New Book: SketchUp and Visualization

Packt Publishing has released a new book on rendering, SketchUp 7.1 for Architectural Visualization, written by Robin de Jongh. I got a review copy about a week ago, and I've spent the last few days looking through it.

The book is an impressive piece of work, and Robin's writing style is not only informative and easy to read, but also pretty darn funny. (Note to self: humor should be used more often in tech books. Keeps readers awake!)

The book has two main focuses:

1. Showing the best ways to use SketchUp, with an eye out for eventual model presentation. This includes keeping poly counts low, making the most of digital images, using components, entourage, etc. This book isn't about object modeling techniques per se, but Robin does discuss a bit of that as well.
2. Creating the presentation itself. This includes not only "how-to's" for rendering and video apps, but also how to set up SketchUp scenes, layers, walkthroughs, and styles to ease the transition into a presentation.
   

The best part is that nearly all of the applications discussed in this book are FREE. There's a lot about Kerkythea for rending, and GIMP and VirtualDub for image processing and animation. It's amazing what you can do with freeware! Now that I've gotten a taste for this stuff, I hope to write up some projects for my monthly subscribers!

The book ends with a chapter on LayOut, for all you Pro users, and a very useful index comparing a bunch of SketchUp renderers.

I have only a few minor complaints:

• The book title states "Beginner's Guide." This is a bit misleading because a beginning SketchUp user would have trouble making heads or tails of the modeling concepts. Logically, I know the "beginner" refers to someone looking to learn presentation methods, but that could be made clearer with a different subtitle.
• The graphics are grayscale, which is short of shame in a book on "knock 'em out" presentations. My own books cost a lot to print in color, so I understand the economic issues. But my Google SketchUp Cookbook has color graphics, with a similar page count and price. Same for the new Site Design book by Daniel Tal. That said, the vast majority of the graphics come through quite clearly in black and white, but a few are a little dark. I'm sure Robin's first choice would be to publish in color, but that's usually not up to the author!
• It would have been great to have more downloadable files to use alongside the book (I found only one in the 3D Warehouse). The projects are easy enough to do with your own models, but having steps applicable to specific models would be clearer than more general instructions.
  

Overall, this book will be extremely useful for any architect, landscaper, interior designer, engineer, even student, who needs to show someone around their models. It costs about $45 in print and $30 as e-book, but you'd be spending a heck of a lot more than than on licensed rendering and production software, which this book will help you avoid.

Highly recommended!

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Dream Houses of 10th Graders

I've posted before about the class projects of math teacher Willy Felton. Here's the latest video he's made from the work of his students:



Willy explains:

This was done in a 10th grade geometry class with 8 students. There was a 5 week deadline that begun with students designing 2D floor plans and land plots. The land plot must be between 2,000 and 10,000 square feet and the house had to be between 1,000 and 5,000 square feet. They were encouraged to make realistic homes that someone could live in even though a couple are questionable :)

Students worked on the computers once a week, but much of the work had to be done on their own. They needed to use layers and scenes to deal with a lot of objects, and they were required to make windows and doors to a real scale. We prepared for the project by copying some blueprints and making standard houses before they had to make their own.

I have done an architecture project every year, but this is the first year doing it on SketchUp.

I especially like the round kitchen (though it may be a little hard to find appliances for it). I'm also impressed by the changing styles, use of shadows, and presentations of both exterior and interior views. Beautiful job by the students, and congratulations to Willy for coming up with this neat project!


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Islamic Geometric Patterns

Usually I ignore Amazon's "Recommended for You" picks, but last week I perked up when I saw "Islamic Geometric Patterns" by Eric Broug.

If you saw my Math Forum project on Girih Tiles (Feb 2010), you know I'm into this stuff. But how did Amazon know? I guess I order more geometry books than I thought.

So the book arrived this weekend, and last night I cracked it open. It's written in three levels: Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced, and is geared toward hand drawing with compass and straight-edge, pencil and ink. The steps are quite easy to follow, and of course, each project can easily be done in SketchUp. The book includes a CD, which I haven't opened yet.

Here's the first construction project (Level 1 - Easy), showing tiles found on the Great Mosque of Cordoba. The lines are constructed with the Polygon, Circle, and Tape Measure tools:


The Line tool traces over the lines needed for the pattern:


Then you color and repeat. Groups and components make this quite easy.



There are 19 constructions in all, so expect to see these detailed on the Math Forum, and also included in my Projects of the Month. Teachers of math, art, and even history: your students will LOVE this!


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Sketchy Physics: So Much to Learn

I found this nice video that compiles a whole bunch of Sketchy Physics SketchUp models. All of the models can be found in the 3D Warehouse (so I understand), and the video shows snippets of how each model moves, interacts, etc.



Here's another one:



There is almost no documentation on how to use Sketchy Physics - a few very smart people figured it out on their own and are using it brilliantly. I'm hoping I can produce a Sketchy Physics book that makes this accessible to everyone.


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Our Upcoming Projects for May

If you subscribe to our Projects of the Month, here's what you'll be getting on May 15:

Round Chess Pieces

Not just for chess players, this project shows how to make any type of round object. In this case, all you need is a photo and a few simple SketchUp tools (including the magical Follow Me tool), and you get a sophisticated-looking model:


Fence Illusion

A little bit Escher, a little bit Necker Cube, this project is about building a fence that only looks like it's closed:


To see the illusion, see my previous blog post!

Quadrilateral Tessellation

Any four-sided shape can tessellate. And when you do this in SketchUp, you can make use of components so that decorated quadrilaterals make some very cool patterns:


At $36 for the year (3 projects per month), there's no reason not to sign up for Projects of the Month!





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Fence Illusion

This is going to be part of my Projects of the Month for May, coming out in 11 days. The idea was given to me by a teacher named Charlie Unkeless, who based his model and animation on the famous Necker Cube illusion.



Part of making this model work involves switching SketchUp from the default Perspective view to a Parallel Projection view.

If you want to see exactly how to create the model and animation, sign up for our Projects of the Month!




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Now THIS is a class project

Yesterday I heard from Guzman Tierno, about whom I last posted about a year ago, with his 24-vehicle pile up model. Guzman is a middle-school math teacher in Italy, and if I had my childhood to do over again, I'd move to Italy and join his class.

Below is the culmination of his year-long class project: The Trojan War. Keep in mind that these models (except for the islands) were made by a class of eighteen kids who are ONLY THIRTEEN.



This video's got it all: geometric objects, houses, war machinery, battle scenes (complete with non-gory decapitations), even a Trojan Horse you can peek inside. In a single project kids are learning math, history, geography, and architecture. Plus I imagine the kids had a blast doing this.

Guzman's students got to work with SketchUp for one hour per week, over 18 weeks. Each week had its own theme:

Week 1: parallelpipeds and chairs (Rectangle and Push/Pull tools)
Week 2: simple houses to build a simple greek city (Line tool)
Week 3: tetrahedrons, octahedrons and variations
Week 4: tables with books, lamps, etc (groups)
Week 5: cube of cubes, pyramid of pyramids, etc. (moving and copying groups)
Week 6: wooden 3d puzzle (Divide tool)
Week 7-8: cars and roofs (multiple selection)
Week 9: icosahedron, dodecahedron, truncated icosahedron (rotating groups)
Week 10: pipes and vases (Follow Me tool)
Week 11: more round objects
Week 12: Temples
Week 13: DNA (Rotate tool)
Week 14: men, shields, swords
Week 15: rooms
Week 16: men, shields, swords - completed
Week 17: helmets (hidden geometry)
Week 18: Random stuff for the video: troy, war carts, etc.

For each week, students were given a worksheet explaining what they were about to model and how to go about it. For an example, check out the worksheet for the helmet (in Italian).

The final project - putting it all together, took another six weeks. The moving parts (cart wheels, soldiers fighting, etc.) was done in Sketchy Physics - that bit was done by Guzman himself. In all the students produced over 500 models during class, and completed another 100 on their own, at home. Here is their collection of models in the 3D Warehouse. (Speaking of the 3D Warehouse, Guzman didn't let his students download any warehouse models for this project; everything is from scratch!)

Guzman has a YouTube channel where you can see many more student videos of SketchUp projects. When you're watching, keep in mind - THIRTEEN year-olds! What were you doing at 13?



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Weld Plugin

Weld is a free, easy to use SketchUp plugin that's useful on its own, and necessary for use in other plugins which I'll detail later (such as Flightpath). In a nutshell, Weld combines a chain of segments into a single object.

You can get this plugin from Smustard. Once you download the RB file, place it in the Plugins folder of your SketchUp installation. Weld will then appear in SketchUp in the Plugins menu, but you might want to set up a keyobard shortcut for it, if you'll be using it often.

Here's how I tried out Weld:

I made this building footprint, and the curvy line at the bottom is comprised of 7 tangent arcs.

When this is pulled up, there are vertical edges corresponding to the endpoints of the tangent arcs. (Of course, these edges can be easily smoothed with the Eraser tool, while holding the Ctrl or Option key.)

Going back to the orginal footprint, i want to join the 7 arcs into one curve. So I selected all of them (just the arcs, not the face or the straight lines). It may be hard to see, but the arcs below are highlighted in blue, meaning they are selected.

Activate Weld by choosing Plugins / Weld from the main menu (or a keyboard shortcut). You'll be asked if you want to close the curve (no), and create a face if possible (also no).

After Weld runs, the chain of arcs is a single object. If you check the arc chain's object type in the Entity Info window, you'll see it's identified as a curve.

And now when you pull this up, the front face is smooth - no vertical edges.

What would happen if the entire chain of edges surrounding the 2D footprint, including the straight edges, were welded into a single curve? After pulling up, you'd have no vertical edges anywhere, including along the sharp corners where you'd expect to see edges.

You can always create edges where none exist, either by drawing them with the Line tool, or by unsoftening them (display hidden edges, activate Eraser, and go over the desired edges with Shift and Ctrl / Option pressed).

Another case where you might want Weld: the Follow Me tool. In the example below, the circle will go along the path which is comprised of 5 lines and 1 arc.


Without Weld, the Follow Me results are divided by edges at each segment.

If Weld is used to combine the path into one curve, the resulting Follow Me is entirely smooth.

Give it a try - what the heck, it's free!



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Magformers: My New Fave Toy

I just got back from NCTM (more on that later), and had a short opportunity to cruise the exhibition floor. At a regional NCTM conference last year I bought some Geofix shapes for my kids, which they and all their friends have loved ever since. I was hoping to get some more, but the Geofix folks weren't exhibiting this time around. (All my mom-friends who requested Geofix will be disappointed, sorry!)

However, I found Magformers, which I think I like even better. They're a bit pricey, but so far worth every penny. I have 5 kids ranging from 9 to 3, and we've all spent the last 3 days spending over an hour per sitting building awesome models. So far we've mostly made models shown on the Magformers website, including:


My three-year old came up with this one on her own:



I need to order some more triangles now...


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New: GeomeTricks Bundle

In response to teacher requests, and in honor of NCTM where I'm presenting later this week, I've combined all 13 GeomeTricks books as a single bundle (in PDF format).

Purchased individually, all 13 books total $139.95. The bundle price is $109.95. And from now until May 20, the bundle is offered at the sale price of $89.95.

If you teach geometry, want to learn geometry, or are a math enthusiast, these books contain hours upon hours of fun and interesting projects. You'll learn all about tiling and tessellation, fractals, regular and irregular polygons, mosaics, symmetry, and Platonic and Archimedean solids. All in step-by-step, illustrated tutorial format, great for all levels of SketchUp users, for both Mac and PC.

I'm offering this set in PDF only; printed books are still available ala carte (I have much less price flexibility with printed materials).

Enjoy!


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New Geometry Video: Cube, Tetrahedron, Octahredron

As I detail at length in the book Basic Platonic and Archimedean Solids, there are many relationships between three of the Platonic solids: cube, tetrahedron, and octahedron. You can start with any of these shapes and perform a few simple "tricks" to get the other shapes.

Yesterday I created a new video to demonstrate one of these tricks: how to create a cube and use it to create tetrahedrons and an octahedron.



The detailed, written version of this project is included in April's Projects of the Month.



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Here's What's Coming in Our April Projects

In a week I'll be sending out the April projects to subscribers. Haven't signed up? Well here's the link - still just $36 for the year (a trifling $1 per project)!

Color Contrast

In the checkerboard below, which yellow is darker - the squares near the top or the bottom?


Of course the yellows are all the same, but the colors around them make them look different. In this project you'll learn how to make this checkerboard model and play around with the colors to get some interesting color contrasts.

Basic Animation

By adding at least two scenes to your SketchUp model, you can easily produce an animation, like the one below. This project will show you how.



Cube, Tetrahedron, Octahedron

If you've studied basic 3D geometry, you're probably aware of the relationship between these three Platonic solids. This project will show you one way to get tetrahedrons and octahedrons out of a cube (though there are many ways to do it).

Sign up for these amazing projects!


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