Introducing the Advanced Camera Tools

From the looks of it, we’re taking Hollywood by storm.

It seems that every time I watch a movie’s special features, up pops SketchUp: How’d they figure out the Penrose stairs in Inception? What did a vehicle designer for Avatar use to invent the bad guys’ robot suits? What tool did the production designer for 300 and Good Night, and Good Luck use? The set design for The Social Network? Futuristic environments for Tron: Legacy? The sheer number of films and TV shows that SketchUp’s been a part of is jaw-dropping—and we couldn’t be happier about it.

Since the entertainment industry’s been so good to us, we thought we’d return the favor. The old Film & Stage plugin we built in 2005 has been languishing in quasi-supported limbo for years. We dug it out of the shed, took it all apart, fixed the broken stuff, then... strapped a rocket to its butt. If fact, we made it so much better that we had to give it a new name.

The Advanced Camera Tools plugin lets you work with real-world cameras in your SketchUp Pro 8 models. Cameras you create with the ACTs provide precise controls for settings like Focal Length, Aspect Ratio and Image Width, which allows you to accurately preview real camera shots right inside SketchUp.

We put together a little video that tells the story succinctly:

In words and pictures, here’s some of what you can do with the Advanced Camera Tools:

Place cameras in your model and look through them to preview your shots.

Choose from dozens of pre-configured camera types, or create your own.

Position and aim your ACT cameras using familiar moves like Pan, Tilt, Roll, Dolly, Truck and Pedestal.

Set the Focal Length of any camera to simulate a large number of physical lenses.

Look through your ACT cameras to preview Aspect Ratio and Safe Zones for the shots you’re planning.

Toggle on and off all of your ACT cameras’ frustums to clearly see what is—and isn’t— visible in your shots.

The Advanced Camera Tools work on both Windows and Mac computers running SketchUp Pro 8. The plugin itself is a free download; you can get it here: Windows | Mac OS X

This Getting Started Guide is a good place to look for answers to your questions. To join a discussion, check out this thread on our forums.

Six years ago, we also released a big collection of components that relate specifically to film and tv production. If you need a dolly or a jib or a light stand or a light or a scissor lift or any other piece of movie set apparatus, this collection of collections on the 3D Warehouse is a great place to start looking.

One more thing: The lion’s share of credit for getting these tools out the door goes to Brian Brown. He worked on them in his 20% time—his day job is leading the engineering effort for Building Maker and the 3D Warehouse. Small tokens of appreciation (RED ONE HD cameras, etc.) should be mailed directly to him.

Happy pre-visualizationing!

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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Shaderlight Winter Wonderland winners announced

Our friends at Shaderlight have just wrapped up their Winter Wonderland rendering competition; the winning entries are delightful:

First Place: Luke Holdmann, Milwaukee, USA

Second Place: Abedallah, Christchurch, New Zealand

Third Place: Zoungy, USA

Kate from ArtVPS (makers of Shaderlight) tells me that the Mac version is on schedule for release in March. Can't wait!

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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New in Building Maker: Duplication

Endlessly repetitive buildings might not do wonders for the urban fabric of a city (Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse, anyone?), but they present some distinct advantages for the average geo-modeling addict. Anyone using a computer who hears the phrase "repeated forms" should immediately think “duplicate.” After all, doing the same thing over and over again is what microprocessors live for.

Similar buildings in the The Hague, The Netherlands

Nearly identical apartment blocks in Berlin, Germany

In situations like the ones in the cities above, Building Maker's "New from current" feature really comes in handy. You use it to duplicate existing models for re-use elsewhere. With any saved model open, right-click in the center of the next building you want to work on and choose Start new building from current from the context menu that pops up. Here’s what it looks like in the app:

Model a building in Building Maker and save it.

Right click the center of the next building you want to model and choose Start new building from current.

Position the new building wireframe in multiple views.

Repeat a few times, and you end up with something like this. These models, incidentally, were made by Supermodeler Dan Nielsen (aka Dan2310) almost a year ago—without this nifty new feature. Think of how much time he could have saved!

Posted by Brian Brown, Software Engineer and Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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Proper Animation is a very cool plugin

Somewhere near the top of SketchUp's all-time list of feature requests, there's a big, bold headline that reads ANIMATE THE MOVEMENT OF OBJECTS. It's something all of us have wanted to do at one time or another. Unfortunately, it's also not something we've managed to tackle just yet. And that's why Ruby script plugins for SketchUp are so darn useful.

A while ago, I found out about a nice little plugin called Proper Animation. Watching the teaser video (below) inspired me to model and animate my very own robotic contraption. Shockingly, it only took me about half and hour to do; Proper Animation is refreshingly easy to figure out and use.

This script's premise is that objects in your model—groups and components—can each have multiple positions. You manually assign each position to build an animation. Playing that animation involves using SketchUp's already-existing Scenes feature. The really nice thing is that Proper Animation automatically connects positions to scenes.

The first thing you need to do is download and install the plugin. Its developer is MorisDov; you can find it on his site. Proper Animation also comes bundled with its own tutorial PDF. If you're looking for even more encouragement/inspiration/support, you can check out the plugin's SketchUcation thread.

Here's how I recommend getting started with Proper Animation:

Step 1

Build a box and turn it into a group. This plugin only works with groups and components.

Step 2

Right-click the box and choose Proper Animation > Set Position - 1. This tells the plugin where the box should start out.

Step 3

Move the box using SketchUp's Move tool. It doesn't matter where you move it to.

Step 4

Right-click the box again and choose Proper Animation > Set Position - 2.

Step 5

Open the Scenes Manager (Window > Scenes) and create a couple of new scenes. Clicking the Add Scene button twice is the quickest way to do this.

Step 6

Choose Plugins > Proper Animation > Start Scenes Observer from the menu bar. This tells SketchUp to start paying attention to the Proper Animation plugin.

Step 7

Click the first scene tab and watch the box travel back to its original position. Now click the second scene tab to animate the box back to Position 2.

Step 8

Telephone Pixar to let them know you'll be applying for a job shortly.

Proper Animation does a whole bunch of other stuff, too. There are controls for scene transition and delay timing, as well as fancier parameters like easing. You can use the plugin's dedicated "Animation Attributes Map" dialog box to fiddle with individual settings. Extremely advanced people are even experimenting with combining animation and rendering—take a look at the most recent pages of this SketchUcation thread to read all about it.

Note: Running Proper Animation on my Mac with the latest version of SketchUp 8 installed, I'm experiencing some weird crashing that didn't seem to happen before. Using the plugin in connection with Scenes (as described above) seems to resolve the issue, though.

Thanks to MorisDov for a truly nifty piece of technology. A thousand nerdy assembly line robot models owe their lives to you.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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Photo-rendering with Shaderlight

If I had a nickel for every time someone asks me which renderer they should use with SketchUp, I’d have a fleet of helicopters perched on the turrets of my castle. One look at SketchUp’s Fan Photos page on Facebook is all you need to understand our community’s obsession with delicious photo-realism. There are piles of fantastic rendering tools to choose from, and more become available all the time. Happily, most of them have a “free mode” that you can use to try things out.

Shaderlight, an awfully-impressive (and relatively new) offering from ArtVPS, is one such rendering tool. Its interface is clean and straighforward, there’s a free version available and the video tutorials are easy to follow and comprehensive. It’s currently only available for Windows, but I’m told that a Mac version is in the works. Here are some tasty sample renderings to whet your appetite:

Boat interior rendering by Sully114

Rendering by Daniel Tal

Kitchen rendering by Eric Schimelpfenig

Villa interior rendering by Sully14

In the interest of fairness to all of our rendering friends, our plugins page lists some of the other tools you can investigate if photo-realism is your bag.

Update: The target launch date for Shaderlight for Mac is early March.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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An important update for SketchUp 8

Sometimes a haiku says it best:

new SketchUp version
shadows work much better now
farewell artifacts!

You'll want to download today's free update for SketchUp 8 as soon as possible. It contains (among a great many other things) fixes for for raster image export at high resolutions on Windows, and for the dreaded Shadow Bug. If you listen carefully, you can hear the sound of millions of modelers uncorking Champagne to celebrate. Believe me – we're thrilled, too.

Here's an overly-dramatic video that shows the Shadow Bug fix in living color.

The newest version of SketchUp 8 (free and Pro) is available today in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Traditional Chinese and Brazilian Portuguese. Stay tuned for Russian, Dutch and Simplified Chinese; they’re coming soon.

Here's how to get the latest version of SketchUp 8:

Windows: Choose Help > Check for Update

Mac: Choose SketchUp > Check Web for Update

Please feel free to express your own euphoria in the form of a haiku in this post's comments thread.

Udpate: Added Korean to the list of available languages.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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Augmented Reality for SketchUp

The first time I saw Augmented Reality in action, I wondered if I'd accidentally fallen through a wormhole on the way to work; it's the kind of thing you'd expect to see on Boba Fett’s BlackBerry. AR is downright futuristic.

In the 3D modeling sense, AR involves combining a live video stream with a 3D model to create the illusion that the model is a physical object in the real world. All you need is a webcam (the ones that are built in to many laptops work just fine), a 3D model (SketchUp takes care of that), a printed-out paper "target" and a piece of AR software that can put everything together. This video shows AR in action:



And here’s an illustration that shows the setup:

A simple Augmented Reality setup for SketchUp, using an external monitor to show the video output. Note that a second monitor isn't necessary for using this plugin.

Thanks to an Italian outfit called Inglobe Technologies, SketchUp users have been able to ride the AR wave for a while now. They've just released version 2 of their AR-media Plugin for Google SketchUp. Three great things about this shiny, happy piece of tech:

• It's available for both Windows and Mac OSX.
• It's available in three flavors: Free (Personal Learning Edition), Professional Lite and Professional.
• I was able to use it, which means that it can't be that hard to figure out.

Start out by grabbing the Quick Start Guide; you'll find the relevant links about halfway down the plugin's webpage. Follow Steps 2 and 3 to download and install the software; the free Personal Learning Edition will let you see how everything works without spending any money. After that, achieve instant gratification (my favorite kind) by skipping ahead to Step 6 in the Quick Start Guide: "Creating your first Augmented Reality Scene".

Here’s a video that shows off the new features in ARmedia Plugin 2.0:

Please use this post's Comments thread to discuss the ways you think AR might benefit you.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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DoubleCAD XT and SketchUp

Having been here for almost seven years, I've concluded that there are as many SketchUp workflows as there are SketchUp users. Trying to recommend a single catch-all combination of tools and methods is like stapling Jell-O to a piece of paper — difficult, messy and ill-advised. When tools like DoubleCAD XT (and DoubleCAD XT Pro) from IMSI/Design come along, things get a little easier to explain.

Most SketchUp modelers who design things for a living spend their time somewhere between the second and third dimensions. Models are 3D, but construction (or fabrication) requires 2D documents. Often, those 2D drawings are too complex to use LayOut in SketchUp Pro to make; LayOut isn't a dedicated drafting tool, after all.

A SketchUp model imported into DoubleCAD XT Pro

DoubleCAD XT is (as its name implies) most certainly a full-featured CAD tool. It's more affordable than AutoCAD LT, and it "holds hands" with SketchUp better than any other CAD system on the market. Among other things, DoubleCAD XT:

• exports COLLADA files which you can open in SketchUp
• imports .SKP files natively
• imports and recognizes SketchUp layers
• generates viewports from scenes in your models
• converts components into DoubleCAD blocks automatically

If you're a Windows user who routinely creates 2D documents, you owe it to yourself to give DoubleCAD a whirl. The no-cost version (did I forget to mention that DoubleCAD XT is free?) is extremely capable, and the Pro version adds lots, lots more for US$695.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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Ponoko 3D Printing Challenge: Three weeks left

We’re one quarter of the way into the Ponoko 3D Printing Challenge; you’ve got three more weeks to enter. The salient points:

1. You produce an instructional media-thing (text, images, video) that teaches folks “How to use Google SketchUp for Ponoko 3D printing.”
2. You submit your creation to Instructables by December 17th.
3. A panel of judges from SketchUp and Ponoko (hopefully) picks your submission as a winner.
4. You receive a boatload of prizes.

More deets on the official Challenge web page. Happy instructabling!

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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Announcing the Ponoko 3D Printing Challenge

If you haven’t discovered Ponoko yet, you’re in for a treat. Ponoko is about turning the stuff you dream up into physical objects that you can hold in your hands. Nothing beats seeing your designs come to life.

To coincide with the launch of their new Personal Factory 4 services, I’m happy to announce a nifty competition we’re helping the folks at Ponoko to promote. Basically, the challenge is to produce a piece of instructional content that’s equal parts enlightening and entertaining. Each entry must be titled “How to use Google SketchUp for Ponoko 3D printing,” but aside from that, the format is pretty open. Text, images and video (or some combination of the three) are all fair game.

The prizes are noteworthy: All three winners will each receive SketchUp Pro 8, a 12-month Prime subscription to Personal Factory 4 and a voucher for having something made. The prizes for first place alone are worth $1500.

The competition deadline is four weeks from now; all entries are due December 17, 2010. Visit the official announcement page for all the juicy details, and have fun making the world a more interesting place to be.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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iClone: Bringing your architecture to life

'Tis the season... for software competitions! The folks at Reallusion (the talented makers of iClone) have recently launched the Bring Your Architecture to Life SketchUp & iClone Rendering Contest. With a combination of realistic materials, detailed landscape entourage objects, spiffy lighting effects and full-fledges animation, iClone is a really nice way to present your models.

If you use SketchUp on a Windows computer, you should definitely give iClone a whirl. The material incentives for entering this competition are substantial; An iPad, a Sony Cyber-shot digicam, SketchUp Pro 8 and plenty of other goodies await the winners.

The deadline for entering is midnight on December 15th, 2010. Visit the contest page on the Reallusion website for more details. Also wander over to this thread on SketchUcation—you'll find links to tutorials and advice that should give you a jump-start, if you need one.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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Instant Roof, instant productivity

Instant Roof, by Chuck Vali of Vali Architects, is a truly great SketchUp Ruby script. Its purpose is simple – you use Instant Roof to quickly create gables, hips, sheds and trellises anywhere you need them. This script has everything going for it:

It's easy to install. Pop one file into your plugins folder and you're done.

It's easy to learn. Chuck (the script's author) has put together a huge pile of fantastic instructional PDFs and videos on his website. The in-product help is also comprehensive and well-placed.

It's easy to use. Everything's right there in the Plugins menu, so you don't have to memorize and keep track of a bunch of little tool icons. The input method for telling the script where to put gables and sheds couldn't be simpler.

To use Instant Roof, you select a face and choose Plugins > Instant Roof > Make Roof. In the following image, I chose to use the California Ranch roof style:

Selecting just a face produces a hip roof.

By default, the script produces an entirely hipped roof; it slopes in all directions. To produce a roof form with a gable, select an edge in addition to the face, then run the script:

Select an edge to tell the script where to draw a gable.

Selecting edges on opposite sides of the building results in gables over both:

Select two edges to create gables on both ends of the roof.

If you select three edges, you end up with a shed:

Selecting three edges produces a shed.

The script handles increased complexity beautifully:

Once I'd wrapped my head around what I was doing, this roof took 3 seconds to generate.

Here’s Chuck showing off Instant Roof on YouTube:

Instant Roof includes a number of roof styles, but they're all just preset combinations of parameters that you can fiddle with to produce almost anything you need. Slopes, eaves, fascia, rafters – they'e all infinitely adjustable.

The script comes preloaded with a few parameter presets, but you can create and save your own.

And if that's not enough, Instant Roof can also create a few different roof details: mission tile, shingles, standing seam and sheet metal.

Mission tile and metal standing seam are two of the roof details you can apply with Instant Roof.

Instant Roof comes in two flavors: free and Pro. The latter gives you the ability to choose from a much larger number of roof slopes; that's critical if you're using the script to do serious work. At US$39, it's a bargain. I can only imagine what impact Instant Roof will have on urban designers, art directors, set designers, concept artists and anyone else who needs to whip up convincing built form, quickly.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this script's author has done a phenomenal job of creating tutorials that should answer all your questions. Visiting his site will be one of the best things you do today – I guarantee it. Here's a screenshot of what you can expect to find there:

Visit Chuck's website for videos and printable help resources galore.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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SketchUp to 3ds Max, anyone?

Those of you who use SketchUp with 3ds Max 2010 are in luck; the folks over at Autodesk have created a nice importer that should make your life just a little bit easier. They've even made a lovely video to show it off:

The new SketchUp import capabilities are part of the Connection Extension available to 3ds Max 2010 and 3ds Max Design 2010 Subscription members.

Tip: Just in case the new importer only works with SketchUp 6 and 7 files, remember that you can always "downsave" to an earlier version from SketchUp 8 (and SketchUp Pro 8).

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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The nerdiest sofa shopping tool ever

Leave it to me to over-complicate things.

Last week, I was shopping for a new sofa online. I found a few that look promising, but I wanted to know how each would fit in my living room. I've already modeled my whole house, so all I needed was a model of each sofa – simple, right?

Not finding what I needed on the 3D Warehouse, I whipped up a simple, generic model. Figuring that I'd need to re-configure it for several different sofas, I turned it into a Dynamic Component. Now adjusting it is just a matter of typing a few dimensions into the Component Options dialog box I made. Here's what my sofa looks like:

You can use the Component Options dialog box to configure this sofa however you like.

Just about every sofa I found online includes dimensions, so it's a piece of cake to turn my generic version into a "for placement only" facsimile. Just type in dimensions, explode the component and do a little tweaking. Behold:

The Petrie Sofa from Crate&Barrel.

The Steele Sofa from Crate&Barrel. I manually extended the back on both sides.

The Traversina Sleeper Sofa from Design Within Reach. I added the cushions afterwards.

I also made a sectional version of my sofa component; it looks like this:

The sectional version of my dynamic sofa. More attributes = more fun.

If you think you might be able to use these models, you're welcome to them; I uploaded them to the 3D Warehouse today:

• Dynamic, Configurable Sofa
• Dynamic, Configurable Sectional Sofa

Interested in making your own Dynamic Components? DC authoring is one of my favorite features in SketchUp Pro.

Extra bonus points: Use Fredo6’s RoundCorner Ruby script to make your sofa look less blocky.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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SketchUp-to-Maxwell rendering tutorials

I have a serious love/hate relationship with photo-realistic rendering. I'm completely intrigued by the drop-dead gorgeous images I come across every day, but I'm terrified by the prospect of ever having to produce any myself. Simply put, rendering seems hard – so hard that I don't even know where I'd begin. There are so many options...

"A mobile beachfront resort concept."
I found this SketchUp/Maxwell rendering on Ronen Bekerman's Flickr photostream.

I've heard lots of good things about Maxwell Render. When they sent me an email about a new series of Getting Started videos for their SketchUp plugin, I clicked on the link; I'm a total sucker for sexy renderings. I spent about 45 minutes watching the first four tutorials, and I have to say, I'm hooked.

If you've ever wondered about Maxwell, here's your chance. Clear an hour from your schedule, pour yourself some coffee, and find a comfy chair. I think it'll be worth your while.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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SketchUp + Piranesi = delicious renderings

Some of you might recall the SketchUp-to-Piranesi Rendering Competition hosted by our friends over at SketchUcation a few months ago. The results are in, and they’re beautiful:

Winner, Exterior Category
Geshu Liu

Runner-Up, Exterior Category
Артём

Winner, Interior Category
Roly Wood

Runner-up # 1, Interior Category
Julie Couch

Runner-up # 2, Interior Category
Geshu Liu

Take a look at this web album to see all of the entries. Congrats to everyone who entered!

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

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