Instead, SketchUp is designed to produce drawings that look like they’ve been created by a draughtsman. SketchUp isn’t intended for producing photorealistic renderings, so there’s no advanced control over materials or lighting, although you can quickly apply bitmap textures and set up accurate location- and time-based shadows, as well as add fog to create a sense of depth. Before you do that, though, you need to get your scene looking just the way you want it. You can still print directly however, and also output to a number of bitmap formats.
#GOOGLE SKETCHUP 6 PRO#
To use your models in further 3D-based workflows, you’re going to need the commercial Google SketchUp Pro 6, although native SKP file format support is spreading. You’re then ready to integrate your finished models with Google Earth and to post them to Google’s 3D Warehouse if you want to share them. Best of all, once you’ve finished your geometry, you can simply project your photos onto it to create an immediately recognisable textured model. Using this information, SketchUp works out the camera position, field of view and perspective accordingly, meaning you can quickly build up your model’s geometry using the image – ideally multiple images handled as scenes – as your guide. Based on the photo, you can quickly mark up horizontal and vertical lines, for example, based on a building’s windows, and then set a central origin, such as the point where two walls meet. This is accessed from a new floating palette from which you load your images. The most impressive new addition is the Photo Match capability. There’s also a new 3D Text tool that lets you set a font, size and extrusion depth, and creates actual geometry you can place into your scene. As well as the existing ability to create text and linked annotations that either remain fixed onscreen or follow the object they’re linked to, you can now set a fixed height for text so its size changes, like the model itself, depending on the zoom level. SketchUp’s text capabilities have also been overhauled. There’s also a Paste-in-Place command, which makes it simple to move selections in and out of geometry as desired. More advanced drawing power comes through enhancements to its intersection capabilities, which can now be limited to currently selected objects or to the current group or component. SketchUp’s core drawing capabilities have also been made easier to use with new modifier keys that let you quickly create copies of objects and force the direction in which a line should be locked. Most importantly, SketchUp now offers quicker handling – Google claims up to five times faster for some operations.
#GOOGLE SKETCHUP 6 PLUS#
By default, the main toolbar has been simplified, there’s a new Instructor palette, the Components and Materials browsers have been streamlined, and the new colouring of sky and ground planes plus the inclusion of a default figure in new scenes greatly helps orientation.
#GOOGLE SKETCHUP 6 UPDATE#
For this first major update under the Google brand, the SketchUp interface has been reworked to make it more accessible to its new wider audience.