Star Wars in Sketchup

Well, May the 4th and 5th have passed, and because of that I was made aware of one of the coolest Sketchup models I've seen in a long time.  This person has taken it upon themselves to model the Millenium Falcon from Star Wars.  The modeler has been putting updates to the model on his YouTube channel for several months now, and I have been watching the process.  If these doesn't get your geek on, I am not sure what will...

Here is one of his older models:

And this is the latest update, truly amazing detail:

I've tried reaching out to this modeler through YouTube, I'd love to interview him or her for a post here, but I haven't heard back yet.  If any readers know who he or she is, please have them contact me!

The greatest plugin I never new I needed!

As you may already know, I draw a lot of kitchens in Sketchup.  But that's not all I draw, I sub contract myself out to a lot of different professions.  Recently, I have been converting 2D house plans into 3D models.

If you've ever drawn an exterior of a house in 3D, you probably already know that one of the most difficult parts to draw is the roof.

Sketchup's rich and open API allow the open source community to create just about any plugin they want for Sketchup.  With this, you get some great plugins, and some not so great ones.  The other day, I came across one of the best plugins I have ever seen for Sketchup.

Its called "Instant Roof" by Vali Architects in Hawaii.  This jaw droopingly awesome caused me to curse out load when I first tried it.  To quote myself after I first used it:

"Holy ****!  That is ******* *** **** amazing!"

Now, before you start think I was rated R, it was a "for tv edit" outburst, see this example:

Now, for the serious stuff.  If you are drawing roofs on houses, then you NEED to get this plugin.  I'll let the creator explain it to you better then I can:

This plugin is immensely useful.  It is so well written.  I highly recommend that you go download it today.  There is a free version, and a pro version.  This is going save me loads of work.  If you draw houses for a living, this is sure to be one of the best tools you'll add to Sketchup.

A table, the dynamic way

Hey folks, I just wanted to share this little gem I found in the 3D Warehouse with you...

A lot of times in kitchen design, the kitchen table plays a big part in the design.  I find myself often placing one in my designs. They are pain to draw, and its hard sometimes to find the right size one on the 3D Warehouse.

No more though!  With the advent of Dynamic Components, we can use one table for whatever we need in terms of size!

If you search for "dc table google" in the 3D Warehouse you'll come across one that looks like this:

There is more then meets the eye with the table.  Its dynamic, that means you have choices.

If you use the scale tool on this table, and stretch it out, it automagically gets longer without getting distorted, and it will throw in the correct amount of chairs.

If you right click on the table, and select the menu called "Dynamic Components" and then "Component Options" You are exposed to a menu that shows several different options for the table.  You can change the color of the cushions. You can select if you want the chairs at random angles, or if you have a touch of OCD, you can have them lined up perfectly.  

You can even use the "Interact" tool to hide certain chairs.

You can even make the largest table in the world with just using your scale tool. (You may want to NOT do this if you are using an underpowered machine!)

This table is really useful, and I use it all the time.  Its so easy to scale it to the size that you need, it sure beats drawing something from scratch.  Check out this great DC to save you time on your next design!

Sinks of Steel

As I am sure you know, I use Sketchup daily for kitchen design.  One of the things that comes up all the time when using Sketchup is undermounting a sink.  It used to be a tedious process of cutting a hole in the countertop that was the right shape for the sink, and then dropping the sink into the hole.  If you were able to get it right the first time, it still took you forever.  If you have to move the sink, forget about it, you'd probably give up.

That is why a while back, I created these undermount sinks.

Those sinks have been working great for a long time.  They've gotten tons of downloads, and have been used in just about every kitchen and bathroom I have designed for the last year or so.

I was recently inspired by these faucets that are now available on the 3D warehouse from Delta and Brizo.  Not only are they extremely useful, but the folks who created the models over at Igloo Studios did a really neat trick with using a single photo texture to make the faucets appear to be real, without having to be rendered.  I did a post on this a few months ago where I compared these faucets to Miami Vice.  See how Don Johnson faired by clicking here.

I sell a line of stainless steel sinks by Artisan.  They are quite popular, and end up in a lot of our kitchen designs.  A few of the other designers I work with were asking me if I could build an offset double bowl sink in Sketchup, and a "D" bowl.  Instead of creating a generic one, I decided to create one that we sell.  In the next few pictures, you will see the process I used to build these sinks.  If you are impatient, and just want the goods, get into Sketchup and search for "Artisan Sinks" on the 3D warehouse.

There are a few things I need to model a sink in Sketchup accurately.  First, I need the dimensions.  I headed over to Artisan's website and grabbed a technical drawing on one of their sinks.

I imported the drawing into Sketchup.  There I was able to scale the image based on the dimensions that are on the drawing.  From there, I started to trace right over the image to start getting the shape of the sink.

Next, I used Sketchup's famous Push Pull tool to start massing up the sink.

I removed some unnecessary geometry, now you can see that the sink is starting to take shape.

 

Now I have hidden edges that I don't want to be seen.  Notice that I left the edges along the top, and bottom.  In the next picture you will see that I can select those edges, and use a plugin to round them over.

Using this plugin I was able to select the edges that I wanted to round over.  Much easier then using Sketchup's built in "Follow Me" tool.

So there it is, a model that is all ready for some textures.

I grabbed a picture of the sink from the same website.  I placed the picture directly over the model that I wanted to paint it onto.  You can "project" textures onto models.  Think of it like standing in front of a projector, the image is "projected" onto you.  Using this method, you can paint flat textures onto 3D models.

Since my model was drawn accurately, and the picture I was using was distorted (as most images are, because camera lenses bend images) I had to use Sketchup's built in texture positioning tools to fine tune the texture.  If you've got a texture that is really out of shape, you can fix it up with a little Photoshop trickery.  These texture tools were designed for texturing buildings, but they can work rather well for this sort of modeling.

There is the final product.  Its a accurately sized, textured kitchen sink.  It doesn't end there though.  Next I made a Dynamic Component out of this sink.

This will help you, the end user with a couple of things.  First, the component will automatically cut a hole for you in your countertop.  It also has an option to set how deep its undermounted.  And lastly, in the component, there are links to the specs of the sink, and a video on how exactly to use it!  To get to all of these, simply right click on the sink when you have it in Sketchup, go to Dynamic Components, and then to "Options" and you will see the settings and the link.

So, go into Sketchup and search for Artisan Sinks.  I've got a collection of three different ones in there to help you model!

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/cldetails?mid=b31bc56becdd90e784283d54542a3ba0