SketchUp fun :)

Having a little extra free time over the Thanksgiving weekend, I downloaded SketchUp, a free piece of software for 3D modeling with a nice GUI.

My earliest experiences with 3D modeling, way back in the early 90's, were with command-line programs like POV ray. These tools would parse an ASCII file describing primitive shapes using 3D coordinates and convert the data file directly into an image file. For a high school project I designed a short animation. It took hours with graph paper, typing, and rendering just to produce a single image. If I had the angle or the eye position wrong, or made a slight typo in the data file, I'd have to re-render the entire image. It was a debugging nightmare.

Modeling has come a long way since then. Most of us have seen a few good Pixar movies, which really illustrates what a large group of empowered artists/renderers can do working well together. (Btw: anyone seen Tron, which has a computer-generated feel to it? It turns out that something like only 120 seconds of actual footage in that film was truly computer-generated. The rest was live-action with hand-drawn effects on the cells.)

But what can an amateur, or even anyone with a little time and a single computer, do as far as modeling goes? There are a number of high-end software packages available which offer power tools. But in my (admittedly limited) experience, these tools have historically been tricky to master.

Enter SketchUp. Thing about this program is that it is Easy to use and learn. So easy it's really honestly a lot of fun. I have never before seen the push/pull tool in any other modeling software (am I just out of the loop?) and I love it. It's the kind of tool that makes you say "why wasn't this in all modeling software from the beginning?" Every once in a while there's a leap forward in UI, and to me, SketchUp does this for 3D modeling.

So how easy is it really to learn? Check out the tutorials. The first two give you a lot of the basics. Even if you don't want to try out SketchUp at least check out the "Textures: Using Photos" tutorial. You have to admit that's kind of cool.

So anyway, I've only had it for a day and I've made a couple models for fun. Here's a house (the scale's a little off on this one):
[skp file]
One limitation you might notice is that you can't create arbitrarily weird shapes. In mathematical terms, I think you can (theoretically) make any shape out of surfaces with zero curvature, but more "curvy stuff" is difficult (maybe impossible?). Intuitively, if you could possibly make it out of paper by cutting, folding, or bending in one direction, then you should be able to model it in SketchUp. Spheres or saddles (like one you would put on a horse) have nonzero curvature, and those shapes are impossible to make by drawing a planar outline and pulling or pushing that outline into a third dimension. Anyway, you can still make some crazy-looking stuff; check this out:
[skp file]

Finally, I discovered it's really useful to print out the quick reference card - you can do that from the Help menu. Have fun!