The annual South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas kicked off today, and for the first time Google SketchUp will be in attendance. We’ll be showing off some exciting new things we’ve been working on, so come find us on the tradeshow floor Monday through Thursday at booth 1322 alongside the rest of the Google crew.
We’re also hosting a party with the Blogger team at Six Lounge on Monday, March 14th. Artists Justin Chin and Sunil Pant will also be on hand; they’ll be live-modeling a futuristic skyline for the city of Austin. There will be also free food and drink (just in case you’re into that sort of thing). And if you come visit us at the tradeshow on Monday, we just might have some VIP invites to the party lying around for folks who mention this blog post.
So stop by, partake of our booze and sweetmeats and see some talented SketchUppers do their thing. Doors open at 7 pm, so come early and avoid the lines.
Please spread the word, and we’ll see you in Austin!
Posted by Gopal Shah, Product Marketing Manager
Learn from the best: SketchUp modeling for pre-production
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
6:39 PM
Sunil Pant, friend of SketchUp and eminent 3D modeling ninja, is teaching an online workshop next week through CG society. It’s called 3D Design and modeling for pre-production using Google SketchUp. Sunil has been a concept artist in the motion picture and video game industry for over 4 years, working with George Hull and other luminaries. His credits include Iron Man 2 and Dreamwork’s Megamind. We profiled Sunil on our blog a few months back.
King's Court Room
In this course, Sunil will go into detail about how he uses SketchUp to quickly block out designs in 3D in order to work out issues relating to proportion and scale. Over the 8 week course, attendees will learn how to design complicated props and vehicle designs like this:
Monorail Maintenance Vehicle
The online course starts on Monday and runs through April. Sign up soon -- spots are limited.
When I joined the SketchUp team a few months back, I did what most people do when they want to learn about something new: I plugged “SketchUp” into my favorite search engine. It wasn’t long before I found my way to this wonderful interview of concept artist Robh Ruppel done by our friends at SketchUpArtists.org.
Robh was the Art Director on the massive PS3 hit Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. In this interview, he discusses how he used SketchUp to help conceptualize and design the video game’s look and feel. For those of you who aren’t gamers, Uncharted 2 was big—really big. Think Avatar.
Concept Art: From SketchUp models to tonal drawings to production
Robh uses SketchUp to determine the size and major shapes of the game’s environments.
Needless to say, Uncharted 2 was an instant classic; having spent more Saturday nights playing this game than I care to admit, it was pretty exciting to read about how Robh used SketchUp to work out the game’s aesthetic, and so I thought I'd reached out to Robh to see if he’d be willing to talk to us on camera about how he used SketchUp on Uncharted 2. He agreed, and with the help of the good folks over at Naughty Dog Studios, we put together this case study:
One of the hardest parts about this project was distilling Robh’s many pearls of wisdom about concept art, designing in 3D and SketchUp into a YouTube video, so we’ll follow up with another post in the coming days that has a transcription of our entire interview.
One more thing: If you found this video compelling, check out the trailer for the upcoming Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. I’ve already pre-pre-ordered my copy.
