A SketchUp to 3dc project

[michalis]

Nothing special, just to show a possible workflow.

1. The new SU8 collada export is compatible with blender 2.49b collada1.4 importer. (ask to triangulate, no textures needed as we gonna paint and UV to another app)

2. I Used blender2.49b just to convert the collada to obj. Here we have to (a) join the groups to one mesh ( select all vertices and delete doubles. Easy 2 clicks operation. Export as obj.

3. Imported to 3dcoat as voxels, more sculpting. Added the statuette.

*Its important to clean all internal faces in SU first. Normals of faces outward, keep the mesh waterproof (no openings!)

Here from our friend Pilou a direct link for a SketchUp Plugin that removes internal - non maniflolds - faces

http://forums.sketchucation.com/download/file.php?id=14434

**(blender2.5x-2.56 is full of bugs and importers don't work well)

Not a precise copy but inspired from the Alberto Giacometti's great sculpting.

[michalis]

And the opposite.

A friend was testing a plugin in SketchUp for organic modeling so I modeled this cave like scene in 3dc in five min. I also exported a decimated mesh at ~5k and used it as retopo mesh , some more min for UVs and baked in MV. Exported as ~20k

Here is the voxel render and the decimated version rendered with Kray for SU. No bumps or displacements here. But I like this impressionistic style.

[Sandro Borg]

Excellent Caves!!

i think they look great...would work great for an animation.

good technique you've found there,very impressive textures too.

[michalis]

Oh thank you, these started without a concept, mostly a test, a link of SketchUp with 3dcoat. A friend created something similar with a plugin there, needed some hours to do it, I just said , "this takes 5 min in 3dcoat (uvs included)"

As this is a static model and low poly version is needed, I used a decimated at 20k tri export under vox palette as a retopo mesh, easy just some more time click click for UVs. The best way for static models IMO.

Zbrush is my favorite app for figures but when we come to terrains, the glory of voxels. But it turned surprising nice, normally I'm not a 'fantasy' fun. Anyway here is the link to download this, as it came to sketchUp.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/bbc24822xeu4nyr/cave3ds.zip / the 3ds file with displacement and normal map.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/i12b6w9jn6nb35g/cave.skp.zip / the sketchup file , no displacements here but you may adopt them from the other folder.

BTW its just a cylinder, curves, a fast alpha spray (the default noise screen) and a well known default picmat shader. The default 3dc library.

[Sandro Borg]

hey,thanks for posting those up.

i don't have sketchup currently installed on my machine,i did dabble with it a little a while ago, but i'm currently up to my ears with 3dcoat and lightwave 10 ,which is leaving very little time for anything else these days.

still,it's cool of you to share.

I am very impressed with these,the first one especially,the lighting is so natural.

There's also a slight 'otherworldliness' about it which is really neat.

I've been so busy concentrating on character modeling and animation, I'm gonna have a try building up some enviroments soon.

These are definately an inspiration .Cheers.

Would be great to see what else you can come up with using this technique.

[michalis]

OK thanks, here's a hi poly obj version,

http://www.mediafire.com/file/7qs8voqdxu5qovh/objCave.zip

All conversions using blender 2.49b, my swiss army knife.

[Sandro Borg]

cheers michalis,

I loaded/merged it into 3DCoat and applied the dirty stone shader.

here's the result.

i can see a lot of potential in 3DCoat for doing environments of this type.

also,the autoretopology tools would be perfect for stuff like this ,where the polygon flow is not as critical as for say a character.

would be perfect then to load into a 3D animation scene.

[michalis]

also,the autoretopology tools would be perfect for stuff like this ,where the polygon flow is not as critical as for say a character.

For stuff like rocks triangular faces are better than quad. So here, its easier than autopo. Just some more time with UVs.

http://www.3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=6485&view=findpost&p=50260

[Sandro Borg]

what I meant when I said autoretopo the cave/enviroment,would be in order to produce a low polygon mesh which I can then

add a displacement map for detail,to then export to 3D animation program,ie Lightwave layout.

Very high polygon meshes slow down performance,that is why I favour this method now.

Hope that makes sense.

thanks for that link,very informative.

you must be the 3Dcoat rock man

[michalis]

Exactly so, I mean, the base tri mesh I exported from voxels decimator was ~3-4K not more. I just subdivided it to use for SU, as most people there use renderers trat don't support normals or displacements. They had some great results when they used the displacement map in Thea renderer. Really close to the voxel render here.

The decimator under vox tree palette exports non stretched tri meshes. Good for displacement.

[Sandro Borg]

Thanks for the advice michalis,I am learning something new here everyday

I'm looking forward to trying some of that out.

[michalis]

Another Sketchup to 3dcoat to blender test.

Being a beta tester of a new sculpting plug-in of SketchUp. Artisan subdivide and smooth v2. Not a big deal for 3dc users of course. But th plugin produces friendly to 3dc topology. No UVs yet.

So, after some interesting results inside SU, exported via blender (as collada1.4) to 3dcoat as PPP. No additional sculpting just painted depth and texture in five min (cubic projections mostly)

Imported and rendered in blender internal.

@haikalle, Kay_eva and all other blender users: Values of normal maps are positive! See my point?

[chris_solo]

Impressive Michalis!, thanks for tips.

[Garagarape]

Michalis,

Thank you for offering help with the rocks.

I often look at you threads to find out knew

workflow ideas. It does help a lot.

For the moment I need to focus on

the submarine.

I used to go for diving with my father

at Karvoustaki (Volos bay?) and other places

in Greece when I was younger. That was such a paradise!

You're lucky to have all those great places around you.