Sketchup Blog - News and Notes from the Sketchup folks

Wanted: SketchUp eye candy for our walls

It’s been a week since we moved into our new office, and the walls don’t seem to be decorating themselves:

Our Welcome Area is currently less than welcoming.
Nancy shows off her bowling trophy. Note the bare walls in the background.
This wall looks like something Mark Rothko threw up.
Minimalism is for weenies. Long live ornamentation!
Here’s what we’d like you to do: Send us your best-looking SketchUp images so that we can print them out and hang them up. As we get to work on the future of our beloved product, we want to be positively swimming in visual inspiration. Drowning in it. When visitors come to the SketchUp Mothership, we want their eyes to pop out, dance the Charleston, sing Hallelujah and burst into flames. Inundate us with your imagery.

Stylistically, anything goes: raw SketchUp, photo-renderings, LayOut files, pictures of 3D printed stuff—we want it all. And we’re planning to print BIG, too. The last thing we grabbed as we headed out the door was a mammoth HP plotter; it prints 36 inches (about a meter) wide.


This plotter yearns for your SketchUp deliciousness. Note: In a grand stroke of irony, someone (who shall remain nameless) has accidentally plotted out the instructions for setting up a networked printer.
Please email your images to us at sketchupblog@gmail.com. Make sure that the images you send are of sufficient size: about 3000px should do nicely, packaged as JPEGs. Lastly, please include the phrase “SketchUp Wall Candy” in the subject of your email. After we’ve had time to decorate, I’ll take some pictures and blog again. Help us un-ugly our temporary space!

On another note, something momentous occurred today. Scott (our old boss, and now the Boulder Site Director at Google) brought us a housewarming present: a beautiful, new espresso machine. I think I'll top off my first doppio with a doppio; productivity is about to soar. 

John (left) is crazed with relief as the new espresso machine is unwrapped. Tom (right) finds a better home for our previous caffeination solution. We have Scott (on behalf of our old friends at Google) to thank for our soon-to-be soaring productivity.
Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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15 comments :

RIGAILL Jean-daniel (43) said...

Thanks from France to give this Sketchup's part of life. See you.

przygod said...

I've tried to send you some pictures but got response:
"Google was unable to deliver your message because this person is no longer with Google"

SketchUp Team said...

@pryzgod: Thanks for the heads-up -- we've been receiving all the images that people have sent so far, and we just disabled a forwarding filter (to and out-of-date E-mail) that was triggering those errors!

EliBjr said...

I would love to send you guys some Sketchup work. Where would you like us to send the images? Is there a specific place you want us to post to? An e-mail address or other location? I could send some non-rendered and rendered work.

blankblog said...

Nice to see you're settling in so well :)
quick questions:
when's the due date?
any preferences for aspect ratio? and should the 3000px be on the long side or the short?
and finally, can we submit multiple peices?

Unknown said...

> and should the 3000px be on the long side or the short?

Judging from a plotter, I think it's just a suggestion for a minimum width. I guess it's able to work with paper sizes up to A0, which gives you 9933px width with 300dpi resolution.

Just check the common paper sizes, set resolution to 300dpi and choose whatever one you find appropriate for your design. Though, of course, A0 and similar sized layouts are easier to work with in vector: raster files of such a monstrous resolutions tend to be impractical. 2Gb .psd files, problems with sending the file, etc.

In case you find the editing performance or size of your raster design uncomfortable to work with, you can, of course, lower the DPI (sometimes, 150dpi looks appropriate on large designs), effectively scaling the resolution down; or switch to vector. It's impractical if you use screenshots of textured objects or photorealistic renders in your design, but graphic styles or simple minimalistic styles like HiddenLine work great with vector tracing, you can try that.

P.S.: Oh, and one advice: if you're exporting viewport images from SketchUp in high resolutions, make sure to scale your edge effects appropriately. For example, Profiles should be exaggerated to a bigger width, so that they look properly on high-resolution render. It's necessary because edge renderer is not referencing the scale of the shot, just using fixed width in pixels from style properties.

Best regards!

blankblog said...

Thanks for your response!
however it is slightly too late, I just submitted all my stuff.
They're mainly renders, in ratio 1:1, 4:3, 3:2, 16:9 or 2:1. in each, the longest is always over 3000px, sometimes the shortest too. I didn't set a value for DPI. Hope that's ok
Thanks for the detailed response anyway :) hopefully it will help other visitors

Fábio Cantu said...

It´s Nice to put a face on the people that make my life easier
Thanks guys
Keep up the good work.
and...

DON´T MESS WITH MY SKETCHUP!!!!

Lone Wolf Drafting and Design said...

Thanks for an awesome opportunity to share our Sketch Up Models with your company! I hope Sketch Up remains the fun and useful tool it now well into the future under the Trimble banner.

NVizeon said...

Let's see the "newly desecrated" walls...err that is decorated walls.

modestGirl said...

The employees seem happy with the move, but that is NOT an indicator of "hope" for Sketchup. Trimble needs to understand Sketchup's core values and Google's commitment to the idea (the core value) and notion of "3D Modeling for Everyone". That is the spirit of Sketchup. And that is how they have developed the software which has led to the success that is it today. PLEASE DON'T RUIN SKETCHUP. Thanks. My eyes are glued to this move.

Boomchucker said...

I've checked the 3D Warehouse for a model of your new office interiors. That would be swell to have to design around. What say you?

Chris Wick said...

The demonstration of true love for the espresso machine is awesome! Great job Scott!

jeff hammond said...

espresso machine = SCORE!!
nice

Unknown said...

Is it to late to submit stuff? I just heard about this and would have loved to submit my drawings..