3D « Quench

11Feb/120

Rendering Sketchup with Indigo

Indigo has released a new version 3 (3.0.14) of their excellent rendering software that can be used along with Google Sketchup 8. This combination of software the rendering somewhat realistic 3d graphics. Indigo provides a Sketchup Exporter which enables quick access to the rendering interface loading your Sketchup file as an .igs render file.

Cubes created in Sketchup 8.0 and rendered in Indigo 3

Indigo also provides the capability to setup other machines on your network as rendering slaves. I did discover that you cannot mix Windows and Apple machines together for network rendering. But, I did setup two Macbook Pros to render the above image in almost half the time. Rendering the cube file at that level took one hour but once I implemented the rendering slave it took about 35 minutes to achieve the same level of quality. I could have let it render longer but wanted to make a quick comparison. Indigo will actually keep rendering until you tell it to stop.

Indigo provides a 30 day demo that will render large files. After the 30 days, it only allows a certain maximum file size of around 720K. Great for playing around but if you are going to do commercial work you will need to plunk down the $835.00 plus $270.00 for each slave rendering node. It is the only rendering application that I have found that runs well on Mac while integrating with Sketchup.

More of my renders to appear on this blog.

Tagged as: Sketchup Indigo No Comments

26May/110

Google Sketchup…now I can use it! (Sketchup 8.0 that is.)

Through the years I have downloaded Google Sketchup only to get frustrated with it and eventually uninstall it. Lately, I had been reading about wood working techniques to design furniture and found out that many craftsmen are using Sketchup. I decided to try the new version of Google Sketchup 8.0. Either I was not intuitive enough to use this software in the past or they have greatly tweaked it's usability (My geek pride says go with the later). Don't get me wrong, Sketchup is not for the neophyte, you should have some understanding of graphics programs like Photoshop and Fireworks along with some understanding of CAD and 3D before attempting detailed Sketchups.

The good thing is that the community for this product is strong and many plugins have been created and supported. I have found some great plugins which help creating Sketchup drawings. I have a list of the ones that I use at the end of this post. I have also contributed the checkerboard drawing to the Google 3d Warehouse.

Base drawing in Sketchup 8.0:

Checkerboard with default style

Above is a base drawing in that I created in Sketchup 8.0 in 10 minutes. The drawing is created with only 2 components,the checkerboard square and the checker itself. Since these are created as components, you only have to edit the component to change all of duplicates. Sketchup does allow application of materials to each duplicated component separately. Copying and pasting are done with using the array method so you can duplicate one component and then type 6x to create 6 more spaced the same amount as the first initial pasted component.

Sketchup also has styles which let you acheive some really awesome effects to your drawings.

Checkerboard with Sketchy edges style

Checkerboard with scribble on masonite style

There are also some plugins (free and paid for), that will render your Google Sketch.

Google Sketchup drawing rendered with SKindigo renderer plugin.

Not bad for a open source product. Sketchup is going to allow me to create some 3d graphics that can be rendered or styled to whatever look that I want to achieve.

Links:
Google Sketchup
Indigo 3d Render for Sketchup
Lumberjocks Sketchup wood material library

Some other drawings I have been working with: