Posts Tagged ‘sketchup’

Sketchup!

Don’t let anyone tell you sketchup is not a ’serious’ modeling program and that it produces untidy geometry, like any program its how you use it that counts. The genuis of sketchup lies in it’s tidy interface, brilliant snapping, and ease of use. Sketchup has it’s limits of course, but for architectural visualisation I think it is the perfect tool for modeling. Every single project in my portfolio started life in sketchup.

The start of any project for me is understanding the building and modeling it - as quickly and as efficiently as possible. This timelapse screen recording shows the whole process, speeded up 10x. The whole thing took about a day (3 hrs 46mins, excluding all the coffee breaks). I like to get the overall form of the building done first, but identifying and making components for any repeating elements (windows, doors, whole apartments) as I go. You can then go back and add detail later on.

Sketchup Arch Viz Modeling Timelapse from Peter Guthrie on Vimeo.

Farnsworth House Sketchup Model

A detailed Sketchup model with low res textures. Go to pushpullbar for more images and to download.

ppb farnsworth 04

ppb farnsworth 05

UPDATE: new direct download link

Chelsea Square Day

Chelsea Square kitchen crop

A new project in my vizualisation gallery: Chelsea Square by Wilkinson King Architects. These images were for marketing purposes and were lots of fun to work on. The building was modeled in Sketchup and all textures were made from scratch from photographs. As usual with my projects, there wasn’t much post work in photoshop (apart from the cross section).

The caustics in the pool were calculated with all the glass hidden, saved and then the glass was turned back on for the final render. The actual water surface was modeled by dropping a ball into some reactor water, totally over the top I know!

Chelsea Square water crop

I wanted the brick texture to match the existing building as closely as possible so I took photos of the end gable brick (in the shade) and then painted over every brick in photoshop. This was so that the displacement map worked correctly in displacing the bricks outwards while recessing the grout slightly, and also helped in the reflection map to make the grout less reflective. The traced bricks layer was used as a mask to lighten a greyscale copy of the diffuse layer. Painting over bricks in photoshop is as about as boring as it gets, but worth the effort.

texture

Chelsea Square stair view crop

Mendes da Rocha Residence

Something I started ages ago and need a new incentive to finish off. This is the Mendes da Rocha Residence in São Paulo, Brazil by Paulo Mendes da Rocha, 2006 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate.

rocha_residence_02

test01

rocha_residence_04

The concrete material is temporary, and I have more internal walls to add, then the furniture. The Paulistano (by Mendes da Rocha) is the main reason I decided to model this house, I really needed a more suitable location for it than this room:

Paulistano 2

wip

When its done, I intend to share the sketchup model on the pushpullbar forums, there will be an update here as well of course.