Summary Mur
In this chapter you have learned how to extend your skills 200 as a rendering artist. You have learned how to take renders and native SketchUp images and add some seasoning. In particular, I think you will keep coming back to Compositing photos and renders into one image Tweaking levels to give realistic lighting Creating the straight out of the camera depth of field effect Adding reflection to windows without even touching a render application These are some of the main skills a 3D artist...
Time for action manipulating entourage in Kerkythea
Kerkythea has a slightly clunky interface, as do most rendering applications. That's why in Chapter 3, I suggested doing all design and composition of the scene in SketchUp. But once you learn the basics in Kerkythea it's perfectly possible to insert, move, and scale stuff in Kerkythea. Inserting entourage directly into Kerkythea has the advantage of keeping your SketchUp scene uncluttered, import the 3DS format better, and will also allow you to use the OBJ format not supported in SketchUp....
PhotoReal Rendering
This chapter is mostly concerned with applying materials and textures for photo-real rendering with Kerkythea or other rendering software, or for output directly from SketchUp. If you're aiming for artistic styles such as pencil or watercolor, it is often better to use an untextured model, so skip this chapter for now and go to Chapter 6, Entourage the SketchUp Way. We're now going to work through the various texturing processes together. Texturing is a simple process of applying the techniques...
Time for action creating spotlights in SketchUp
1. You will only be using SketchUp to set up and export lights. So you can hide all unnecessary geometry to help you place lights more easily. Your main scene is already open in Kerkythea. 2. Click the Insert Spotlight button on the SU2KT toolbar. 3. Click somewhere on the ceiling to place it. 4. Move the cursor down along the blue axis and click near the floor. 5. Click OK to accept the default settings. 7. Select Yes on Export Lights only. Leave the rest set to No. 8. Name the file spotlights...
At which stage do I introduce entourage
There are three options here, illustrated in the first column of this table Broadly speaking, the level of difficulty experienced with entourage will increase the further along the process you decide to introduce it. So, as already discussed in Chapter 3, Composing the Scene, it is best to set up entourage place markers at least in SketchUp right at the start. The disadvantage of introducing detailed entourage high polygon, detailed textures into SketchUp is that it tends to slow the program...
Finishing touches
1. As with the Dennis technique, add a Vignette layer to finish the composition. 2. Save a copy in GIMP .xcf format to allow you to edit it further some other time if desired. This format retains all the layers and masks. 3. Go to Image Flatten Image this will remove layers and masks . 4. Go to Filters Artistic Apply Canvas to get the paper affect. 5. Choose a depth setting to your own taste. You can see here how the paper grain shows up the smudged graphite just like when you do it by hand. 6....
Part Tweaks and lighting levels
Rendered output from Kerkythea is superb. There's no doubt about it. And that's because it's a physically accurate light simulator. When you click Start Render it fires light beams at the scene and recaptures them in the camera. So, it's really just a digital camera with simulated digital light. What that means to you and me, apart from the superb results, is that light levels saturation, white balance, and so on aren't always right, straight out of the box. And that's where GIMP comes in....
Time for action setting up Pencil sketch technique
Create scenes in SketchUp corresponding to the following images and export them as before. They can be based on any black and white sketchy line style from the style pallet. All the settings listed below are modified in the style manager pallet The Heavy Construction Lines layer, consisting of The Light Construction Lines layer, as before but it consists of These first two layers are created using the Level of Detail slider with high Extension values, as you can see in the following screenshot...
Time for action set up a fake room
Here's an example of how to utilize images in your scene. When rendering a building with large windows, all we need to do is set up a billboard image of a room, such as this one, behind the window. Someone on Flickr took the photo for me. Thankyou But what if you're making an animated flythrough and the camera passes by the window slowly The image behind the window won't move right at all. The answer is to mock up a quick Photo-Match room. Have a go yourself 2. Find a suitable picture of a...
Time for action creating pencil shading in GIMP
1. Select the Shaded Pencil layer. 2. Select the Select by Colour tool from the main pallet. 4. Go to Filters Blur Motion blur. 5. Set Length between 10 and 20, and Angle to however you like it to simulate the direction of your pencil strokes. 6. The contents of the layer are blurred in the direction you specified. 7. Select this layer in the layer pallet. Select the move tool and move it back approximately within the sketchy lines use the arrow keys . 8. Select Colours Brightness contrast,...
Using components to increase productivity
If you've come to SketchUp without any prior knowledge of 3D CAD, one of the features that will absolutely amaze you is components. When you create a component, you can copy it as many times as you like. These copies are linked to the original component and are called instances. If you change something in the original component, all the instances will also change Likewise, if you change something in any of the instances, all the others will change too. Imagine how much difference this single...
Time for action setting up the Dennis technique in SketchUp
This picture shows a dwelling in SketchUp. I've taken this one from the 3D Warehouse. It might be easier for you to do the same, rather than using your pride and joy project, simply because you'll be defacing it beyond recognition and this can be quite upsetting Choose a really simple model like this one First you will set up the three pages which you will export to GIMP. They are 1. Maximize the window so that you keep the window size consistent. 2. Compose your scene, if you haven't done so...
So whats the big deal about low poly modeling
Have you ever downloaded a huge model from Google 3D Warehouse and found SketchUp becomes un-responsive Low poly modeling makes the difference between the smooth, easy navigation around large scenes and a slow jumpy nightmare. That's because SketchUp has to calculate where all these polygons are many times a second when rotating orbiting a view. This is even more difficult once shadows are switched on, because SketchUp also has to work out where shadows hit each polygon. Take a look at the...
Compositing in VirtualDUB
Virtualdub was introduced in Chapter 2, How to Collect an Arsenal Rambo Would Be Proud of. If you haven't obtained it yet, check out Chapter 2 for details. VirtualDub basically creates animations from still images, and has loads of other image filters too. In just a couple of steps you're going to take the individual frames saved from Kerkythea and turn them into an uncompressed AVI video. 1. Find the VirtualDub.exe file or shortcut and double-click it. 2. In VirtualDub go to File Open Video...
Furniture
When creating interior views the furniture you choose is of paramount importance in establishing the look and feel of the image. While people are not used to discerning build quality of architecture, they are very well equipped to discern good or bad furnishings. That's because everyone buys furniture, and everyone spends most of their lives in rooms. And so, when looking at an interior visual most of the impact will be created by the furniture, not the room itself, as you can see in this image...
Whats low poly
In SketchUp, everything you create is formed from a wire frame, over which is stretched a skin. You can see this process happening when you draw any shape with the pencil tool. The lines are the frame, and when a shape polygon is complete, the frame receives a skin surface . These surfaces are actually all made up of simple shapes polygons which you can't see. Go to View Hidden to see what I mean. Low poly modeling is where you create things in SketchUp while constantly striving to keep the...
Switching between PR and NPR versions
9. In your scene, right-click and select Reload. 10. Select the PR or NPR version and click Open. You made a component from the 2D cutout and told SketchUp where the axis should go. This means that when inserting the component in the future, it will always appear with the middle of the feet at the cursor. This eases placement dramatically. Even more importantly, because a Face-Me component rotates to follow the camera, you've told it where the centre of rotation is. You've labeled your...
Editing textures in GIMP
You now have the textured image of the entire face you selected open in GIMP. You can now modify whatever you wish. When you click Save and go to SU, the image will update in SketchUp. As you can see from the texture I opened below, the image here is only 178 x 337 pixels. That's a little too small to do anything with. You can see the poor quality of the texture. So instead I'm going to go back to SketchUp, apply a standard brick pattern, and re-open the texture in GIMP. As you can see from the...
Walkthroughs and Flyovers
In this chapter, you're going to learn the basic skills you need to produce animated walkthroughs and flyovers. SketchUp can be the ideal software to produce these types of animations. In fact, the film industry uses SU as a pre-visualization tool. They work out the basic shots, camera angles, timing, and so on within SketchUp before they shoot it for real And that's how we're going to use it too. What to include in your animation How to create a simple walkthrough in SketchUp Using paths for a...
Smoke machine effects fog
Have you ever finished a SketchUp model only to find yourself completely stumped as to how to finish off the edges of a scene This is a common problem. In real life buildings aren't just surrounded by nothing. SketchUp now has a nifty little setting which allows you to simulate the image fading into the background, called fog. Other tricks which help with this are setting up photo backgrounds, as will be discussed in a moment. Of course, if you are using a photo match scene you don't need to...
Time for action downloading and installing extras for Kerkythea
You should now download whatever goodies you can get your sweaty hands on at the Kerkythea website. These bits and pieces, such as materials, backgrounds, skies, and ready-made scenes will make life a lot easier for you later on. A little time spent here really pays off later. Download the latest stable beta versions of Kerkythea application. Integration, exporters and various tools for linking from various modeling applications. Download material and model libraries to improve the appearance...
Time for action correcting perspective
Often your source photos will not be taken square on to the texture. That's not a big problem. Just follow this method in GIMP or other powerful image editing software such as PhotoShop. Some digital cameras have an automatic feature called white board capture built in such as the Casio Exilim range . This is a fantastic way of skipping this step and will save you lots of time if you're using textures regularly. It works with any rectangular surface. 1. Start with a photo taken as near square...
The final indoor render
You are now ready to render a preview image and final image of your artificially lit indoor scene. Because the scene is complex with many light sources and reflective materials, we're going to do a preview render with setting 01. Ray Tracing - Low. This won't calculate light bounce Global Illumination , but this doesn't matter when you've got a lot of lights in a scene as you can see in the following screenshot. Most areas will be lit directly. And what's most important, your render won't grind...
Animating in SketchUp
Now comes the really fun bit We're going to look at the main ways you can get animation out of SketchUp. And don't forget, whatever you animate in SketchUp can be turned into a render in Kerkythea. So, SketchUp is a pre-visualization tool for rendering as well as a visualization tool in itself. Time for action - a simple walkthrough 1. Create the simple scene illustrated here in SketchUp. The tallest object is about 2 meters 6.5 feet tall. 2. Texture all the faces differently so that you can...
Time for action low poly curves and circles
All circles and curves in SketchUp are made up of straight lines. The default number of straight lines in a circle is 24. 1. Draw a circle and zoom in to the edge. You can see a facetted edge as shown in the preceding screenshot. This is because SketchUp draws circles and arcs as a series of lines to create the curvature. 2. Now Push Pull the circle to create a cylinder. 3. To find out how many polygons are being used to make up the cylinder go to Model Info Statistics. 4. The number of faces...
Time for action using a sky image in GIMP
The web's full of stunning sky photos. Just grab one you like, and follow these steps to insert it into your composition. Or why not just point your camera upwards on a sunny day 1. In GIMP go to File Open and select the sky image. 2. This will open a new GIMP window. Working in this has no adverse effect on your first window. 3. Go to Filters Artistic Oilify and increase Mask size and Exponent until you get an oil paint effect similar to this 6. Switch back to your Dennis window. 7. Just in...
Authoring video sequences
So, you've got a bunch of clips. These may or may not relate to the storyboard you set up at the start, but it doesn't matter. You're just practicing. What you need to do now is put your SketchUp animations together. 1. Open Windows Movie Maker or similar software . 2. Go to File Import Into Collections. 3. Drag the main flythrough clip onto the timeline. 4. You're now going to insert the short clips into the main flythrough. 5. Move the slider see the following screenshot to where you want to...
Landscaping with sandbox Watch your polygon count
If you have a CAD plan with proposed levels, you can easily draw around some contours and use sandbox to create landscaped areas. The only thing to bear in mind here when using sandbox for visualization projects is that the more detail you put in to the contours, the more polygons you get in the 3D mesh. So, use a few straight lines to approximate the contours. The same goes for creating a mesh from scratch using the from scratch feature. Limit the amount of squares as best you can. SketchUp...
Advanced materials techniques
Now that you've learned all you need to know for success the majority of the time, here's some other skills and techniques you can learn if you want to. You'll find them useful, but not essential. So, if you want to, you can just come back to this part when you need it. This is by no means a complete description of all the features you'll find in a rendering program. It's just some exercises showing you a couple of advanced functions which I think you'll find useful in your SketchUp workflow.
Time for action making unique textures for surfaces
Before you can open an entire surface texture in GIMP, turn it into a unique texture for that face. 4. Select Texture Edit Texture Image. 5. GIMP opens up with the texture ready for editing You just created a separate texture image for the face you selected. This creates an image based on the face, and detects any cropping and holes, such as window openings. If you don't do this GIMP may open a tiled texture and edit that instead, which will change that texture wherever it is used in the model.
The texturing process flow chart
The process that I suggest you follow is shown in the following flow chart, and it shows how you can start with any of the base modeling techniques you learned about in Chapter 4, Modeling for Visualization, to end up with a superbly textured scene. The mistake most newbies make is to go straight for tileable textures, and then leave it there, which makes for a sometimes dull and often unrealistic render. Also the same basic textures that come bundled with SketchUp keep cropping up in...
Time for action Anv
1. In SketchUp draw a cube and apply a tile material to each face. 2. Set up shadows and rotate the view so that the shadows are facing towards you. 3. Go to View Animation Add Scene. 5. In Kerkythea go to Insert Omnilight. This places an omni-directional light at the location of the camera like a headlamp to light the scene head on. 6. Select the tile material and add a high amount specular in the material editor say 65 and set Shininess to 125. 7. Perform a render using Raytracing Low, and...
Using layer masks in GIMP
Layer masks are a key feature of pro image software, and the main reason we're using GIMP instead of, say, Photoshop Elements. A layer mask is a black and white image associated with a layer. Wherever you paint black on the layer mask, you will be able to see through the layer. And wherever there is white, you will not be able to see through. You'll also be using layer masks in Chapter 9, Important Compositing and After Effects in GIMP. You're going to use layer masks now to create holes in the...
Using a site photo
One of the best ways to bring across the concept of a new building is to put it into its existing setting. We can do this with a photo of the site as it is now before building commences. It's also one of the easiest ways of producing great architectural visuals because you don't have to worry about all the extra bits of entourage that need to be selected and arranged. They're already in the photo. If you can get your hands on a decent camera, and the site's relatively uncluttered, this may be...
Displaying SketchUp sections
There is currently no function to create building sections in LayOut, so you need to create sections in SketchUp first. Once you add them in a SketchUp model, the LayOut version will contain them too. 1. Right-click on a SketchUp window in LayOut and select Open with SketchUp. 2. Click on the Section Plane button and click on a surface. The section plane will be created in plane with that surface. 3. Use the Move tool to move the section plane where you want it and then manipulate your view to...
Am I outgrowing Kerkythea
In general, my advice is to stick with Kerkythea until you're showing signs of outgrowing it. Some of the things you might like to have at your fingertips which Kerkythea currently doesn't enable are Physics and particle animations Poser integration 3D people Animating objects, not just cameras More access to quality entourage for example automatic foliage creation in Vue Simplified or enhanced interface Render directly within SketchUp What should I look for in a renderer The tables have been...
Saving the final image
12. When you're happy, click the Stop button. 14. Use the Gamma sliders if necessary. 15. Hit Save and type in a filename. 16. Select either PNG or TIFF in the File Filter box. After 40 or 50 passes the image should be done . You can leave it longer or stop it earlier, it's up to you. Don't worry about the slight grainy quality of the image, as you'll learn how to remove this in Chapter 9, Important Compositing and After Effects in GIMP. Here's my final daylight render
The SketchUp Kerkythea rendering process diagram
In this section there is a diagram that shows the SketchUp and Kerkythea rendering process. This is a good way of doing it because you achieve great results in little time. For example, why find out that a material hasn't mapped at the right scale only after an hour long render Using the following process, you would find that out in 30 seconds with a low quality test render. Step 1 Check integrity and the modify testrender loop. We're going to look at each of these in detail using a fairly...
Kerkythea preparing to go photo real
You remember I promised you there would be an extra special prize in this stash The flamethrower or rocket launcher that turns you into a one man army Well, this is it. Kerkythea is an open source software project. That means some guys have released the code for this rendering engine for free, and not only that, the ever grateful core users have built up a reputation for excellent support through their user forums. The important thing is that, because it's freely available, you can install it...
Part Compositing multiple images
It's time in this second half of the chapter to go on to compositing multiple images. You will have learned a lot of the skills needed here already in Chapter 7, so, you're already half way there The following few pages will equip you to stitch together finished images from different component parts. Time for action - using the Kerkythea mask render for windows You'll find this trick useful again and again in all sorts of ways as you progress with your post-processing skills. We're going to go...
Artificially lit indoor scenes
As you've seen, you can get a really nice, really quick render using SketchUp's sun and sky settings without changing much in Kerkythea. SketchUp passes on all the necessary environment information on to Kerkythea. But what about indoor scenes with artificial lighting In this Time for action we're going to take the same scene and turn off the natural light, then add lights back in SketchUp to export to our Kerkythea scene. You can use any scene you used for the first half of the chapter.
Want an automatic veggie maker
RpTreeMaker from Render Plus allows you to create 2D trees from within SketchUp and place them into the model. It saves a PNG with alpha mask on a 2D Face-Me component. An alpha mask is a black and white image of the tree showing SketchUp and Kerkythea where to clip the image. The down-side of this is that Kerkythea doesn't always detect the alpha mask. This can be overcome by saving the PNG from within SketchUp and telling Kerkythea where to look for it within the Materials screen. You will...
Time for action modeling ridge tiles
Ridge tiles are a little more tricky because of the weird angles we get at intersections of pitched roofs. You're going to create a very basic ridge tile component and copy it along the ridge and hips you can see this in the picture at the end of this section . Making it into a component means if you want to make the tile more complex later, you only need to modify one tile, and the rest will update along with it. 1. Find a tile manufacturer website or brochure if necessary. 2. In a new...
D or not D that is the question
Here's a table showing what entourage is available for each category people, trees, vehicles, furniture, and backgrounds such as city scenes . For each of these there are pros and cons for 2D or 3D, based on availability, quality of the outcome, and ease of use. In addition there are the types of output to consider. When aiming for stills, 2D will usually be the best way to go if it's available. 2D isn't resource hungry unlike high polygon 3D trees and actually more photo real than 3D when the...
Time for action applying Alpha transparency to faceme components
If you have photo-based 2D trees or people in your SketchUp scene, these might have Alpha maps. This means that parts of the image are made transparent. To view this correctly in Kerkythea you may have to save the material image from SketchUp and apply it as a map in Kerkythea, otherwise it'll render like the preceding image. Confused No need to be, it's as simple as this 1. Open a scene in SketchUp and place a 2D tree in it from the 3D Warehouse. 2. If it's been made by using Alpha...
Suggested Basic Toolbar Layout
Ut W Cots l gt M Tai WVrfow HHy Recommended Basic Toolbar Layout SketchUp 7 Ldflidrd uravv iuui gt vVinduW Hel gt p Ldflidrd uravv iuui gt vVinduW Hel gt p
Getting started with LayOut
You will find that many things in LayOut remind you of SketchUp, so you'll feel at home with it as soon as you load it for the first time. It's designed completely from scratch for SketchUp. This is good because there's nothing redundant about it. And we can look forward to Google continuing to develop LayOut in years to come as their de-facto presentation tool. Some areas of LayOut in particular, such as dimensioning, are an exciting development as they extend SketchUp's reach into the domain...
Curtain walls
Large expanses of glass may need some detail in the window mullions or other structure to look pleasing to the eye when producing photo real visuals. You learned how to do this in Chapter 1 by adding rounded corners, and it's also covered in more detail at the end of this chapter. Non photo real probably doesn't need this. Just remember to use components for the upright and horizontal members of the frame so that chamfers fillets just need to be done once. Give the glazed areas a consistent...
Time for action how to create billboard elements
1. Insert your image into SketchUp scene somewhere out of the way. 2. Right-click and select Explode. 3. Double-click to select, then make it into a component. 4. Copy it and rotate so it stands upright 90 degrees using the Move tool with Ctrl pressed. 5. Place it where you need it. Scale as necessary. - 82 - 6. Now go back to the first copy. Double-click to edit. 8. Draw over areas to be clipped and hit Delete. 9. The in-place component automatically changes too. When you import and explode...
Think like a film set designer
Successful film and stage set designers save time with the following 2D cardboard cut-outs swapped for 3D items Modeling high detail only for close up shots You're going to learn how to think like a film and stage set designer. You'll use a backdrop image for whatever stays in the background and never enters into a close shot. That'll save you days of modeling time, and maybe hours of rendering time. You'll use 2D cut-outs for whatever you can get away with, rather than 3D geometry which eats...