@iichiversii said:

Once I position the camera I usually use the look around tool in the walkthrough tool tab and position the camera view manually on to a fixed point, it works for me, does this help?

Hello Damien,
In the Sketchup instructor I found a small tutorial on the "Position Camera" tool. The link is http://support.google.com/sketchup/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95028

Thanks for your help again!!

@iichiversii said:

Glad I could help, any problems PM me and I'd be glad to help out more, would like to see your result too if possible, best of luck

Hello Damien,
I tried a few tricks with the position camera tool. However the camera tends to look at the horizon is it possible to point the camera to a particular object.
Suppose there is a cube in the scene and I want the camera to look at the cube. How do I use position camera and also lookat a particular object?
Is this possible?

@iichiversii said:

Yes, use the line tool and create a vertical line to the height you want your cam positioned, the position the camera ontop with the position camera tool, export a 2D age in the file drop down tab, save this image as L, then move you vertical line to the right 8inches and repeat but this time save your 2nd image as R. There you have your two images to create a 3D image, hope this helps

Excellent Damien! That's what I needed!
Many thanks!!!

Hello Damian & Csaba,
Thanks for the nice ideas.
At the moment I am looking for something simplistic and if possible with Sketchup.

1. Is there a way to position a cam in Sketchup and the desired location in from of an object and then take a snapshot of the object from that virtual cam.

I found something like "position cam" However how do I take a snapshot then from that cam?

@iichiversii said:

Yes this is all very possible, it's a topic iv being doing in the past, view topic http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=34252&start=30#p411445
This should help you achieve your goal

Wow Damien! That seems great!! Let me see what you have got there as that thread seems to be running over 3 pages!!

I has originally posted this in the Sketchup Wishes forum.
There was a plugin http://www.smustard.com/script/Stereo that I think used to convert a sketchup scene into L-R images. At the moment the status on that site is "Coming soon"

Is there any other plugin that can convert an static sketchup scene to Left, Right images.
Alternatively can I postion camera in skechup at a particular position from the object then take an image as seen from the camera then strafe the camera ( left or right) to another position and take another image as viewed by the camera?

@gaieus said:

Here is "stereo", a plugin that creates two scenes with some custom settings:
http://www.smustard.com/script/Stereo

Hello Gaieus,
Sorry to hijack this thread but I was searching for something similar and that link says that the plugin has not yet been developed its status is showing coming soon.
Is there any other plugin that can convert an static sketchup scene to Left, Right images.

@tig said:

Add the Image inside a new empty group group.entities rather than the model...
Manipulate the Image size etc as desired
Explode the Image.
You now have a face inside the group.entities
Find the face in the entities - there's only one.
Leave the face.material as it is [i.e. the image now made into a texture].
Make face.back_material=nil to use the 'default back material' or say use face.back_material="Black" to make it 'black'...

That did it!
Genius, TIG!!

I'm adding an image with ruby using "entities.add_image" and the image appears 2 sided.
Is it possible to make image appear only on one side and the other side should be just a default color, or same as backface color.

@thomthom said:

No such API access I'm afraid.

Btw, I'm moving this to the developer forum.

Hi thomthom,

Any idea what the make_pano_pm.rb file does?

Is it possible to setup Match Photo and extend it using the Ruby APi.

I found only one method relevant to match photo that is "pages.add_matchphoto_page"
Also the sketchup installation folder has a script called "make_pano_pm.rb" seems to be related to the Match Photo not sure what it does though.

Any leads on this would be appreciated!

Many thanks, Gaeius and DaveR for the excellent advice.

I downloaded the example "InsideFace.skp" provided by Gaeius and was wondering how did you get those colored lines the ones in Red and Yellow, when I draw it always defaults to Black. Is this linestyle also present in the "Styles" palette?

@dave r said:

Work in the Monochrome face style and set the back face color to something more easily noticeable than the default blue gray. I use a light lime green because it is easy to see even when the face is very tiny or there's a small hole.

I have no clue how to set the color of the backface to green in Sketchup?

@thomthom said:

@jrudd said:

@gaieus said:

Yes, UV Toolkit does it.

UV toolkit from Thomas Thomassen right?
I tried that one out but somehow I my problems were not sorted out, I mean the texture mapping was still bad, I don't know what I'm doing wrong?
Just located the "Fix Reversed Face Materials" by TIG on this site will try it out shortly.

Can you present screenshots or sample models of what you refer to?

Hello Thomas,
I probably don't thing there should be a problem with your highly revered "UV Toolkit" it's more likely that I'm doing something wrong here or possibly having followed the advice of building a model with the known issues of how Sketchup works with faces.
Later today I hope I get some time to get some snapshots up.

@mitcorb said:

@DaveR:
That is excellent advice on the good housekeeping. But I find from time to time that internal faces will reskin, especially if the mesh is regular enough, such as repetitive loops and on reopening the model.

And what does "reskin" mean?

@dave r said:

One thing I would look at even before getting to the point of applying materials is your approach to drawing and practicing what I refer to as "good housekeeping". Work in the Monochrome face style and set the back face color to something more easily noticeable than the default blue gray. I use a light lime green because it is easy to see even when the face is very tiny or there's a small hole. I find it easier to stay on top of face orientation as I go rather than creating a sloppy model with the idea of fixing it later. I also remove any unneeded internal faces and stray line segments as I go.

The green of the back faces does tend to show through at edges in some places when I make low res exports of screen grabs so I'll change the back face color to black before making images from the model.

This is excellent advice!! Many thanks. I also find that my models tend to have more faces when exporting. Possibly I'm not building my models up correctly any further tips on how to reduce faces in models would be awesome!

@unknownuser said:

TIG has a plugin that reverses and maintains mapping. And doesn't Thomthom's UV toolkit do this also?

What are you exporting to?

Thanks for that, I just located the TIG plugin, exporting to XSI.

@gaieus said:

Yes, UV Toolkit does it.

UV toolkit from Thomas Thomassen right?
I tried that one out but somehow I my problems were not sorted out, I mean the texture mapping was still bad, I don't know what I'm doing wrong?
Just located the "Fix Reversed Face Materials" by TIG on this site will try it out shortly.

I'm a noob in Sketchup and tediously created a 3d model in it and now while exporting it I'm facing a lot of difficulties especially with materials on back face instead of front face.
I've been trying some of the ruby plugins that do face reversal present on this site but to no avail, somehow the texture doesn't seem to map properly on the other face. What could be the problem why isn't sketchup uv mapping the textures on the front face when I say reverse faces or something like that.

Is there a way out of this, what precautions should I taken in my future models so that I don't end up like this?

Hi all,

Proud to announce that there is finally a solution to the face flipping problem. You can now reverse faces and preserve UV coordinates! I tested it and the results are accurate!

The UV Toolkit makes it possible. You also need to download the TT_Lib and put it in your plugins folder.

To reverse a face, first select what you want reversed, then go to Plugins > UV Toolkit > Frontface material to Backface (or the opposite).

Hope it helps,
Jeremy