The only 3D I’ve worked with any depth has been through the virtual world Second Life. Their built-in builder interface makes it a snap to create 3D objects: prisms, cubes, triangles and much more. This morning I saw the new Google SketchUp is being equally toted as “an easy-to-learn 3D Modeling program” that:

… enables you to explore the world in 3D. With just a few simple tools, you can create 3D models of houses, sheds, decks, home additions, woodworking projects - even space ships. And once you’ve built your models, you can place them in Google Earth, post them to the 3D Warehouse, or print hard copies.

Marketing hype aside, I decided to download and see how “easy” and “simple” it would really be for me to build a basic dice cube. I was able to create one in Second Life and already had the textures necessary for the cube sides created with Photoshop by hand.

Building a cube
Starting with a rectangle shape, click on the pull tool to turn the rectangle into a six sided cube (the rectangle tool is marked with the red arrow on the left and the push/pull tool is marked with a red arrow on the right):

Then stumbled trying to figure out how to add textures to the sides of the cube. Off to the Sketchup help docs under “images.” Just go to File -> Import and then you’ll see a menu to import as a texture:

Placing the texture on the object wasn’t very intuitive compared to my experience with Second Life. In SL you just drag the texture onto the object and it automatically resizes to fit. Not the case for Sketchup where some other manipulation is required (?). It’s possible that Sketchup method is superior for professional 3D modelers but it wasn’t for me in my first test anyway. As shown from the picture above, my dice is broken, showing more dots than there should be (the texture only had 3 dots, but it was stretched and somehow duplicated).

Making a basic square with six already designed textured sizes should be a quick job. Guess I need to spend some time with the tutorials to figure this out. I never needed a tutorial using SL to build a dice cube. I just needed to build the texture and add a few lines of LSL to script them onto the six sides like this:

Any readers who are experienced 3D modelers and have given Sketchup a quick try? What do you think? Most pros will stick with high end products like Maya, but there is a pro version of Sketchup. I didn’t poke around too long to find out pricing. High end 3D graphics software can run well into the thousands so it’s nice to see Google trying to get non-pros into 3D.

What about the 3D Warehouse?
Google has a 3D Warehouse where you can share your Sketchup models. r0m made and shared a jail (amateur) and for the more skilled check out the Rose Bowl.

Final thoughts
Conceptually, I like Sketchup, but it’s not really “easy” to learn. Easy to me means someone who has already worked with a little 3D shouldn’t have to dig around and take tutorials to make basic shapes with premade textures for the object sizes. I like the idea of being able to work offline and build shapes as opposed to inside the SL interface which requires building everything online and logged in and thus is susceptible to work being lost if you don’t save it often. I suppose the computer could freeze offline and work could be lost too. I noticed Google has an autosave feature to My Documents which means you wouldn’t lose all your work.

All in all, this one requires some time to dig into. More time than somebody like me who doesn’t really have a huge interest in building and sharing 3D objects for fun. If I was going to spend time doing this then I’d more likely use Second Life where there is an actual marketplace and those objects can actually be bartered, given away or sold. Second Life has sandboxes where you can build 3D objects without having to pay for an account.

3D virtual Las Vegas
While in the 3D mode here and unrelated to Google Sketchup, one of our VTOR group members visited a virtual Las Vegas sim in Second Life. Cool pictures and report, JohnnyRS. I’m going to have to check that place out. It would be cool if the real casinos moved into this sim. Imagine them advertising specials for their terrestrial casinos? Oh, the possibilities …

Did this post make you go hmm?

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