I see that this is a 4 year old discussion.

Anyway,is this still available somewhere or does anybody know any similar Blender Addons or User Preference settings that would make Blender a little more comfortable for Sketchup user.

This is really interesting discussion here. I am more like a hobbyist in 3d modeling but I still feel that Sketchup has not developed too much over the years. Anyway, I can't really complain because I have always been using the the free version of Sketchup. I would definitely be frustrated if I was a professional and using commercial version.

I have also been experimenting Blender multiple times and it has always been complicated. Anyway, nowadays I am already testing Blender by importing my Sketchup models and trying to find an efficient workflow to bring my models into game engines like Unity3D. For me this is more like learning Blender step by step. Hopefully I can already manage the tool after a couple of years! When experimenting modeling in Blender I have really been missing:

• Tape measure tool for drawing construction lines in order to model efficiently with dimensions
• Proper pen/line tool
• Object snapping like in Sketchup

By the way, has anybody tried Bonzai 3D recently? They are now in the version 3.x. A couple of years ago people seemed to complain that there was just too many bugs and crashes but I would assume that it has improved since then.

Link to Bonzai3d version history:
http://www.formz.com/products/bonzai3d/versionHistory/b3d_History.html

@cmeed said:

So I have played and played - watched many videos on unreal4 and i have to say it really looks amazing. Unfortunately, sketchup isn't making life easy. exporting a mesh using .fbx and importing into unreal4 is relatively easy but the texture UV are all overlapping.
my understanding of UVs are limited as I've never really used them having been a sketchup user for so long they are not as prominent as they are in other programs - Maya, 3dsMax and blender - and I'm just learning how they are used in game engines.
looking through Unreal Answerhub and UnrealForums there a few sketchupers trying to make it work but the forums answers are - "learn blender" or "learn maya" etc - yeh easy for them
Unreal4.2 is imminent, which is able to import .obj - will the same overlapping uvs happen - probably but I'm hopeful…..

I have similar challenges. I don't know too much about UV mapping, etc. but I would like to bring my sketchup models into game engines. Actually, I have been using Unity because of the free version. I have also been experimenting Blender but it is such a big change that i have not yet put my time there. Lately I have been checking some other ways to do the UV mapping and texturing with different tools like Roadkill, substance designer, substance painter. I think that I am still quite far away from having good results. Anyway, I think that game engines are developing so fast that those could replace render engines in near future if you don't need to have 100% realistics results.

I would be interested to know if there are any people here who are using sketchup models with game engines like Unreal or Unity.

Did anybody advance with their plans with Blender? I would like to know if somebody really managed to start using Blender or was it still too complicate to use after Sketchup?

I have also been experimenting with Blender lately and I think that it has changed a lot over the years. Anyway, there are still many Sketchup tools that I really miss, for example:

• Easy/simple object snap
• Tape measure tool for drawing construction lines
• Lines tool

@d12dozr said:

I wrote a tutorial for something very similar in issue 16 of the Catchup magazine: http://sketchucation.com/catchup/2013/01/

I would be interested to check this but I could not find the tutorial. Could you specify the page where it starts?

Thanks for all the suggestions. I will need to check Spline Fit plugin and Curvizard. Sorry for not being 100% clear with my explanation, I agree that I should have had picture in the beginning to explain the matter.

Here is what I am looking for, see below. Basically I would like to modify my contours so that I could add more line segments into the straight parts. This would be essential when creating terrain mesh.

Actually, I did some testing with Curvizard and I didn't find a way to add segments to straight parts without affecting the round parts. When using poly divider function I get more segments in straight parts part but I lose the multiple segment in round parts, and therefore I lose the original form of the contour.

Is there a plugin that can edit (add control points) multiple polylines at the same time?

I would need to add more control points (nodes)evenly with certain spacing to my contours without removing the original control points. Also, it would be essential to do it for multiple polylines at the same time so that there would be no need to do this individually for each line. If I remember correct, simplify contours makes the opposite function, reduces control points, for multiple polylines at the same time.

@rob d said:

For texture baking straight from SketchUp, the easiest/cheapest workflow I've come across to use LightUp http://www.light-up.co.uk/ as you can see in this video http://vimeo.com/19204786

Thanks for the tip!

I have been following LightUp for quite some time, but I have never considered to purchase it because I would most probably use only small part of its capabilities. I just downloaded the trial and it seems to work really well with exporting/importing into Unity. Also, LightUp seems to really easy to use. Maybe I have to think about it once again.

I am using Thea Render for rendering and texture baking has been in their roadmap for long time but it has never happened. Also, I would assume that it will not be there for a while because they are concentrating more on other stuff and I totally understand them for doing that.

Just a note, I also did a quick test with OBJ Exporter plugin and it seemed to work surprisingly well with Unity, see example below.

@tobobo said:

I've started working with Unity here at work.

How long did you spend on it?

And if its not too cheeky...

what was your work flow?

The workflow is not that complicated. I just create the terrain in Sketchup and use different paid tools for creating the scene in Unity, for example Terrain Composer, Relief Terrain Pack (RTP) shaders and Skyshop. It is just quite a lot of tweaking the settings (textures, lighting, etc.).

Terrain Composer:
http://www.terraincomposer.com/

RTP:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/5664

Skyshop:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/8880

Thanks for nice comments!

I haven't imported that many models yet so I can't say too much about importing. The terrain I imported in obj format and then I used Unity's Obj2Terrain script for converting the model. Also, I am pretty much beginner when talking about texturing, UV mapping and 3D model formats, etc. This means that it maybe still long way to go before I am able to import my Sketchup models into Unity. One alternative could be to use baked models and import them. But, there are not that many render engines which can do that nowadays.

Here is one example of architecture animation created with VRAY/Unity:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/89818-Loft-Architecture-visualization

Here are some examples of animations that I have created with Unity Game Engine (Free version). I have created the terrain model and all the splatmaps for texturing the terrain in Sketchup but the rest of the work is done in Unity. Naturally you can’t match the quality of the render engines like Thea, Podium, etc. but I still think that Unity has good potential to be used for different architectural animations. Also, Unity is improving constantly because of different extensions created by users.

This is still WIP and my plan is to start bringing my Sketchup models (buildings, signs, etc.) into this golf course model. Anyway, it is stated in many forums that Sketchup is not that great when trying to import the models into Unity.

Videos
https://vimeo.com/83965567

Here are some screenshots that I have made with free version of Unity3D for landscape modeling (golf course). Basically I have created the terrain model and splatmaps for texturing terrain in Sketchup. The rest is pretty much created in Unity. The next phase would be to bring some of the buildings that I have modeled with Sketchup into the model.

I think that Unity has improved quite a lot recently. In Unity 4.0 the free version also includes real time shadows for one light source (sun).

In quite many cases I end up tracing all the contours from layout. Because of complexity and visibility I have to put all the individual contours into the layers based on their altitude (60m altitude => Layer:60).

Would it be possible to include option in TopoShaper to read/create contour altitude from layer information in future? Anyway, I am not sure how many people actually trace the contours when creating terrain in their modeling, so I don't know if this functionality would be beneficial for greater audience.

Thanks for suggestion I had totally forgot Zorro! The problem is that it seems to get me bug splat quite often. Maybe that is because my geometry is quite complex so I have examine my model a little.

I haven't been actively following plugin forum for a while so I would like to check if there is certain plugin available. Do you have any idea how to split or cut my model into separate pieces? I have a model which has many (6) geometry levels on top of each other, see picture. I use this model for splatmaps by exporting flat top view image at the highest resolution. Now I would need to split the model into 4 same size pieces in order to be able to export it in higher resolution.

Is there some plugin that would enable me to divide this model into 4 same size pieces? I am still making changes into the model and I will most probably need to do this multiple times in the project. Therefore I would need to have some easy/automatic way to do this.

I just checked Ruby console but there was nothing. I will PM the model.

Thanks for this excellent plugin!

One question. I have a terrain with contours which is 3000x3000m. I have been using TopoShaper for creating terrain, but I have been running problems when changing the grid size from 50x50 to 100x100. TopeShaper always gets stuck in 63% (calculating boundaries). Has anybody else had similar problems?

I have been following Unity3D quite some lately in order to see if it could be used for creating architectural animations for my Sketchup models. Now there is something coming, Unity3D and Marmoset Toolbag. Anyway, I don't exactly know what is can used for but some of the pictures look amazing.

http://www.marmoset.co/
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/173412-Skyshop-Image-Based-Lighting-Tools

Thanks for pointing up this Helix along curve plugin! This does exactly what I was trying to do. Also in general this seems to be really great plugin.

Hopefully this functionality will be added to some of the offset plugins if there are more people benefiting this.

Just a quick check. Is there a sort of "random offset" functionality of some of the plugins? See picture in order to get idea what I mean. Basically, it would be nice to be able to offset lines and give some kind of min/max values for offset distance.