Sketchup

So much of my work is done with Sketchup in one way or another these days that I thought a dedicated page was appropriate. I wish this tool had been around many years ago. The beauty of the program is its simplicity and intuitive operation which belies it's power as a very comprehensive modelling tool. It's companion program: Layout also has become a great aid in presentations that incorporate Sketchup models and other content. If one adds to the mix a decent rendering program it always amazes me what fantastic results emerge. Again, as I mention in my opening comments in the film and commercials pages, we are not usually making the illustrations public because it is the film one ultimately sees but Sketchup allows us to produce totally accurate scaled spaces that can be previewed in 3D, 2D, as animations, scaled drawings and rendered with lighting to give almost photoreal views of the designed spaces before anything is built.

This is a random image I used to represent a space. (A photograph of an apartment)

This is the sketchup model I built to match closely the elements of the scene and lighting to match the overall feel.

This is the Sketchup model (from left) rendered with v-ray to show how it is possible to achieve convincing images of proposed spaces

Here are a couple more reverse engineered examples of Sketchup's ability to model render real world spaces. Again I have used random photos from the internet and reproduced them as Sketchup models and rendered them with Thea to demonstrate how real environments can be reproduced fairly easily.

random photo of a room

random still life photo

Sketchup reproduction

Sketchup reproduction.

Sketchup model (not rendered)

Sketchup model from above rendered in Thea.

Sketchup model rendered in Thea Renderer for previz of book prop for TV commercial. Purpose to emphasize size of document. Book was made and was very heavy, it also contained the full text of the Affordable Care Act!

This was done in preparation for a Target commercial. I modeled the basket in Sketchup and rendered them in Thea. We never actually did the commercial but I was happy with the results of this model anyway.

Sketchup model of wedding ring, (half gold half silver) rendered with Thea. Addition of shallow depth of field and a scratch texture to make it more realistic. Reflection map as a separate channel.