Does anybody have experience in large terrain texturing in Sketchup? I am modeling a golf course and I would think that Lumion would be perfect tool for presenting this new golf course and the fairways. I have also tested Unity 3D for creating similar animations. In Unity workflow, I can texture the terrain quite nicely in Unity, but in Lumion workflow I should probably do it in Sketchup.

The area that I have modeled is 1500m x 1500m and I have traced the contours and created the terrain with Sandbox Tools. Then I have used Terrain reshaper to make the terrain less complex. Now I would need to texture the terrain. In sketchup it seems to be difficult to texture the such a big terrain nicely. I am thinking about creating single texture for the whole terrain and projecting that texture into surface. Does anybody have any experience in rendering this kind of big terrain textures in external applications? Does it take ages to render? Or do you think any other good ways to create terrain texture in Sketchup?

Golf course layout with contours:

Terrain in Sketchup (file size about 2mB):

WIP in Unity3D:

@unknownuser said:

There is also the Street Generator by Thomthom.

Fredo

Thanks, this absolutely something that I need to take a look about!

Thanks for the ideas! This plugin looks amazing and I will probably use it when making roads on terrain. Anyway, this time I was looking something really simple and quick because I just need to trace the roads on a picture. If you happen to know something that could be used for this "double offset and close the lines function", please let me know.

Is the a plugin that could be used for making roads/paths on a planar surface? Basically, I am doing now:

• Draw centerline with Catmul Sline- plugin
• Offset that twice
• Close the ends with lines
• Delete the centerline

I will need to do that about 50-70 times, so it would be much faster with some kind of plugin. I would assume that this plugin is already available but I can't just think any Plugin that would perform this function.

Juan, thanks a lot for doing the work form me. I didn't know that you can get the contours that nicely from pdf.

Thanks for all the great suggestions! I tried the Comet Docs but I always get error when trying to convert the pdf to dwg. Also, there seems to be the same problem with quality when converting the pdf to image file. In the future I will be using this conversion tool for other purposes for sure. So, thanks a lot for the link.

Wintopo looks promising but the layout needs be converted to image because the software can't open pdf-file. I believe that this is the reason why contours get broken when creating dxf-file.

I don't have Illustrator and so I don't really know how well it could work in my case.

Here is the map that I am trying to trace in Sketchup:
http://www.golfpirkkala.fi/images/stories/pdf/gpi_layout.pdf.pdf

I would need to bring layout of the site into Sketchup and trace all the buildings and contour lines. The layout is in pdf-format and when I take a snapshot of the layout and import it into Sketchup the quality suffers quite a lot.

Do you have any ideas how to import pdf with better quality? Are there differences between image formats or other possible workflows?

Can't wait to hear more about this! I hope that they will tell something about pricing soon. I would like to have Lumion 3D but it is too expensive for me since 3D modeling is just a hobby for me. I hope that this would be some kind of option for me.

Would it be possible to use splatmaps in Sketchup as you can use them in Unity? Here is a screenshot of terrain mesh and splatmap that I have created in Sketchup and applied in Unity. As you can see the textures blend quite nicely. The tool that I have used in Unity for texturing terrain is Tom's Terrain Tools. With this tool it is really easy to paint the texture in the terrain.

Tom's Terrain Tools:
http://www.lemuria.org/projects/wiki/TerrainTools

Unity:

Splatmap:

Does anybody have any experience with this application? Is this something that could be imported to Sketchup or some render engines, for example TheaRender?

(woody3d.com)

@d12dozr said:

miikka, are you unlocking the camera height and unchecking "Sun face camera" in Vue like the Sketchup2Vue manual says?

Yes, I have done those changes according to the manual.

I am also having some problems when trying to use Automated VuePython Scene Loader. If I import Sketchup model manually, everything works ok. But, when using Python script I get only Sphere and no other geometry is listed in Object list. I am using Sketchup 8 and Vue 8.40-04.

@dburdick said:

You have to move the model as a whole. The single sided faces group consists of all of the faces which have materials on both sides. If you just grab the whole model and move it, all of the sub-components will move with it -- including the single-sided faces group.

Thanks for explaining dburdick. Anyway, it seems that there are many other faces with material on both sides in my crane model. But, export doesn't create "loose geometry" in these cases. Based on this, I believe that the problem arises when there is material on both sides of face and these materials are different.

Is there is any way/plugin to examine Sketchup models and geometries in order to find out if there are faces with different materials on the sides of the same face?

Has anybody experienced similar problem when using Sketchup models in Vue? I have exported my Sketchup model into Vue with the new plugin. But, when I move the model in Vue it is not complete component. There is separate SingleSidedFacesGroup that I have not created in Sketchup.

I have been dreaming about rendering animations (with moving objects) in Sketchup for some time. Anyway, there has not been any good way to do it in Sketchup and with rendering engines it is not really possible to control the movement of the objects. Do you think that Vue 8 Complete Architectural Bundle could be solution for my needs? I would like to create animation where cranes/trucks/other machines are moving in terminal along a certain path/time and I would be able to move the camera view at the same time, see example of terminal below. Also, does Vue require a monster computer for rendering this kind of models? The size of the model is about 30MB in Sketchup.

My computer is:
Intel Core I5-750
4GB 1600 MHz DDR3
XFX HD5750 1GB

@gaieus said:

If you really want to pay money for software, you should rather check this out (I think it's about € 45 or so):
http://flashpanoramas.com/player/

This software looks amazing and the price is reasonable.

Gaieus, have you ever tried to create hotspots for you panoramas? I quickly tried to find out how to make hotspots with FlashPanorama but I couldn't find any examples or tutorials. Anyway, it seems that there are several plugins for making hotspots and all kinds of stuff. Based on the tutorials for Pano2VR (http://gardengnomesoftware.com/tutorial.php), creating hotspots seems to be really easy. But, the price is about the double compared to FlashPanorama.

Thanks for the answers. I finally got the PanoCube to work. It is really easy to use once you get it installed. The link that Pilou pointed out helped a lot when trying to figure out how to install the software. I also found this (http://gardengnomesoftware.com/index.php) software (cost about 70 euros) for making cubic movies. But, since I got PanoCube working I probably stick with that.

Do you have any software suggestions for making Quicktime VR (QTVR) cubic movies? See examples from Gaieus (a Roman basilica or a Medieval church) in other Sketchucation thread. I would like to able to create cubic movie from single spherical render. I have been considering for example PanoCube (http://www.panoshow.com/panocube.htm), but it seems to be complicated to install/use. What free or cheap softwares you are using when making these cubic movies.

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=31863&hilit=panorama

Here are a couple of laminate textures that I have taken from http://www.krono-original.com/. Basically, I have used Krono's floor studio and taken a Print Screen, and then I have edited the image with Gimp. Also, I have used Bricks'n Tiles software to create seamless textures. Probably these textures are not usefull for professional use but for hobbyists they should be quite ok.

In Kerkythea forum, Jon demonstrated how to create seamless material/texture from photo, see tutorial in Make new material from scratch -discussion in materials forum (11th post in the discussion). I don't have Photoshop and therefore I would like to know if it possible to do the same thing with Paint.net or Gimp. Especially, I would like to know how to do perspective crop?

(www.kerkythea.net)

It seems that the link to Kerkythea forum is nor working. Therefore, I have attached two pictures from the tutorial that I am talking about.