Style Builder Overview
It's the edge styles that put the "sketch" in SketchUp. Most computer programs create graphics that look machine-made, with perfectly straight lines and uniformly solid colors. SketchUp is unusual in that it lets you create images that look as if they were sketched with all the beautiful imperfection of the human hand. These edges give SketchUp graphics their character (Figure 15-1).
SketchUp provides two types of edges: vector edges and sketchy edges. Vector edges are straight lines that look computer generated. Sketchy edges come from graphic images of hand-drawn lines. In a neat feat of computer wizardry, SketchUp takes a few images of hand-drawn lines and applies them to your model in a way that makes the whole image look as if it were drawn by hand. Computers are good at consistency and uniformity, but if there's one thing that's hard for computers, it's displaying the kind of random personality that comes as second nature to us humans. You see lots of examples of sketchy edges in SketchUp's Style window. Choose Window ^ Styles and then click the Select tab. In the drop-down menu choose Sketchy Edges.
With the help of Style Builder, you can create your own sketchy edge styles. Here's an overview of the process:
• By hand, draw several sample lines—called strokes in Style Builder—and store them as graphics files. Most styles use somewhere between a dozen and three dozen stroke images.
• Load the strokes into Style Builder. This process creates sets of strokes. A set is a collection of strokes of a certain length, such as 64 pixels or 512 pixels. (If you wish, you can rearrange sets or transfer new strokes to existing sets.)
• Use Style Builder settings to modify the look of the sketchy edges. Settings include Halo and Extensions (page 227).
• Save your project with the new strokes in a .style file and load it into SketchUp.
Figure 15-1:
Sketchy edges have differing thickness, and they may not be perfectly straight. When they meet at corners, they may fail to touch, or instead they may overshoot the intersection. This variety in edge styles makes SketchUp models look as if they were sketched by hand.
Figure 15-1:
Sketchy edges have differing thickness, and they may not be perfectly straight. When they meet at corners, they may fail to touch, or instead they may overshoot the intersection. This variety in edge styles makes SketchUp models look as if they were sketched by hand.
Tip: When you're done, you can use the Mix tab in SketchUp's Styles window to add your sketchy edges to existing styles.
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