Sunday, 4 December 2011 - Wednesday, 14 December 2011

The challenge is to model a snowmobile.

@unknownuser said:

Snowmobile

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A snowmobile, also known in some places as a snowmachine, or sled, is a land vehicle for winter travel on snow. Designed to be operated on snow and ice, they require no road or trail. Design variations enable some machines to operate in deep snow or forests; most are used on open terrain, including frozen lakes, or driven on paths or trails. Usually designed to accommodate a driver and one passenger, their use is much like a motorcycle and an all-terrain vehicle (ATVs) intended for winter use on snow-covered ground and frozen ponds and waterways. They have no enclosure except for a windshield and their engine normally drives a continuous track or tracks at the rear; skis at the front provide directional control.

3D Warehouse Tag: 3D Challenge 132

To learn how to participate, please visit the challenge blog at: http://sketchup3dchallenge.blogspot.com/

This topic was because it was suggested by 3 different people. Please post a suggestion in this challenge's blog comments so I can know what would interest you.

http://sketchup3dchallenge.blogspot.com/2011/11/3d-challenge-131-banks.html#comment-form

Sunday, 20 November 2011 - Wednesday, 30 November 2011

For this challenge you will be asked to Occupy SketchUp and model a bank. Piggy banks while cute and oh so cuddly in a cold, hard, porcelain kind of way, but they do not apply to this challenge. We are talking about commercial banks, the kind where you deposit your hard earned cash and fees begin to dwindle down your balance.

You can design a hometown branch, a credit union, a big institutional city bank with elaborate Gothic architecture or anything in between. In addition to this you may choose to model a bank of the past, present or future. And please, no mattresses, coffee cans or anything shoe involved because that may indicate you actually do that...

3D Warehouse Tag: 3D Challenge 131

To learn how to participate, please visit the challenge blog at: http://sketchup3dchallenge.blogspot.com/

@aaronfeld said:

Removing the back faces could help but it may not be the most efficient use of your time. Layers are the way to go however, the benefits are far greater then going around deleting back faces. Thats not to say that you shouldn't do it, just pick the right thing to spend your time on. Oh and 12gb of RAM is absurd so you should be fine.

Thanks.

Okay, I understand what you mean, it's what I thought but I didn't want to assume. I do have a pretty fast CPU and 12GB of RAM so maybe that's why it is only beginning to slow down. I do have a lot of geometry that isn't shown that could be removed. Every component and group are solid shapes so I guess removing the back sides of the objects that are not seen could help. I'll have to test it out to see if there is any benefit.

Challenge #130 is now closed and it is time to vote for the winner.

The entries can be see here:
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?q=%223d+challenge+130%22

Vote Here:
http://sketchup3dchallenge.blogspot.com/2011/11/sketchup-3d-challenge-130-flying-cars.html?showComment=1321485355159#c4797949614416783460

@aaronfeld said:

That's pretty awesome! The blog showed the interior but can we get some close ups here?

Most of the interior is still set to default material but this will give you an idea of what it looks like. You will noticed that everything is aligned to a grid of 4'x4' squares 6 inches apart. I did this to make the ship completely modular in the interior.
Entry:

Corner Detail:

Landing Bay/Hangar:

Bulkhead Section Doors:

Corridor:

@aaronfeld said:

Seeing your skill I would assume you know but if you have everything in groups/components you can and should put stuff in layers. It'll help you keep your frame rate up and make it easier to model. I have a model with over 274000 polys and with everything properly layered I run like I was modeling with only a few thousand. Nice job!

Yep, everything is component-ized but not in layers. Now when you say put stuff in layers, do you do it so only the part of model you are currently working on is active? I always have the rest of the model hidden when working on components, is that not enough? I have 1,084,145 faces, is that a lot?

@roidsan said:

Charles,

It is such a kick to be gone from the forums for a couple of months and come back and find something so great like your ship. It is wonderful for sooooo many reasons...the complexity is so exciting, the anticipation for the detail you will accomplish is intense, and the joy, I am LOL, because it is so great that someone has the time and the deep inspiration and appreciation of a sci fi story to do that model. Hurray!! and I look forward to more posts of progress. Oh... and your blog is also great. It is such a pleasure to be able to follow the development of projects like yours.

You go guy!!!!

Lloyd

Thank you Lloyd, I better get to work on it then!

As the new admin for the Google SketchUp 3D Challenge I would like to breathe some new life and energy into the challenge. One thing that would help me out a lot would be suggestions for challenge topics. If you have a moment, what topics would you like to see? Thanks.

@marian said:

With the additional modifications and renders somewhere around a day and a bit, but that included also alot of time I didn't do anything to the model.
It didn't take a lot of time to render, I made various renders of different angles at a resolution of 1024x768, nothing fancy, so it was quick.

I saw your renders on DeviantArt and I have to say your car looks amazing in red. The only problem with it is that I don't own one!

@krisidious said:

awesome... the Force is strong with this one...

Thanks, that's the plan. Live long and prosper... I mean, use the Schwartz, Lone Star! Wrong again...

@marian said:

Hi Charles, I just finished and uploaded my flying car. This is the first time in a long while since I participated to this challenge. http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=b0640cf2841d942ec591f57871f2161d&prevstart=0
It lost its appeal over the years, I think you'll have to make a few changes to the challenge in order to get more people and you'll also have to make it more visible. Until this post I had completely forgot about it.

One idea would be to offer as prize for the winner a render or renders of the model at a specific resolution. Of course this won't appeal to people who have renderers and know how to use them so also other things should be changed.

Thanks for coming back to the challenge and great entry as well. You are right about the visibility issue and that's why I announced the current challenge here as a start. As stated on the blog I am looking for new ways to showcase the winners of the challenge and I welcome any suggestions you or anyone here can offer. The challenge blog is currently undergoing a face lift and my goal is to give it a fresh new look.

I like the idea of a rendering prize but I would need someone who is good at rendering to help out because I am very new to rendering and generally just display my work from 2D exports from SketchUp.

How long did it take you to model your entry? And then then to render it? I really like what you did.

Given my username you can tell I am an avid Star Wars fan so of course it is only logical that I would attempt to make my own starship in SketchUp. Well, this would be my second ship. My first ship served as a proof of concept that I was actually capable of designing a ship. This one is proving to be a monster and SketchUp is struggling a bit alrready. The hull has taken shape recently after a long time creating the interior layout. It is lacking a lot of detail but the main structure needs to be finished before I get there.

You can see the progress on ship from the beginning on my blog at http://jedicharles.com/

Front View:

Rear View:

Top and Bottom Views:

Front and Rear Parallel Projection:

Escape Pods:

Observation Tower and Hangar Entrance:

Starboard Docking Ring (no ring yet):

I recently became admin for the Google SketchUp 3D Challenge and I wanted to announce the first challenge with me as admin. Here is the description of challenge #130 - Flying Cars:

@unknownuser said:

Dates: Thursday, 3 November 2011 – Wednesday, 16 November 2011

For this challenge you will be modeling a flying car or a hover car. Flying cars may be defined in many ways but, for the purposes of this challenge a flying car is defined a vehicle designed for 2 to 6 passengers, that is operated by its owner for daily use, that’s primary means of movement is through flight and would take the place of today's automobile. This also includes landspeeders, airspeeders. Jetsonian aerocars, VTOLs, etc.

You may model an existing flying car design, real or fictional, or you may design your own out of your imagination. Your submitted flying car may have wheels but they are purely optional. The vehicle’s means of propulsion may be based in reality or complete sci-fi non-sense (and even though my handle is JediCharles and have a fondness of sci-fi tech, it is still non-sense).

To learn how to participate, please visit the challenge blog at: http://sketchup3dchallenge.blogspot.com/

@numbthumb said:

Just a random thought - that landing gear has a very similar appearance to those of Eagle One that I have attempted to model some time ago.
Sorry for the OT [attachment=0:3fatuy8x]<!-- ia0 -->footpad.jpg<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:3fatuy8x]

I don't consider this off topic at all. Your design seems a lot stronger than mine.
I am working on a much bigger ship now (about 2.5x the length and 3 primary decks). It's going to need something even more substantial for it to land. This time it's going to have a landing bay with the capacity to hold a small but well-known freighter and a few star-fighters. I hope SketchUp can handle it.

@liam887 said:

Looks pretty good, I would beef up the landing gear tho it looks like a heavy ship for such small legs

You are absolutely right about the landing gear. I already decided to address that as part of a "refit" later on but for now we will have to pretend that the repulsorlifts are holding most of the load. The Lucrehulk-class Core Ships seen in Attack of the Clones were supposedly so massive that they used the same principle; their landing gear were only used to stabilize and anchor the ship. My idea is to replace them with legs that simply flip down and lock into place. That should hold.

Charles

@numbthumb said:

@unknownuser said:

I just created a version compatible with 7.0. I'll get that uploaded as soon as possible for you

Hey, that´s great! Thanks! Looking forward to see more of your work.
Cheers!

As promised, here is SU7 compatible file:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/1buf01ltf2iz2df/210CR-SU7.zip

The file size is a little bit smaller and I think that is because there are no scene thumbnails. It would be great if SketchUp was able to compress it's SKP files. That feature would be very useful because the data is highly compressible. When I zip up the original SU8 version there is a savings of 15MB.

I just started on the next ship. It's going to be bigger but hopefully it won't take as long. Before I started on this project, most of my creations were for the Google SketchUp 3D Challenge entries. If you want to take a look at what I've done see the link below:
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/doadvsearch?nickname=jedicharles

-Charles

@numbthumb said:

Looks great, it surely would be fun to explore it in WalkAbout 3D or something like that.
Unfortunately, only the 3DWH version - without the interior - (but with John´s suggestion to change your avatar picture ) is compatible with SU7, which I am running, so that is impossible for me to do
Nevertheless, great work indeed Are you planning on rendering it?

Of course, now I regret adding the logo and I can't remove it... I just created a version compatible with 7.0. I'll get that uploaded as soon as possible for you. As far as rendering goes, I think I need a little more practice before I can deliver anything decent. I've been tinkering with Kerkythea a lot lately and I am trying to get the hang of it. I will eventually get there.

-Charles

I've been working on a starship design project for over a year and it is finally finished so I thought I would share it here. I could have finished it much sooner but it is something I chose to take my time creating. I am an avid Star Wars fan so it made sense to make a ship. It is not based on any particular ship in the Star Wars universe but it is designed to exist there. I chose to make it a blockade runner like the Tantive IV in the first scene from Star wars - A New Hope that gets swallowed up by the star destroyer.

My goal was to design one that in theory could have better odds of fleeing its pursuer. It is a bit smaller than the Tantive IV but would have maneuverability and speed similar to the much smaller Millennium Falcon. It also has a ridiculous amount of firepower with a total of 20 guns. It isn't the fanciest ship out there but the simpler design allowed for a much smaller file size and relatively fast performance in SketchUp. Textures have been used very minimally and practically only for the display screens seen inside. That is typically how I model with SketchUp because I figure that if I can do it with model geometry alone why bother with textures whatsoever. I have modeled the entire ship including the interior. All components used are original and created by myself. So without further delay I present the Outer Rim Industries 210CR Fortified Blockade Runner:

For more pictures of the ship visit the gallery (there are over 80 images):
http://picasaweb.google.com/jedicharles/OuterRimIndustries210CRFortifiedBlockadeRunner

I chronicled the entire project on my blog throughout it's creation, see here:
http://jedicharles.com/category/starship-project/

Here is a summary of the ship detailing it's specs:
http://jedicharles.com/starships/210cr/

On the page linked above there is also a slideshow of the image gallery and a link to a zip file containing the entire model. The model came to 23MB making it too big for the 3D Warehouse so I had to post in a zip file elsewhere. The zip file is only 7.6MB.

A version without the main interior has been posted to the 3D Warehouse and can be found here:
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=28ae603e7836706b2e7c5c2a99a86839

I would appreciate any and all comments you have about the ship. Thanks.

-Charles D. Rhodes

The deadline for Challenge #001 - 100SF House has been extended to June 21, 2009. Please see the challenge description for more information.