The force is strong with Shaderlight

I have talked in the past about how I thought rendering was too complicated and too hard to do for the average Sketchupper.  I thought I was right until I discovered Shaderlight, the rendering plugin for Sketchup.  Check out some of the renderings I have done:

Shaderlight has proven to be a powerful, and very easy to use tool.  If you understand Sketchup, then you can understand Shaderlight.  As with any program, its always good to have a good teacher.  Its even better if you can learn from a master.  Martin Cox, the senior Shaderlight Ninja will be offering a free, yes, a FREE web seminar on lighting in Shaderlight on Thursday, April 14th at 1pm EST.  Click here to sign up!  Ingredients required to view this recipe of awesome?  A computer, monitor, and a dash of internet.  Thats it!

I've already seen him present in person, and I can tell you it will be worth it!

3D Connexion: Making your mouse even more jealous

3D Connexion has just announced new drivers for their line of 3D controllers.  I reviewed one of these units a while back.  You are probably thinking "New drivers, big deal.  That's like me getting excited over regular vs premium gas."

You are right, driver updates are normally just bug fixes and other boring things.  This update is a little more involved.  After you install this update you will be able to whip through web pages, fly through playlists on iTunes, and even Windows Explorer.  You accountants out there could really spice up your day by panning around a giant spreadsheet (Yes, you can really do that now)

Best of all, this update is free.  It will make your 3D Connexion device, no matter what model much more useful.  Lets just hope your regular mouse is not the jealous type.

Sketchup's Grandfather

Just the other day a friend of mine sent me this video.  Its a video of "Sketchpad" developed in 1964 by MIT.  It is a 2d and 3d drawing application that is run off a computer that looks to be the size of an entire room.  As a hand draftperson back then, they must have looked at this and thought that these MIT nerds were crazy...  If they could only have seen the future.

If you thought that was cool you should check out some of the related videos to this one.  Seeing this reminded me of all of the Microsoft Kinect hacks that have been happening since the hardware was released.  If you aren't aware, Microsoft Kinect is a 3D camera that you can add on to your XBOX 360.  The 3D camera makes YOU the controller, rather then a joystick or WiiMote.  To get an idea of how this works, check out this video:

Microsoft has been making the Kinect open source so that anyone can "hack" it to control whatever they want.  Check out these videos to see what folks have been coming up with:

All of those hacks have been done with an inexpensive piece of hardware and just your average home computer.  Add in a dash of Mountain Dew and Hot Pockets, and an episode or two fo Star Trek and you've got yourself a hack.  Its amazing what we can do today with such available technology.

Hopefully in the near future we'll be modeling with our minds and our hands, instead of a mouse and a keyboard!

Sketchup, now with mind bending capabilities

I love plugins for Sketchup.  Think of them as "Apps" for Sketchup.  Sketchup in its stock form is quite a useful modeling tool, but you can take it so much farther with different plugins.

The other day I was tasked with modeling a house for a client in Sketchup.  Sketchup's tools are great for this sort of thing.  This house did have several curved staircases.  If you've ever had to figure out one of these, its not easy, there is a lot of math involved.  Once you've got the math done you need to actually draw the thing.  Drawing a curved staircase in Sketchup isn't actually that hard, its just time consuming.

Enter Shape Bender, a brilliant plugin for Sketchup.  It was written by Chris Fullmer who I had the pleasure of meeting at Basecamp 2010.  Shape Bender allowed me to take a straight staircase and bend it by just using a couple of clicks.

The Staircase Before

The Staircase Afterwards and shelves that I bent with Shape Bender

To see how Shape Bender can bend geometry and minds, check out this video:

If you'd like to get Shape Bender for yourself, you can download it HERE.

Here are a few other plugins that I use that you may find interesting:

Round Corners by Fredo 6

Material Replacer by Thomas Thomassen

Organic Modeling in Sketchup

Its been a busy week for me, so I wasn't able to do my regular Monday update.

I wanted to share a new tool I have been using in Sketchup called "Artisan".  Its an organic modeling toolset for Sketchup.  The creator, Dale Martens has been responsible for many other excellent scripts.  I think this one is his best yet.  I am just starting to learn it.  Check out the video below, and if you want more information I encourage you to head over to his site and check it out.  Its available as a demo.  So far, its truly amazing.