,
con ciò facilitare la comprensione della geometria 3d,
usare prismi, coni, piramidi ecc, per creare qualcosa di significativo e con ciò dare valore a ciò che studia a matematica,
costruire oggetti 3d complessi come dodecaedri, icosaedri, ecc dal gusto prettamente matematico,
coinvolgere emotivamente ed attivamente i ragazzi in modo da rendere la materia viva e vissuta sia nelle ore al computer ma anche nelle ore in classe,
usare il computer per tenere attivo il cervello di ciascun ragazzo,
imparare l'uso di tecnologie non banali con le quali avranno in una forma o nell'altra a che fare nella vita e nel lavoro ...
abituare all'uso di sketchup come strumento per studiare e capire problemi di matematica,
usare gli strumenti di sketchup per capire la struttura geometrica di vari tipi di solidi (prismi con push/pull, solidi di rotazione con "seguimi", ...)

Forse, anzi sicuramente, ho scordato qualcosa,
ma come si vede ce ne sono di processi che si attivano nella mente dei ragazzi in un progetto del genere ... E questo è quello che più conta secondo me.

ciao,
grazie
guzman.

@flipya said:

... I love your project man! It's great how you mix 'boring old' math with computers and 3d animation. I bet there's not a single student who didn't love doing this, and I'm sure by doing this you've taught your students a much better feeling for triple-axis systems. I was always pretty good at math, but some of my classmates weren't. They would've had great benefit from a project like this.

Thanks Philip,
you found better words than I was able to find to describe the meaning of this project.

I plan to describe better the whole project and to make the worksheets freely available but it's gonna take me some time and I need to translate them.

guzman.