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). [image: Z7KK1Y3.jpg] [image: Cg9yV62.jpg] [image: mmlrxj0.jpg]

tomot - Our previous version of our plugin was written in C++ and used a binary format. This made our plugin much more difficult to maintain than it needed to be. Now we use Python and XML, which will allow our stuff to be more flexible and forward/backward compatible. I understand it's nice to be able to use the same files you would use in a new version, in an old version... but this isn't something that happens very often in the software world. We are trying to achieve that goal though. I would like to point out that it's free to upgrade to the latest version of our product though, and hopefully after this patch, this will be a very stable and flexible plugin. Anyone that signed up for our beta - We had MANY beta applicants. We didn't really hand pick anyone. We waited too long to get our product out to testing, so we didn't really have time to hand pick anyone. We thought that if we allowed 700 or so eager users to use our plugin and test it out, we would be able to get feedback from a diverse group of people that would hopefully represent a majority of our users... That didn't quite work out. Instead of getting 700 users that were constantly testing and reporting back any bugs they found... we got maybe 10... 15? people to really give us any feedback. There was enough feedback to keep us busy though, and so we put our heads down and got to work. Since the developers were in charge of the WIP testing (corresponding with our users, and providing support/debugging), the developer blog (sorry if anyone was keeping up with that... I hope to update it at some point), and developing our plugin. We were too busy developing to mess around with finding more testers and sorting the bunch we already had. It was sad. We even added a couple people here and there after the WIP tester selection was made, and they would provide some feedback here and there, but quickly faded away as their interest faded (I'm guessing that's what happened... maybe they were eaten by sea monsters?). So that's why some people got left out. It's nothing personal, you just fell through the cracks unfortunately. Next time around, we'll try to be more particular about who we let in... or we'll just do a public beta... haven't figured that one out yet.

yes, it works great with walkabout3D too. maybe adam could provide an fbx importer as part of lightup since he exports to it and obviously has a handle on the format.

@pixero said: Is there a plugin to export what's selected? I'm trying to make a plugin for a special purpose that would triangulate and export everything in a selection with a given prefix and fileformat(.dae) and then hide it, all at the click of a button. Also how do I make it iterate through all groups and components to triangulate? Can the triangulation be made at export time so it wouldnt affect the geometry in the scene? Any help appreciated. Use the ideas in my export_selection.rb for the export. As you have the selection you can iterate through its items and use e.hidden=true ? Your best bet for the triangulation would be to make a new group of the selection, copy the group, explode the original new group back where it was [and also 'hide' its contents] - now you have a copy of everything for export - simply group.erase! when you are done to get rid of the unwanted now triangulated stuff? To make the triangulations use my triangulateFace.rb ideas. Iterate through the group.entities and triangulate any faces, if it's a group iterate through its contents subgroup.entities.to_a and triangulate any faces in it [make a def to process these subgroups that can be recalled within itself to process groups in groups etc]... To triangulate faces inside any component instances will be more fraught since changing a definition could affect instances outside of the selection... So if having components in the exported set is unimportant then you can take each component-instance add it to a new subgroup [which is given the same name/description if required] and explode the instance - that way the contents are kept but can be changed independent of the definition... as it's now in a group process it as other groups to triangulate it - you need to trap for instances that are inside groups and inside instances and group/explode them the same...

@pixero said: @taylor64 said: I wonder, reading your post, if you ever tried to import the doors or moving objects separately? You could move the part in question to the origin assuming the pivot point, then export to .FBX move it to where you want it to be in the scene. Just an idea .... I haven't tried writing scripts for moving doors yet. Do you have any knowledge you could share on the subject? Thanks I've thought about it but not done it yet. I've tried it and it works, saves me from having to add another step and having to use yet another app. When you have a component in your drawing, "save it as" which will create a new drawing of that component, adjust the origin in the new drawing to where you want your pivot to be , and export it to unity from the same. Just wonder if any of you Guys have experience in writing scripts (Unity) to make e.g. the door rotate or a drawer to slide in and out?

Thank you ,thomthom http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=24635

[Portuguese] Acho que talvez vc esta pensando em meu plugin chamado "Three Line Tools" (tres utilidades de linhas (mais ou menos)). Pode acha-lo aqui: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=16923 e o plugin esta ao baixo do primeiro "post" meu. E si nao é aquele plugin qeu esta buscando, fica a vontade de explicar em portugese como funciona o plugin que esta procurando E desculpa si meu portuguese esta rui, sou da California e foi dez anos atraz que eu vivi em brasil. Chris [English] I think you are looking for my Three Line Tools plugin. Here is the link: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=16923 and the plugin is at the bottom of my first post. And if that is not the pluing you are looking for, feel free to explain in portuguese how the plugin you are looking for funtcions. And sorry if my portuguese is horrbile, I'm californian and it was over 10 years ago that I lived in Brazil. Chris

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=44671#p44671

I'm going to give all this a try---as I'm very interested in using the UDK to test urban design (and then run games occuring in these designed / augmented spaces). Signed up on the Unreal community discussion board...and found this same topic discussed here: http://www.katsbits.com/htm/tutorials/sketchup_converting_import_kmz_blender.htm Ideally, I'd like to work out a good pipeline for using SU created content....at least to put down an initial layer of general buildings, streets, etc. Having said that...I'm not married to using SU to create content. But, like Revit and Microstation, I know SU well and am just hoping ot reduce the amount of new programs that I would need to learn (or direct others in using them).

Its like my Win98 Trispective that has ray-tracing rendering (and animation) built in; ole links to excel and word; full animation (including moving objects and ray-tracing, etc.) export to everything; surfaces, solids, and vector drawing, etc., etc.... for $400.00 (at that time). To be fair, it has the same scattering menu problems that SU has:-)

http://rhin.crai.archi.fr/rld/plugin_details.php?id=219

@pixero said: I was thinking in the same lines. But still...it's not like Google will just make the most popular of the suggested ideas, right? Not at all. They are interested in opinions, but Google has their own agenda for SketchUp, too.

You have my blessing. Better animation is one of those things Google needs to prioritise.

Yes, I think on PPB there are (more) ads displayed to "Guests" (not logged in). Maybe an effective way to "encourage" logins, too. Google never reveals which click and which ad pays how much however so it's a bit like lottery, too.

Wow, thanks! Will try asap.

For this perticular job its too late. It worked out the way I described above but was a bit more troublesome. I have developed a way of animating with smooth speedups and slowdowns where your flightpath script has its part and I need to use the same technique for the whole shot for it too match the scene before. I still like to see this addition though. Here is a description of my technique: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=20173#p167962

Thanks Jan, interior designers will be grateful.. EDIT: just in case you need.. [image: Xh47_jsmove_16.png] [image: ziUo_jsmove_24.png]

I don't think Lightup does this. I think it renders materials and bakes them into faces in SU. At least that is my (severely limited and naive) understanding.

I will, thanks.