InstantWall - SketchUp Extension Review

InstantWall is an extension for the famous 3D computer aided design and modeling software, Trimble SketchUp. Today, we will talk about how InstantWall can help designers and modelers.

InstantWall is basically a wall creation tool for SketchUp. You can create various kinds of walls instantly, for example, site walls, columns, retaining walls, pilasters, curbs, etc.

Site walls, retaining walls, pilasters, curbs, you can build anything with InstaWall. Walls may be vertical, battered, sloped, stepped or rough stone. Many options exist for wall cap and pilaster cap profiles. There are also options for custom user defined wall cap profiles. Interestingly, when you build these, textures (or materials) will automatically align with the wall and wall cap.

But that's not all! Balustrades,railings and fencing may be added on top of walls or between pilasters. Many options for picket and baluster profiles including user defined shapes.

You can also build Colonnades with InstantWall. Several options are given for column types including custom user defined. Needless to mention, you have the option to to follow terrain elevation as well.

Whereas, you have the option to also make arcades. Arcades can be modeled as flat, pointed, segmented, round or elliptical. Optional voussoirs may be raised, flush, or recessed. Just as with walls, textures will automatically align with voussoirs.

The InstantWall plugin for SketchUp works with Metric or Feet / Inches systems, so you can work with it from any localization.

With 153 preset styles organized into libraries, you will never run out of ways to customize your model with InstantWall. Not only those, but you can also create custom styles as well!

The plugin features an interactive menu: you got icons, images, and text for your convenience.

Another salient point for this extension for SketchUp is that with InstantWall, all walls can be modeled as 3d, 2d face me or 2d hidden lines. That flexibility will surely help you achieve a new level of smooth workflow.

The developer of this SketchUp extension, Chuck Vali, keeps it regularly updated. The latest version of InstantWall is 3.2, which was released only last March. Chuck is a licensed architect in Hawaii and California. Most of his work experience is in the hospitality industry, resorts and hotels.



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Published By
Rajib Dey
www.sketchup4architect.com
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V-Ray 4 for SketchUp Released

Rejoice, ye SketchUp folk, for the new V-Ray has come!

Version 4.20 for V-Ray has been released this February. It features some significant improvement over the previous version. Primary of which is new compression used to decrease installer archive size.

For those who are not familiar, here is a short description of V-Ray.

It is a professional lighting and rendering tool for architects and designers. It is created by Chaos Group and comes as an extension of SketchUp.

With an incredible set of creation tools, V-Ray lets you render anything and everything. You can create some quick models, or pull out all brakes and render a whole scene in realistic detail.

You get around 600 realistic new materials to adorn your model using V-Ray in SketchUp, too. This lets you create photorealistic images of your model. You can make 3D models exquisite in detail using this plugin as well.

1. You can use it to automatically remove noise in scenes. The render time is cut in half. Now you can denoise after rendering as well.

2. Now you can use global illumination in stunningly realistic scenes indoors and outdoors. There are plenty of in-built lighting styles to choose from. Make it look real!

3. You can apply HDR tech on your image as well. The high dynamic range produces a more normalized image that would feel lifelike.

4. VR-ready content creation is now possible. You can now see your model in 3D environment!
5. Around 600 drag-and-drop materials! Use them to dress up your model and customize endlessly.

6. V-Ray now keeps your render history in the frame buffer. You can use this to fine-tune color, exposure, depth perception and more!



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Published By
Rajib Dey
www.sketchup4architect.com
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"Modeling a Face Me Christmas Tree in SketchUp ”

Importing an image from another file in SketchUp is an easy process but transferring a normal image into a Face Me component is a little complex task that is shown in here.

About SketchUp:

SketchUp or Google SketchUp is mainly a3D modeling computer program that is used for a broad range of drawing applications used by architects, interior designer, landscape architects, civil and mechanical engineers, film and video game designers also. SketchUp can be getting as a freeware version named SketchUp Make and a paid version with many more extra benefits called SketchUp Pro. SketchUp is software from Trimble Company and there is an online library of free model congregations and 3D Warehouse to which users can add other models; besides that, the program has drawing layout functionality with variable ‘styles’, supports third-party ‘plug-in’ programs hosted on the Extension Warehouse to supply other abilities and enables placement of its models in Google Earth. As SketchUp users are most of architects, designers, builders, makers and engineers etc.

who works hard to give a nice shape to our physical world, they need great tools to do the work. SketchUp is in mission to bring their best to produce some great tools for drawing as drawing is the key thing of the SketchUp users. They draw to search ideas, to identify the things and to show other people their work that they do with love and love to build; SketchUp understands it truly and trying to improve their software day by day.

This article is about the method of learning to create a 2D Face Me component that always faces the camera in SKetchUp. From the previous videos about 2D Face Me it is known that using 3D vegetations in SketchUp could make good results but it also slow down the rendering procedure and overall workflow quite a bit.

Justin Geis is the founder of The SketchUp Essentials and started using SketchUp while he was working as a general contractor in 2008 and after using it he found that SketchUp is extremely powerful that he just started to use it in his personal works also. Then he started The SketchUp Essentials as a place where he could share his ideas of using SketchUp easily through some tutorials and tips to help other users controlling the power of 3D Modeling in everyday lives.

About Extension Warehouse:

It is an online resource with various plug-ins developed made especially for SketchUp and these extensions help to add some special tools and features to SketchUp. These extensions can be found for any particular application like drawing or 3D printing and some industry specified tools for architecture, interior design, construction and many more. So basically in this Extension Warehouse people can do the following things:

• Users can search extensions by name or as per the functionality.
• They can also install various extensions with a single click of a button.
• Or users can also control all the extensions from easy-to-use location in the My Extension page.

At first, Justin downloaded the image of a Christmas tree from Google with a transparent background and then imported it in SketchUp; while importing an image, users should click on the image option. After importing the image will appear as flat image which will not allow users to work on it. Next Justin trimmed the sides as per size of the image using the Move tool and transfer the whole image in a group. Then he started to turn this image into a component by following steps:

• Right click on the image and select the option “Make Component”, which will open a pop-up window.
• To turn this component as a Face Me Component click on the Option called “Always Face Camera” from the pop-up window.
• At last click on Create button and it will appear as a component that always faces Camera no matter in which angle it is rotated.

After that this image is ready to work as a texture or component in any project; users can make copies of the image or can use it in creating new designs etc. but they will always face to the camera.

Sourcewww.thesketchupessentials.com



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Published By
Rajib Dey
www.sketchup4architect.com
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"Random Component placement in SketchUp with Compo Sprayr ”

SketchUp Plugins are very much helpful and useful in creating models; the new Compo Spray has lots of options which make the placing of components in a model easier.

Introduction of Justin Geis: Justin Geis is the founder of The SketchUp Essentials and he has started to use SketchUp as a part of his daily works as a general contractor in 2008. Since then he is a proud SketchUp user as he has realized very quickly about the power of SketchUp in various works and started to use it for his personal projects also. The idea of starting the SketchUp Essentials is like making a place to share some easy to follow SketchUp tips and tricks and tutorials which will help the users to control the power of 3D Modeling in their lives.

Justin Geis has blogged about different SketchUp tips and tutorials, in this article we will discuss about his another tutorials through a video, how to use Compo Spray. Compo Spray is a SketchUp extension which is designed to help people randomly to place components with the SketchUp model and here are some details about using it.

Plugin Name: Compo Spray

Didier Bur: Tool cost is free

Download place: the SketchUp extension warehouse: https://sketchucation.com/pluginstore?pln=compoSpray

Functions of tool: This extension is mainly designed to help users in adding the components faster in the models such as trees, rocks etc. besides this, it help to randomly spread these objects. This extension will allow users in many ways to aimlessly spread components on faces within SketchUp; in the menu the first option works most though there is other option like perpendicular which is not working recently. The plugin allows the users to select up to 8 components at once with the help of dropdowns, after that they will be automatically placed on a selected face. There is a very helpful thing which is a documentation file that gets installed in the plugin installation folder with some instructions for the users. Here are some tips to work with this plugin after starting it:

• Users can select a same component many times again and again after selecting components; it is useful as while working with a component multiple times in a model, users can select it as many times as they want.
• They will get two kinds of spray options as per the face is selected or not while starting the tool and after selecting a face, one will get the option to place objects based on the corners and faces. But if any face is not selected, then users can get a series of options for point, line, triangle etc.
• These options like point, line, triangle and other shape options allow the users to set a routine location for users component spray depended on a location you dictate. These components can be used to place objects on terrain and other faces that are not actually flat.
• Whenever the users have selected either a face or a series of faces, they can spread objects aimlessly across the faces by selecting “Selected faces,” or with the vertices of the geometry using “Vertices of faces.”
• The pressure percentage is for adjusting the numbers of the created objects.
• Users can also command the layer that the components are made on.
• The altitude setting allows to fix components between various heights into the model.
• Slope option allows to only place objects on face that are at a selected slope.
• Scale option allows the users to displace the sizes of the different components.
• Besides the above options, there are also a series of options below which allow the things like reflecting objects, checking impact and many more.
• This extension actually works as it is spraying components downward.

SketchUp or Google SketchUp is mainly a3D modeling computer program that is used for a broad range of drawing applications used by architects, interior designer, landscape architects, civil and mechanical engineers, film and video game designers also. SketchUp can be getting as a freeware version named SketchUp Make and a paid version with many more extra benefits called SketchUp Pro. SketchUp is software from Trimble Company and there is an online library of free model congregations and 3D Warehouse to which users can add other models; besides that, the program has drawing layout functionality with variable ‘styles’, supports third-party ‘plug-in’ programs hosted on the Extension Warehouse to supply other abilities and enables placement of its models in Google Earth. As SketchUp users are most of architects, designers, builders, makers and engineers etc. who works hard to give a nice shape to our physical world, they need great tools to do the work. SketchUp is in mission to bring their best to produce some great tools for drawing as drawing is the key thing of the SketchUp users. They draw to search ideas, to identify the things and to show other people their work that they do with love and love to build; SketchUp understands it truly and trying to improve their software day by day.

Read more
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Published By
Rajib Dey
www.sketchup4architect.com
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"SketchUp Skill Builder: building section animations with Scenes"

SketchUp Skill Builder is used to support each other in a friendly way while building up the SketchUp skills and Josh Reilly has shown the method of building section animations.

About SketchUp: SketchUp or Google SketchUp is mainly a3D modeling computer program that is used for a broad range of drawing applications used by architects, interior designer, landscape architects, civil and mechanical engineers, film and video game designers also. SketchUp can be getting as a freeware version named SketchUp Make and a paid version with many more extra benefits called SketchUp Pro. SketchUp is software from Trimble Company and there is an online library of free model congregations and 3D Warehouse to which users can add other models; besides that, the program has drawing layout functionality with variable ‘styles’, supports third-party ‘plug-in’ programs hosted on the Extension Warehouse to supply other abilities and enables placement of its models in Google Earth. As SketchUp users are most of architects, designers, builders, makers and engineers etc. who works hard to give a nice shape to our physical world, they need great tools to do the work. SketchUp is in mission to bring their best to produce some great tools for drawing as drawing is the key thing of the SketchUp users. They draw to search ideas, to identify the things and to show other people their work that they do with love and love to build; SketchUp understands it truly and trying to improve their software day by day.

SketchUp Skill Builder: SketchUp Skill Builder has come up with the idea of releasing a video with a challenge and/or tip-and-trick to try by the users, these challenges will rank form beginner to advanced and each Skill Builder will have their own string which can be found under the ‘Tutorials’ class. The vision is for supporting each other in a friendly way while building up the SketchUp skills and it is a platform to transfer ideas, alternative methods for any given exercise or to ask questions on the specific string of the Skill Builder it relates to. While designing a beautiful room sometimes users face problems while making it more beautiful and turning it a full proof building design but they can’t make any wall or ceiling; now it will be easier by using Transparent Materials.

This time SketchUp Skill Builder comes up with its new feature- Scene transitions in conjunction with Section Planes. Section Planes are used in SketchUp to create animations in active section cuts for hiding and showing geometry. Sections planes cut a model in SketchUp along a plane so that the modelers can look inside the model without moving or hiding any geometry. More than that, in a 3D model, an active section plane covers everything on one side of the plane it is described here through an example.

If we draw two layers of section planes and want to work on them, it is not necessary to delete or hide any one of them, but the fun is that they can be worked as a group or component.

In the layers of section planes, if we click on them we can see that there is a group of section planes and each one of them has a section plane inside of them. The layers can be named also for better work, layers can be turned on or off by a single click only and before adding section plane on the layers one should make sure that the objects should be in the correct way.

To add a section plane inside group one can click the left button on the image and add it; moving the section planes in SketchUp is easy it’s like moving it like any other geometry by using the move tool.

There are many applications in Section planes for any section animation technique that could be used to make it more effective and to add a finishing touch also. Follow the link for the detail variation:

Users can pair up Section planes along with their own SketchUp model or can download one from the 3DWarehouse which will have some added animation action. But the project has to be set up with Scenes and Layers similar in this video and while upgrading, users can find many advanced techniques to use.

Read more

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Published By

Rajib Dey

www.sketchup4architect.com

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