Unless I'm missing something there's no combination of COLLADA import/export settings in SU and Blender that would keep components. It's just how those exporters/importers work.

Triangulation solves issue with holes in faces, which are not supported, as far as I learned, in Blender.

The real question is whether keeping component structure is really necessary, I doubt it.

@jql said:

qpik, you're using cycles or is this blender internal?

So far internal, why do you ask?

@filibis said:

Hmm, i see now better.
So, can we say it's not that suitable for interior stuff? Or is it possible to add other light types in addition to sun into baking process?

It's all a matter of translating objects from SU to Blender, then everything is possible.

Simple triangulation issue in slender.rb (you should see HOLES NOT SUPPORTED in Blender console).

triangulated_faces => true

Fixed and reuploaded whole package. Result:

baked_result_comparison_v2013_qpik.skp
After tweaking slender.blend scene (Environment Lighting Raytrace -> Approximate) which you can try with your own settings:

baked_result_comparison_v2013_qpik_1.skp

@filibis said:

What should i expect at this point? Is it going to import baked result to side of the original model (as you show in first post)?

The result should be the same as after importing COLLADA, a model ready to be placed in SU, but with shadows baked.
If you add

pause

at the end of slender.bat you should be able to see any blender errors.

Have you unpacked the whole 'slender' folder from the zip file?
Do you have blender installed? Maybe the installation path is different than mine (C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender.exe), check slender.bat in the 'slender' folder.
In sketchup open Ruby Console and type

load 'C;/../../slender/slender.rb'

with the actual path.

@jql said:

And how will you make the material assignement?

Material code names? Like Glass, Metal, Wood and the likes? Or you won't get into material properties?

I don't know yet, maybe. Or a class for managing materials in SU and exported to COLLADA. Probably the first solution would be easier to extend with external material libraries.

Specularity/bump etc. are worth supporting but reflections/refraction can't be really baked, so its no use going too much into detail.

@jql said:

So tell me one thing. Slender exports to blender does it all by itself and imports it back baked?

Exactly.

@jql said:

I wonder if it is compatible with Thea for Blender.

If only it can bake textures then I'd say yes. The plugin uses existing importers/exporters, so its main purpose is to automate unwrapping meshes and creating materials.

@jql said:

You can have a baked lighting model inside Unity and Unreal for a great experience, but it would be very nice to have a baked lighting model inside Sketchup and use that in Layout for instance.,

I guess it's worth a shot then.

@jql said:

We have Lightup which is capable of a texture atlas and I believe it also can bake light in the model. However, Cycles is much more realistic.

I've been using LightUp some time ago, but I also found it not realistic enough and the lightmap wasn;t actually baked into the SU model.

@jql said:

There is also a plugin called BlendUp which seamlessly exports from SU to Blender and it does it very well. It doesn't bring back the model to SU though that can probably be done easily enough (I was never able to bring back a textured model myself...)

I read about it but haven't tried. I always had the idea of Blender as this old, unfriendly Linux program and always used Kerkythea export. Cycles GPU was the thing that drew me to Blender now.

I added sun export/render.

Yes and no, the idea is to bake rendered scene in Blender and bring it back to SU.

I started with simple Environment Lighting (not exactly Ambient occlusion), but I plan on baking realistic sun shadows and possibly all kinds of lighting and materials (except live reflections and caustics). What I posted is just a couple days of work, re-learning Ruby and catching up on new SU API plus learning Blender and Python (amazing progress, I think the last time I looked at it was ca 10 years ago).

I just wonder if Unity or Unreal (haven't used them yet) are easy enough to make such plugin obsolete.