In Part 1 I showed how I modeled an organic sculpture using a few neat SketchUp extensions. That project consisted of two sculpture models, and here’s a description of the second one. My model appears in this rendering – it’s at the top left corner, along the sidewalk. The idea was that the…
I recently had a fun design job with a local architect. The idea was to make a conceptual model that loosely resembled a specific sculpture. The sculpture model would be placed in a SketchUp model of a new, mixed-use project, to show in context what a similar art installation would look like. (The…
The other posts in this series focused on how to create models of trees that have transparent background and always face the camera. This last post in the series is about solving the problem of shadows. Here’s a face-camera tree: And here’s the same tree with shadows turned on (menu: View / Shadows). Because…
In Part 1 of this series, I showed how to find some efficient and well-modeled trees in SketchUp’s 3D Warehouse. In this post, I’ll show how to create your own “face camera” trees from scratch. I’ll start with the same model – a house that could use a few trees around it. All you…
In Part 2 of this series, I showed how to import an image of a tree and make a face-camera component. In that example, all of the work was done within the model itself. But if you work often with landscape elements, you might want to build yourself a library of tree or shrub models…
Consider this lovely model of a small cottage in the woods, by Verkley Design and Modeling: (You can download this model yourself by clicking the “3D Warehouse” logo above. Or you can try this out with any model that can use some landscaping features.) The trees in this model are well designed, making good use…
Did you know that you can easily do this in SketchUp? It’s done with scenes. Here’s how I did this example. Geo-Location First, I needed a geo-located model. This means a model that has a defined location. Why does location matter? Because SketchUp shadows are created based on where the model is. (Place a…
A while back I did a series on finding quality components – picking and choosing from among the millions of models to find something you know will be well-made. Part 1 of that series had a tip about finding models created by the SketchUp staff, using the “author:” search syntax. For example, if I want…
In Part of this series, I showed how to use SketchUp’s Position Camera tool to navigate to a specific view of this news studio. In this post, I’ll show a different feature of Position Camera: the ability to both place the camera and point it at the same time. Here’s the entire studio – what you…
