Sketchup City

[tilt]

looks really good nematode, great work.. looking forward to seeing more from you

[nematode]

Next I needed to decide how to render the model.

There are a number of render packages that integrate with Sketchup. Those are nice because they ease the workflow. Also - they support rendering an isometric view. But, after trying several, the results weren't what I was looking for. I don't want to generalize - this is only my experience - but I found that the renderers that integrate with Sketchup are best suited for rendering architectural views for industry. I needed software that could let me produce a moody picture with lots of environmental qualities. That was a dissapointment for me, because integrated Sketchup render is a great idea.

So, I needed to find another renderer that a) is free b) supports render of an isometric view and c) allows me to import my Sketchup model.

I looked into Vue. Clearly, Vue is a nice product, although it doesn't feature an isometric view. But, the show stopper with Vue was, at least at the time I was searching, it wasn't free. In particular, I remember that the Vue file importer cost money, so Vue wasn't a viable option for me.

I next looked at Bryce. At the time, a basic Bryce product was free, and sometime later, Bryce Pro became free. Although I had some reservations about using Bryce (and still do) it had a couple of big things in its favor.

Bryce does a nice job rendering an infinite water plane. Given that water would feature prominently in my renders - it's a model of a seaport city - nice looking water was very important. And, Bryce includes a lot of textures. I was going to need textures, since textures will not export from Sketchup to Bryce.

However, like Vue, Bryce doesn't support an isometric view. I also looked at Terragen 2. It supports isometric view, and renders pretty terrain, but it didn't look like it would allow me to import my Sketchup model. By this point in my search, I had come to the conclusion that I was going to have to make a compromise somewhere. No render software met all of my needs.

So I decided to give up the requirement for isometric view. Maybe I could use field of view to simulate it. Or maybe I'd find that it didn't really matter. After all, I'm not making a blueprint.

All things considered. Bryce best fit my needs.

So I began the process of exporting my Sketchup model into Bryce. The workflow was basically - within Sketchup, create groups of objects that will need to receive a certain texture, export them in COLLADA format, import them into Bryce where they will appear as a group, and then apply the Bryce texture.

Exporting, importing, and texturing was a big job. It was also a big job to learn how to produce nice renders with Bryce. I have been working with Bryce for a couple of years now, and I have to say, the learning curve is steep. I consider my Bryce renders to be only average. There is a lot more to get out of Bryce, but getting to it is very, very hard.

Here are rendered images of my city from a top view, emulating a map. They are not an isometric view. They were done in Bryce 7 Pro.

More to come......

[nematode]

What attracted me to a 3D project is the opportunity to create views of my model from other perspectives.