sketchUcation

If you did not already know Fredo Portrait is a powerful extension that allows you to create and manage cameras, update and create scenes, export to various file formats and much more.

But an often overlooked feature of Fredo Portrait is the ability to create 2D Face Me components with crisp external silhouetting for accurate shadows.

Want to learn how to do it?

In this tutorial you will learn to use Fredo's ThruPaint to texture an arch using it's QuadMesh UV feature. This technique is particularly useful for Architectural models that require you to reflect the real world construction using only a texture.

SketchUp modelling mastermind Eric Lay shows off a great technique to quickly model a gyroid in SketchUp. Eric also shared the SketchUp file with the steps to modelling included in an easy to follow scene-based file.

In this tutorial you will be introduced to using Skatter to create realistic lawns in SketchUp. Skatter is a new particle extension for SketchUp that is packed with powerful features that make populating surfaces with objects a simple task.

For this tutorial we will use our own North American Grass Pack and some perennial weeds to add some realistic variation and appearance. Time to get skattering!

Ever need to calculate how much fill you need to level a site? Luckily TIG has a tool that does just that. CutNfill is a commercial tool that, for only $20, that makes extracting and calculating site fill incredibly easy.

In this tutorial we will take a terrain, add detail, level the build area and extract the info using the CutNfill extension for SketchUp.

Download CutNfill

SketchUp's Section Cut tool is awesome. To make it even better TIG wrote an extension for SketchUp to address the need to have filled Section Cuts. It is really easy to use and adds another level of sheen to your client presentations.

In this tutorial we will take a quick look at some of the features the TIG's Section CutFace extension.

Cars included in exterior renders of architectural scenes help with the scene composition. Some 3D artists prefer to add them in post production using an image editor application. I prefer to include them in my scene using SketchUp.

At times there is a specific need of a car render look. By learning it, you are capable of outputting nice renders of cars, motorcycles and all other vehicles. So this tutorial focusses on how create a car paint and an studio set up for car rendering using V-Ray for SketchUp.

A few months ago someone was looking for tutorials on how to make low polygon models in SketchUp. At the time I was not particularly well versed when it came to low polygon modelling so I decided to learn for myself.

During that time I researched the best methods and techniques needed. I discovered low polygon models can look great with the right texture applied.

If you ever get SketchUp startup error-messages relating to plugins? This usually means that some plugins are not loading properly and it indicates they have not been installed properly.

Or maybe you get system messages actually preventing you from adding/managing files/subfolders to the Plugins folder in SketchUp. This guide will help you identify the problem and fix it for both Mac and PC devices.

There are many times when you want to import existing information into Sketchup in order to incorporate it with your model. PDF is a very common file format, and you'll find many architectural drawings are shared in PDF format as well as most product data manuals. Currently, you cannot import a PDF directly into Sketchup on the Windows version so the usual way to import something at least is to convert the PDF file into a raster image.

In this SketchUp tutorial, we'll introduce a free tool that you can use to convert PDF's to DXF files, which you can import into Sketchup Pro.