You might be thinking about taking the Maya 3D course down the road or just would like to get your feet wet in 3D modeling - but your eyes drop out of your head when you see the price of 3D software! Google’s Sketchup is a great open source alternative to explore 3d. It is very powerful yet very easy to use. You can find the download at: http://sketchup.google.com. A new and improved version 7 has just been released and is available as a free version and a professional version. Sketchup Pro will cost you some money, but the free version will get you started and by no means is it a wimp!
Download the free version,and you will be working with SketchUp in a couple of hours. No kidding! Sketchup has dozens of video tutorials, and great help support. Also Sketchup links to a 3D Warehouse where you can see other 3D artists work and can download objects that you might use for scenes you are creating - an Open Source culture! Also Sketchup has plug-ins that extends software functionality.
Test Driving the Free Version
Well let’s try this bad boy out! If you've been watching the construction of the new building along Hwy 75. You might be looking for more information to what the new Health Education Building is going to look like. Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to spin the building around in 3D space. . . to get an idea how it might look from a different angle, maybe walk through a virtual building or, how about posting the model on a website or interactive DVD so others might be able to view the model. This can all be accomplished with the free version of Sketchup!
To create the 3d model of the building I used the following 2D architectural rendering and the floor plan.
The artistic rendering, was used to capture the brick texture as a "texture map" that is attached to the walls of the model as a material. (I could of used a photograph of bricks and windows and could of got even more realism). The 2D floor plan was scanned and imported into Sketchup. and was used as a guide to create the walls in 3D. You can see the walls in the photo below seem to rise up from the floor plan. Using the floor plan as a template keeps the building in the proper perspective and size.
Go ahead, click and drag on the building below with your mouse and drag to spin the building around in 3d
When you click on the building the mouse cursor changes to a two headed arrow. Click and drag and you can spin the building around. Pretty cool stuff. All created from just a floor plan and an artist rendering and the free version of Sketchup!
NWCET put together some great Web Resources and they are listed below. Some of the links below you have seen in our web classes but here is a comprehensive list of Web resources, that will be very useful!
The National Workforce Center for Emerging Technologies (NWCET) is an NSF Advanced Technology Education Center in Information Technology located in Bellevue, Washington, http://www.nwcet.org/.
The following websites provide a full range of free instructional content on web design and related topics. Exploring these sites is a great way to extend your knowledge as you work on advanced web development. Enjoy!
Zepdigital alias Glenn Reid, is a faculty member in the Visual Communications Department at North Metro Technical College, Acworth, Georgia.
Zepdigital is also an avatar name for the virtual classroom 202 3/4 that resides at Google's Beta Virtual Reality Site-Lively.com
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