Sketchup Extensions

With the recent release of Sketchup 2013 and its brand new extension warehouse it seems like a good time to do a round up of my favourite extensions (or as I used to refer to them, plugins). There are hundreds of extensions available but these are the ones I actually use regularly. I'm looking forward to discovering new ones through the extension warehouse as it makes extensions more accessible and easier to use. RoundCorner

RoundCorner is great for adding bevels and fillets to geometry, in fact I prefer the workflow to how you would normally do it in 3dsmax.

As sketchup doesnt have any kind of modifier stack though, I like to 'hide' the non modified version of the object inside the component. As it is hidden it won't be exported as geometry and it allows you to go back easily and make changes. In the image above, I have a hidden copy of the window frame 2m to the right that I can move back into place and redo the bevel/fillet if needed.

FredoScale

A great plugin for doors and windows, you can take a group and stretch it but retain the width of the frame. In the image below, the original door is on the left, the fredoscale stretch version next, and the scaled one on the right. It can do a LOT more but I just use it for this one function.

JointPushPull

Push pull non planar surfaces! Occasionally a god-send, for example extruding terrain surfaces (pavements, roads etc). Can work according to the surface normals or on an axis.

Instances

Right click a component, 'select all instances'. Very handy.

BezierSpline

A whole set of curvy line drawing tools. Can also divide up splines into equal length segments which is useful when making contours.

Curviloft

Good for simple lofts between two lines.

ComponentStringer

For copying components along splines. Useful for stairs, balustrades, fences etc.

ShapeBender

I recently had to make some curved windows, this plugin made the process very simple. Make your component as usual, then draw a curve to bend it, easy!

I haven't had a chance to see which of these extensions are available on the new extension warehouse yet, but will update this article with new links once they are online. Might also add new handy extensions to this list so feel free to let me know which ones you find handy!

Finally, if you are new to Sketchup, Ronen's blog post from 2009 9 Sketchup tips.. is still essential reading to get you off to a good start.

HDRi Skies - Mourelas Konstantinos

A beautiful image sent to me by Mourelas Konstantinos (@mourelask on twitter) which uses the very dramatic 1853 sky from my collection.

Moody sky, fog, trees... ticks all the boxes for me. Love it.

More about the image here.

Free HDRi Sky* - 3DArtist Mag

Completely forgot about this until I got sent a copy of the magazine, but 3DArtist Magazine has one of my skies on the cover disc courtesy of 3DOcean.net.

It doesn't mention my name anywhere but it is indeed one of mine so maybe a good chance to try a HDRi sky out if you haven't done so already.

The sky on the disc is '1928 Dusk Sun'

*when you buy the magazine for 6 quid

Tind by Claesson Koivisto Rune

Some of my favourite images from a recent project for the Swedish company Fiskarhedenvillan which was designed by Claesson Koivisto Rune.

(thanks to The Urban Alaskan blog for letting me use the snowsteps image here)

Many thanks to Design Connected for their help with the furniture used in this project. Almost all of the pieces of furniture are designed by Claesson Koivisto Rune themselves:

and the remaining items were:

Any other props were either supplied by the architect or come from modelplusmodel. The logs next to the fireplace originally came from evermotion I think and I then put them in place using MassFX in 3dsmax.

As usual all images are lit by my own HDRi skies without any additional help from a vraysun. The actual skies used were:

White House exteriors: 1614 White House interiors: 1008

Black House exteriors: 1614 Black House interiors: 1614

Red House exteriors: 1123 Red House interiors: 1008

As always you can find the full set on flickr.

Hayes Davidson are recruiting!

Hayes Davidson are recruiting! They are currently looking for a Technical Projects Manager, Technical Photomontage Artists and 3D Artists. For information about how to apply, visit http://www.hayesdavidson.com/about/jobs.php

I rent a desk at Hayes Davidson and have the daily pleasure of working alongside a great team of talented and enthusiastic artists, as well as (the equally talented) Patrick Vale and Nick Rochowski.

overscan

Quick 3dsmax tip.

If you need to enlarge the frame of a camera without altering the perspective of your original composition, try this:

Divide the original width of your frame by the new width, which in my case was 1200/1600 which gives 0.75. Then multiply your camera focal length by this ratio to find what the new focal length should be. For the example I'm using my original focal length was 35mm, which multiplied by 0.75 is 26.25mm.

Set your camera to this new focal length, change the format accordingly and you have effectively added width to your composition.

Thanks to twitter.com/VisualEyesMedia for this handy tip!

(There is also a script for this purpose www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/overscan but it doesn't work with vray cameras)

3dsmax - annoyances no. 1

I'm not usually one of those people who resists change in computer software, but I do when 'new' is both less intuitive and also slower. So this post is really just a reminder to myself of what to do to revert the 3dsmax select dialog to the old style one, and the material/map browser (within the material editor) as well. Enjoy!

C: > Users > *username* > AppData > Local > Autodesk > 3dsMax(Design) > 2013 - 64bit > ENU > en-US > defaults > MAX.vray > Currentdefaults.ini

[Scene Explorer] SelectByNameUsesSceneExplorer=0

(If you aren't using vray then the path will be slightly different)

C: > Users > *username* > AppData > Local > Autodesk > 3dsMax(Design) > 2013 - 64bit > ENU > plugcfg_ln > SME.ini

UseOldMtlBrowser=1

EDIT:

And another thing while I'm at it. I prefer having the file menu visible rather than just as an icon, luckily this is very easy to do, just customize your UI, click the menus tab and drag the file menu back where it should be like this:

Thanks to Pixela I think it was who originally helped me with this!