"No Thanks, Santa" - movie made with SketchUp

3D modeler Joel Metzger has a website called Treasure Inside, where you can find several very nice movies he's made. He emailed to tell me about his latest one, which features 5 reasons he doesn't need gifts from Santa.

No Thanks, Santa! from Joel Metzger on Vimeo.

I thought I'd share this before the holidays get going, because not only does it show some nice SketchUp work, but the message is a really nice one for the season. It's important to realize how lucky we are, in the scheme of things!

Here's what Joel wrote about his process for this movie:

The backgrounds, houses, trees, and props are all SketchUp. The drawings are all hand done, often by tracing over digital photos of myself and then coloring scans of those tracings. Sometimes I insert jpgs into SketchUp layers and sometimes I overlay stills in Photoshop. The movie itself is put together with Corel VideoStudio.

A friend of mine drew all the Santas (wonderful!) and I did the tracings of the Joel character (pretty sloppy!)

It is the latest of a series of short movies I've been making for the last couple years, Treasure Inside. The website is www.treasureInside.net. They are all about the beauty of feeling the peaceful flow of life inside. Perfect for this holiday season.

I got the idea for it from an international movie maker website I discovered recently. They put out a call for 3 minute movies for an Italian TV station, in a "Top 5" format they use. I sent in my idea, but was not selected. I decided to make the movie anyway and sent it to them. This morning I got an email from them calling it "brilliant". They might use it anyway. It would be shown all over Italy!

Joel has compiled his movies into DVD's - they might make nice stocking-stuffers this year!


Anyone can design anything in 3D! http://www.3dvinci.net/

Join our FREE Email Mailing List!

Math Forum Project: Dodecagon from a Circle

This month's free project on the Math Forum shows how to start with a circle, add some more circles and construction lines . . .



. . . and create a dodecagon.

Once you have your dodecagon, you'll also see some cool things you can do with it:


The Student Version has a question about the number of circle "sides" needed to start with, to create a dodecagon. The Teacher Version has the answer! Enjoy.



Anyone can design anything in 3D! http://www.3dvinci.net/

Join our FREE Email Mailing List!

What's Coming in Our December Projects?

We have some fun, colorful stuff for our subscribers this month! Going out on December 15 are these projects:

Christmas Ornament

Well it's not necessarily an ornament, but that's how it looks to me this time of year. It's actually an interesting geometric exercise which produces something beautiful. The Intersect Faces tool is the star of this project.



Barber Pole Spiral

One of last month's projects showed how to create a barber pole using a digital image of stripes. This time the project shows how to use physical geometry (lines) to create the spiral stripes.

Kairouan Tiling Pattern

This Islamic geometric pattern can be seen on a famous mosque in Tunisia. It's easily created in SketchUp using simple geometry, construction lines, and groups and components.

The project subscription is still just $36 for 12 months: 36 projects in all. You can sign up here.


Anyone can design anything in 3D! http://www.3dvinci.net/

Join our FREE Email Mailing List!

Creating a Perpendicular Plane

It's been a few months since I posted on my page on the Math Forum - it was a really busy summer (and September, and October...)

I hope to post regularly again, and as a start, I just uploaded the November project: creating a plane perpendicular to a line.



It's a pretty simple concept - using the Follow Me tool to create a perpendicular face, then using that face to set the plane.

Check it out.





Anyone can design anything in 3D! http://www.3dvinci.net/

Join our FREE Email Mailing List!

What's Coming in Our November Projects?

If you're a subscriber to our Projects of the Month, here's what you'll get on November 15:

Stepped Bubble Letters
This is a favorite project in the enrichment class I teach. You use the 3D Text tool to create a word, then create offsets around the letters. After some clean-up you'll get a great result in 2D:



And it looks even better when pulled up into 3D steps:


How to Work with Huge Models

Another topic that comes up often in the class I teach: someone starts with a large, complicated 3D model and then imports even more large models into it. The example used in this projects is a furnished house, with a sports car in the driveway and water slide in the backyard.



Carrying around that many megabytes can make SketchUp perform slowly. This project shows you some ways to "trim the fat" to make your models work better.

Striped Barber Pole
This project is a result of a customer request: how to model a barber pole. Well, there are two ways to do it. This month's project shows how to import an image of stripes and tilt the image so the stripes are diagonal.

The other method is to create the stripes themselves in SketchUp, which proceed in a spiral pattern. This will be one of December's projects - stay tuned!


As always, our projects are a steal at $36 for the year. They will provide hours of interesting and fun modeling time, for young and old alike! Subscribe here.



Anyone can design anything in 3D! http://www.3dvinci.net/

Join our FREE Email Mailing List!

SketchUp Jack-o-Lantern

Happy almost Halloween! I was just completing the write-up of one of my SketchUp projects of the month, which involves using the Intersect Faces tool to cut a window into a rocket.

You can apply this technique to almost anything. So if I want to make a jack-o-lantern, I can download a pumpkin from the 3D Warehouse (there are many), and create some prismatic objects to represent the eyes, nose, and mouth. It's easier to create these objects in blank space then move them into place. And everything should be exploded first, if needed.


Select everything, right-click on any selected face, and choose Intersect Faces / With Model. This gives you the intersection edges you need to make the cutouts. Then you can trim away all the extra edges and faces. (My cutouts go all the way through, which you might not do with a hand-held knife on a real pumpkin!)



There are already some great Halloween pumpkin models in the 3D Warehouse. These are awesome:




Now, I'd really like to see someone model this one:




Anyone can design anything in 3D! http://www.3dvinci.net/

Join our FREE Email Mailing List!

What's Coming in Our October Projects?

The projects going out next week come as a result of teacher requests and feedback. So I hope everyone can find something useful in this batch! If you haven't yet subscribed, you can sign up here.


Google Earth Tours

This project shows how to create an annotated, guided tour around some landmarks of Washington, DC, using buildings that are already in Google Earth. No programming is necessary; all you need is the free version of Google Earth.



Rocket Windows

One of last month's projects showed how to create a rocket. This time you'll learn how to add windows to the front and back, using a cylinder and the Intersect Faces tool.




Torus, and Other Round Things

I get asked all the time how to create objects like a torus, cone, or sphere. These are easy, once you get to know the Follow Me tool. In addition to creating a torus (aka, doughnut), you'll see how to create other shapes using a Follow Me path.




There's no reason not to sign up - it's just $36 for the year (3 projects each month for 12 months). You'll never be stuck for ideas again!

Subscribe here.





Anyone can design anything in 3D! http://www.3dvinci.net/

Join our FREE Email Mailing List!

What's Coming in Our September Projects?

I hope everyone's back from their August break well-rested and ready for school. I took a fabulous vacation with my family to Wyoming and Utah, and it made me wonder why we're living on the crowded, mountain-less, hurricane-prone East Coast. But we do love Washington, so we're staying put.

Anyway, these fun SketchUp projects should get you back to school on a great footing! Become a subscriber for just $36 for a year - that's 36 projects over 12 months.

(And in case you missed, we just released our fourth Project Bundle, 18 projects from March 2011 - August 2011, which is sale-priced during September at just $19.

Rocket Ship

First you start with the fins, then comes the cylinder body and the cone tip. Very easy, very cool!



Onion Dome
I saw this really neat technique on a YouTube video, which combines hidden edges with the very handy Scale tool. You can create just one onion-shaped dome . . .


. . . or create a whole Dr. Seuss-looking town.

Star Patterns

This geometric project shows how you can take a single hexagon and make variations on a star pattern. The seamless look comes from hidden or softened edges.



Click here to become a subscriber.





Anyone can design anything in 3D! http://www.3dvinci.net/

Join our FREE Email Mailing List!

What's Coming in Our August Projects?

Even if you're spending your last weeks of summer sitting on a beach, I hope you're stilll thinking (in the back of your mind?) about fun things you can do on your computer! After all, it does rain sometimes, even in paradise...

Anyway, for our project subscribers, here's what's coming out next week:

Box of Blocks

In this project, you start with a box with a single block . . .


. . . And use array copies (first-to-last with spaces in between) to figure out how many blocks will fit in the box.


Stained Glass Window

In this project you start with a downloaded image of an arched stained glass window . . .




. . . And import it into SketchUp to use as an actual window (one that you can see through!)




Snowflake Triangles

This is a nice and simple project, based on something I saw at a local museum. You build a symmetric pattern from a set of equilateral triangles . . .


. . . And make rotated copies of that pattern to see the resulting "snowflake." It's pretty neat, since it's not always easy to tell exactly what you're going to get!



You won't regret signing up for our projects - you get 3 projects per month for a year. And it's still just $36 - $1 per project!

Enjoy the rest of your summer!




Anyone can design anything in 3D! http://www.3dvinci.net/

Join our FREE Email Mailing List!

What's Coming in Our July Projects?

It may be summer, and maybe computer work is the last thing on your mind. But what better way to beat the heat than to sit in the comfy air conditioning working on some fun design projects? (Of course, when you're done, get outside and play in the fresh air!)

On July 15, here's what our Project of the Month subscribers will be getting:

Styles from SketchUp Artists

Displaying your models in the default SketchUp style looks decent enough:



But you can make things much more interesting by changing the style. SketchUp provides a few good ones, and you can download awesome styles for free from SketchUp Artists. This projects shows you how.



Crop Circles

Whether or not you think crop circles are man-made or alien creations, they all have very interesting geometry. This project shows how to use SketchUp to create the famous South Field Crop Circle from 2000.




Wavy Text

The 3D Text tool is quite fun, but it only creates text in a straight line. To get letters to curve, you need to project them, and a free plugin can help you make the letters 3D.


Sign up and have some fun! It's still just $36 for 12 months: that's $1 per project. Cheap thrills!




Anyone can design anything in 3D! http://www.3dvinci.net/

Join our FREE Email Mailing List!