Google Sketchup 6: Creating and Manipulating Objects in 3D (Page 2 of 2)

Now that your room is furnished, let's learn how to add textures. First, let's install some carpet on the floor. Go to the Windows menu and select Materials(7).

A window will pop up. In the drop down menu, select Carpet and Textiles. Here you have a wide variety of styles of carpets and textiles to choose from. Click on a color you like. When you move your mouse over to the canvas, notice that it now looks like a paint bucket. The surface you click on will be filled in with the color or texture you chose. Remember that textures won't look perfect since the image has not been rendered yet. Think of this as a rough sketch of what it will look like when you are finished.

Practice placing colors and textures to the walls and floor. Then try adding some tile to the bathroom floor. Here is what my room looks like with textures and furniture added. (8,8a)

One awesome thing about Google Sketchup is that you not only have access to all the tools and objects available within the program, but you can also get massive amounts of objects from their 3D warehouse.

Look in the File menu and select 3D Warehouse then click Get Models(9,9a).

Here you will see an enormous amount of models that you can easily import to your project. Just click download under the objects you want.

Another cool resource is the Google Sketchup website. If you go here, you can download large bonus packs of furniture, people, cars, etc, all for free!

One of the great things about Google overall, is the incredible amount of resources available to help you become more proficient with this program. If you go here, you can get videos and self-paced tutorials that cover many ways to use Sketchup and how to use even more tools.

The ability to convert your canvas into a photorealistic picture takes a little more effort. Sketchup itself does not have a render engine. It is still possible though. Here is how I do it.

First of all, go to the Sketchup 6 Plugins page. A plugin is basically software that adds functinality to a program. Here you will see several choices. Among these, there are two types of render engines. One type works within Sketchup, that is, inside the program. The other type allows you to export your canvas and render it using a totally separate program.

For the sake of simplicity, let's use a renderer that works within Sketchup. Many of these you will need to pay for, but they have free trials. I downloaded and installed the trial of Podium. When you install Podium, remember that you need to save the registration code they give you. Once installed, reopen Sketchup and go to the Plugins menu (10), select Podium then click Show. When the screen pops up, click on the Settings (10a,10b): the second screen will pop up.

Make sure that in the Settings, you choose a place to save the rendered file where you can find it easily. You can adjust the quality of the rendered image with the slider bar in the setting menu also.

Clicking Render is like clicking the button on a camera. Whatever is visible on your screen is what will get rendered. Manipulate the canvas until the picture you see is what you want. Then select Render on the Podium window. It will take a few minutes for the computer to render and polish the image. Once it has finished, click Save. Podium has now saved the rendered image in the place you specified. Here is what my image looked like before(11) and after(12) rendering. So cool!

This series has covered how to make structures, add objects and textures and render images. The more you explore and experiment, the more confident you will feel creating your designs. Sketchup has many more tools than those covered in this tutorial. If you are interested in a how-to guide on anything else, please let me know. Thank you for using this How to guide. I hope

you can see the potential for creating your oun great 3D images in Google Sketchup 6!