Tutorial: Interior Lighting using LightUp

Here is a quick tutorial on lighting an interior using Light Up

Interior Lighting

The following tutorial will take you step by step through rigging lighting in SketchUp for rendering in LightUp.
You'll want to download the SketchUp model so you can follow along. Its available on the LightUp website here.
After downloading it, open up the file in SketchUp and open the LightUp preferences dialog.

more Here

Tutorial: Creating Motion Blur with Vehicles using Photoshop

This is a tutorial shared by Jonald Magistrado. This is very helpful post processing technique to add subtle blur with your vehicles to create an illusion of motion.

Tutorial: Mapping Chair Textures

Here is another tutorial from Alvis that shows how he model and apply textures to this Grete Jack chair.





Video showing the modeling process


Video tutorial showing the mapping of material.

Tutorial: Chair Modeling by Alvis

Alvis from Lithuania shared briefly his workflow how he modeled  his chairs. Alvis used SketchUp and a script called "Subdivide and Smooth" by Dale Martens.  He also use another scripts called "curviloft" by Fredo to create loft and "line to cylinder'' by D. Bur.

Note: If you want to use curviloft, be sure to download the latest LibFredo. All plugins can be downloaded at Ruby Library Depot.

Overall scenes shots showing the modeling of chairs and stools





Once the basic frame was done, then smooth tool of smooth and subdivide will be use with the basic frame. To have the thickness, the same model can be copied and rescaled. See image below. Then loft tool will be used. Subdivision and smooth will be used again.



To add the metal trimming, edges were copied and selected. Line to cylinder script was use to create the tubes.


Below is a rendered image using Twilight.

Download Free Vismat

Download Free Vismats HERE

Tutorial: Glass Etching in Vray SketchUp

One of our excellent contributor, Gerbe Dumahil, shared this tutorial again. Thank you again Gerbe for allowing us to feature this tutorial again here.

Tutorial: Nomeradona's How to Deal with Faceted Arc and Circles in SketchUp and VraySU

Here is a new tutorial by Nomeradona: How to deal with Faceted Arcs and Circles in SU and VRAY SU

http://nomeradona.blogspot.com/2011/09/tutorial-how-to-deal-with-faceted-arc.html

Hitting 100,000 page views

I started to put this site on 25th April, 2011. My intention is in a very small way, I could gather all the links, tutorials, resources and visualizers particularly using Vray and Sketchup related stuff. I am deeply moved with the kind of support from everyone. Now after 5 months the page views of this site already hit 100,000 page views far more than my personal website I put few years ago.

Thank you very much. Surely this blog will continue to share, feature and support everyone.

Yours,

Nomeradona

Tutorial: Displacement Subdivision

This is tutorial shared by Eugenio "Jenny" Sorokovoy.

This image show displacement flaw.



The reason for this flaw. The image shows the view on the geometry that makes the problematic surface. You can see the small alterations on the surface that cause the uneven subdivision.



I've used "subdivide and smooth" plugin to show how the method of vray's subdivision work. You can notice that the tight subdivisions are the ones that seen in render as "artifacts"



How to correct this? Here I've closed up the small chunks and increased the size of the right side of the "L" shape surface. also I've applied the SS plugin just to show you guys how this affect the subdivision. NOTE: the SS plugin and the Sketchup lines for subdivision are not necessary for this to work properly- it's just a tool that helps me to see subdivision that will accrue in render of vray.



Now after rendering you can see that the evenly divided triangles are also shown equally in the render.

Featured Artists: Do Phu Hoang Nguyen

We would like to Feature Do Phu Hoang Nguyen aka. "phunguyenvfs". Phu Nguyen is one of the Vietnamese guys whom we knew for a long time. We followed his blog, his work and how he created beautiful tutorials and rendering. In order to know more about Phu Nguyen, here is a small interview.

SVR: Please tell us more about yourself.

DPHN: My name Do Phu Hoang Nguyen my online nickname is "phunguyenvfs". I am originally from Dalat, and now living and working in Binh Duong City, Vietnam. My current job is architectural designer/visulaizer/contributor with an architectural design company here in Binh Duong City. I spend with computers more then I spend time with my wife and son. But good enough, I am fortunate to support my little family. I always think knowledge is infinite. I always wanted to learn and improve my knowledge.

SVR: Can you please tell us about your workflow or pipeline?

As for my workflow. I set everything as possible with Google Sketchup including my camera view set-up. In Vray SketchUp, I normally start with lighting by setting the parameters which affects  the global illumination; light intensities and sky lights. In interior scene, I normally start with my point lights. Once satisfied with my lighting, I proceed with materials and texturing. I always do my rendering in Vray SketchUp. I also use the frame buffer to correct the exposure before saving my final image. If there is final compositional presentation, I use Photoshop.

SVR: How did you start with SketchUp?

DPHN: I started to worked with 3D using Autocad in 2008. One day, I saw a friend using SketchUp5. I was impressed with the software at first glance. I became interested with this software  and started exploring it. I was led also to an online forum site www.suvn.net . I joined this forum site where I learned a lot, particularly with SketchUp and Vray Sketchup.

SVR: Do you have any idols or inspiration in Visualization? who are they?

DPHN: My idols were Alex Roman, Simonhc, Nomeradona, and many others. I am inspired by their  work. I am also inspired by many excellent designs that can be found in ArchDaily site.

SVR: How is SKetchUp in Binh Duong City? Is it popular?

DPHN: SketchUp is very popular in the City of Binh Duong. Most of the architectural design firms, communities, and students use it.

SVR: Given a chance, what is your request or wish with Google in their future development of SketchUp?

DPHN: Currently, I use Sketchup 8. It's suits me! If Google SketchUp will develop further this software, convenience and support with high poly models would be nice.

SVR: Given a chance, what is your wish to ChaosGroup in their future development for Vray?

DPHN: I wish ChaosGroup will focus with Vray Proxy for their future development of Vray SketchUp. Vray Proxy will benefit me and others especially with master plan projects that requires lots of trees and greenery.

SVR: Do you have any advise to the new guys in visualization field?

DPHN: The new guys in the field of visualization. They need to take care with modeling. They need to respect the physical properties of materials and lighting in their scenes. Do not be discouraged and give up easily.

SVR: Thank You Phu Nguyen! 

Below are some render images of Phu Nguyen. You can also access his The Mkaing of Beauty Salon at Sketchupartists.org HERE 

For more of Phu Nguyen's work, follow and visit his Blogsite HERE.

http://phunguyenvfs.blogspot.com

Tutorial: Animation using SU Animatte and Vray SketchUp

We have presented Apiwat Hngimhyun  aka Starsheep Contemporary kitchen HERE.

This time, he will show to us using video his workflow with animation using SU Animate, Vray Sketchup and Adobe After Effects and Knoll lighting.

News: Another Excellent plugin from Takahata

Building structure for SketchUp is another excellent ruby plugins conceived by Tak2hata, the same guy who conceptualized the Fur maker. To download Click HERE.

Creating New Materials - Fine Woodworking

This is an excellent tutorial of Dave Richards. Click the link to access the tutorial.

Creating New Materials - Fine Woodworking

Nomeradona's Tutorial_September 2011

Access the tutorials of Nomeradona for the month of September.

1. How to correct those jumbled mapping in SketchUp

2. How to create Pool Water in Vray Sketchup

Tutorial: Sculpting a chair seat

This is a tutorial from David Richards from www.finewoodworking.com

 

 

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A friend of mine has been learning to use SketchUp. He decided to use a model of the beautiful Welsh stick chairs he builds. It's a pretty complex thing to draw, especially as you're learning the program, but he has been doing a great job and is almost there. One of the parts that's been slow in coming was sculpting the top surface of the seat. We've been talking about various ways to deal with it. Here's a pretty simple method. I must give credit to John Marks for the basics of this and to 'Fredo6' for his new Curviloft plugin. It came at just the right time for my friend.

Since the seat is symmetrical, we'll just work on one half and then copy and flip the copy to make the other half. The half of the seat blank is drawn and the chamfer added to the bottom edges using Follow Me. The outline of the sculpting is then drawn on the top, front and center face. I used the Bezier plugin for this but you could also use the Bezier Spline plugin for this. I then used the Weld plugin to weld the segments used to make up the each of the different curves.

Then we'll delete the top face and the faces above the curves on the front and the centerline. The three selected curves are going to be used by the Curviloft plugin to create the sculpted surface of the seat.

After activating the Skinning function of the Curviloft plugin, we'll click on each of those edges in turn. They'll turn orange when they've been selected.

Next hit Enter once. You'll see the tentative faces shown in black. You can make some adjustments to it if desired but I think this works out quite well for the seat.

Hit Enter again and the surface will be created as a group. In this case it was created with the back face up. We'll fix the face orientation and explode the group later.

The original seat has a curve along the side where the sculpted part of the seat runs out. We'll draw that curve in...

...and pull the face up a little bit. I only pulled it up 1/16 in. to just create that detail where the curve is.

Now we'll open the group created by the Curviloft plugin, select the surface and reverse them. Just right click on the selected surface and choose Reverse Faces from the Context menu. Then close the group for editing, select it and explode it with another right click to get to the Context menu. You can see in the image above that I've also deleted the face on the centerline. This is to make the seam line harder to see once the two halves are placed next to each other. At this stage, we'll make a component of the half of the seat.

Use the copy function of the Move tool to copy the component. Right click on it and choose Flip Along>Component's Red. Then move the copy into place. Open one of the copies for editing and get the Eraser tool. While holding Shift and holding the left mouse button, run the cursor along the seam line all the way around the seat to hide the seam line.

Here's a quick trick for applying a wood grain material to the seat. Start by placing a face above one of the components. Place one edge so it is directly above the center line. Apply your wood grain material to that rectangle. Right click on the face and choose Texture>Position to rotate it as needed and perhaps slide it around to get a nice part of the board. The material I used for this illustration is the equivalent of 8 feet long so I can pick a nice section out of it.

After you get the material placed as desired, right click on the face again and choose Texture>Projected. Then open the seat component for editing. Sample the material on the rectangle with the eyedropper and then click on the faces of the seat.

If you have an end grain material to use, you could make a vertical face in front of the seat component and repeat the process of making the projected material. Once the materials are applied, delete the rectangle(s).

Since the halves of the seat are mirrored instances of the same component and the material is applied to the faces of the component, you'll end up with the material being book matched. If you don't care for that, you can use Make Unique on one of the components so that you can apply the material separately on each side. If you choose to use Make Unique, you might wait until after you've drawn in the holes for the spindles and the legs.

When you get all finished, select both components and make a nested component of the seat. This will make it easier to handle if you need to move it around in the model.