Foxglove Manor

[torstan]

Wow, that looks very cool. How long does it take you to put together a model with that level of detail?

[rlucci]

Thanks for the ego-boosters guys!

Do you plan on destroying it a bit or are you planning to make it look as it did when built?

Sketchup doesn't do broken/destroyed very well. I tried with a previous project, but wasn't happy with the results. Besides this was more a test to see if I could get Sketchup and Daz Studio to place nice together.

I had no idea you could jerry rig kmz over to daz.

The KMZ file is really just a ZIP file with the extension changed (security through obscurity, I guess). Just rename the .KMZ to .ZIP and, boom, there's your .DAE collada file inside the zip file. Some tweaking is needed once you import the Collada file, but it works.

...how did you get such a beautiful ambient occlusion render in Daz (presumably Bryce rather than Studio)? I'd love to know the render settings that you used.

That was DAZ Studio (the free version, not Pro). The current version (v.3) includes a plug-in for ambient occlusion. It's buried, and not very intuitive when you do find it, but it's there (it's called "!UberEnvironment2 Base" in the "Lights" section of their "Built-in Content"). There's also a normal single distant light with a soft shadow that makes it look better.

How long does it take you to put together a model with that level of detail?

Umm... Let's see... 6-8 hours? I had made the fireplaces and doors in a previous project, so those were just dropped in (some squished a bit). The layout was easy - just copied from the adventure path. The real time consuming parts were the roofs, stairs, and those trusses (which I might have gooten carried away with a bit).

[nolgroth]

That's cool. I think the stairs are extremely well done, so if you went overboard with them, it was to the greater effect.