Sketchup Blog - News and Notes from the Sketchup folks

Photoshop gets a little less 2D

Posted by Brian Brewington, Software Developer

People who get to be visually creative for a living (and those who are creative just for fun) already know and love Photoshop. Just recently, in Photoshop CS3 Extended, the good folks at Adobe added the ability to manipulate and modify textures on 3D models, opening up new possibilities for content creation and editing by 3D enthusiasts. In fact, at our users' conference a couple of years ago, we did an informal poll and learned that a huge number of Sketchup users are into Photoshop, too.

So when our 3D Warehouse team met with the Photoshop team a few months ago, it was pretty natural to wonder, "Wouldn't it be cool if Photoshop users could grab models out of the 3D Warehouse?" That's how the plug-in idea was born. A bit of coding later, we've got our first version. Now CS3 Extended users can take advantage of the creativity of 3D modelers from around the world who've shared their stuff on the 3D Warehouse. And in case you had any doubt, the plug-in is free.

Getting started with the plug-in is pretty simple, really. If you've got a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended, just download the plug-in and put it in your Photoshop Plugins/Automate directory. Once you've got it, choose File > Automate > Search Google for 3D Model (in Photoshop), pick your favorite model, and you'll be off and running.

Whether it's a sports stadium, a fast car, a cartoon character, some expressionist art, or whatever this thing is, just grab a model out of the 3D Warehouse using the plug-in, and customize it to get the look you want. Have fun!

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6 comments :

Norman Blogster said...

The big 'A' used to stand for "Autodesk". Pretty soon it'll stand for "Adobe":
http://www.partiv.com/2007/03/29/adobe-new-autodesk/

Anonymous said...

Great idea, I have always had an issue making things look realistic in sketchup. The addition of photoshop will make that so much easier and probably save me a ton of time. Keep it up folks!

Anonymous said...

What about the 3d models I create myself, is the plu-in gonna work with them also or only with 3d model downloaded from the warehouse

Anonymous said...

Photoshop CS3 Extended can load models in .obj, .3ds, .u3d, .dae, and .kmz formats. So, if you can get your model into one of those formats, then yes, it can.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this nice information. I use Adobe CS3 and i always have problem to create 3D things and CS3 solve this problem little bit.

Anonymous said...

tHATS JUST WHAT I NEed. thx :)

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