Sketchup vs Blender

[Keanu Ronwood]

Well have some questions. So I always heard people like don't use sketch up. Its not that efficient, or stuff gets messed up. Well using sketchup 2018, and blender 2.79. So I did a experiment, and I know this is not a new topic, alright I get that. So been learning blender, so far wow didn't realize how easy it is,  finally I'm getting it, on how blender works. So I put some txt on pictures but better explain first. So I made the cube in blender, first pic exported to desktop(using avastar exporter], then uploaded to second life, same settings. So I took the same cube, imported to sketchup, see I didn't get to the texture stage in blender yet tthought, hey I could just import it to sketchup put some textures on it and, upload it to second life Same settings at other upload. Well that didn't work so well, more impact but not sure why. mean I understand there 2 different programs programs, but what the hell does sketchup do to mess it up. I didn't touch anything besides, import and exporting from a different program.

uploaded to second life from sketchup 1 objects selected land impact 6 remaining capacity 17989

uploaded to second life from blender 1 objects selected land impact 4 remaining capacity 17989

 

 

Edited February 23, 2018 by Keanu Ronwood

[Keanu Ronwood]

so like I said didn't touch  anything just export and imported the same object threw different programs that I originally made in blender. So sketchup mess up stuff somehow or is it the importer setting. Also pic below, I can walk threw the right one, with physics on high.

Edited February 23, 2018 by Keanu Ronwood

[arton Rotaru]

Sketchup has split that model into 2 objects, as can be seen in the More Info panel. It has an awfully high physics weight as well. It's land impact should be 25 according to the physics weight actually. I don't know why it's showing just 6.

Also, what does same upload settings mean? The same upload settings would be if you select "Use LOD above" in all LOD slots, and choose the High LOD as the physics. Other wise you will get varying results each time you upload that mesh.

It's also not the same model anymore if you alter the UVs, material assignment, or shading of the mesh.

Conclusion; Sketchup still sucks to be used for Second Life.

[Keanu Ronwood]

Sorry i posted topic, alright I understand now. Sure its been covred before, you know I thought blender was hard to use, but learning, easier then I thought. Thing is Arton, one of the people that loveeeeeeee sketchup, so simple. I can build really good, just realizing, using ingame prim, just isn't the thing anymore. I know haven't been for a while. What I mean as same upload settings, I did same high physics. Mean didn't touch anything just imported the object I made I blender, then exported it, seeing if something happen, sketch totally changed it, crazy, didn't do anything. Alright going to keep learning, scratch sketchup. Thank you for your time.

[arton Rotaru]

What might work better is doing it the other way around, modeling in Sketchup, and doing some cleanup in Blender. Removing hidden faces, joining the meshes etc.. But in the end, it might be easier to model in Blender directly.

[Chic Aeon]

9 hours ago, Keanu Ronwood said:

So been learning blender, so far wow didn't realize how easy it is,  finally I'm getting it, on how blender works.

Just had to smile at that. 

[Keanu Ronwood]

omg so many error on spelling lol, was tired last night. Still learning, have avatar plugin, kind of a cool tool. OMG Chick Aeon nice to meet you, looked at some of your tutorials on blender. Yeah, trying to transition, into the new second era. I have so many ideas, but what I mean is instead of using basic prim square objects in second life, using third party program like blender to build. I have maya 30 day, and blender 2.79. Yeah just getting into all this again, going to work on my business again. I'm a stay at home dad, got excited about second life again, after getting burned out from drama, and other stuff. Alright ty guy for everything.

[Anna Nova]

It is amazing how fast you can model in Blender once you get the hang of it.  The learning curve is steep, but the rewards come in stages to keep you going.  After modelling, you have Texturing yet to come!

[Keanu Ronwood]

Ty for being so awesome you guys. I know this topic come and it goes probably more frequently, then the amount of coffee I drink a day. I was trying to ask a question in this post, then just went all over the place. mean I just thought there was a 100% answer to blender. I figured 2018 mabe google sketchup worked better in second life now. Ive been playing sense 2009,  trying to get into it. Yeah anna still have bunch to do, as in learning, but I'm trying. I'm working in the beta grid right now, but get kind of lonely. Alright well if anyone want to add me to friends list be nice. Also anyone know any good plugins for blender, I got avastar, and destructive extrude good plugin. Like that tools like sketchup, when you extrude the mesh. Last thing, what do people think about maya 2018. My main problem is that I have hard time finding up to date tutorials. lot of tutorial like 2014 2012 kind of stuff. 

[Chic Aeon]

43 minutes ago, Keanu Ronwood said:

Ty for being so awesome you guys. I know this topic come and it goes probably more frequently, then the amount of coffee I drink a day. I was trying to ask a question in this post, then just went all over the place. mean I just thought there was a 100% answer to blender. I figured 2018 mabe google sketchup worked better in second life now. Ive been playing sense 2009,  trying to get into it. Yeah anna still have bunch to do, as in learning, but I'm trying. I'm working in the beta grid right now, but get kind of lonely. Alright well if anyone want to add me to friends list be nice. Also anyone know any good plugins for blender, I got avastar, and destructive extrude good plugin. Like that tools like sketchup, when you extrude the mesh. Last thing, what do people think about maya 2018. My main problem is that I have hard time finding up to date tutorials. lot of tutorial like 2014 2012 kind of stuff. 

Most folks here use Blender -- for many reasons I suppose. Maya is more of a professionals software and therefore you don't see a lot of home made video tutorials.  Likely the old ones aren't all that relevant (or the interface has changed and that can be confusing) now. That is typical of software. 

 

[Chic Aeon]

By the way. I just noticed your land impacts on your original post. Aim for one not 4 or 6  and be sure you can see it from LONG distances.   

[Tenly]

Maybe I do not understand what is happening but seems to me if you take a blender object then import it to sketchup then export it you are not comparing sketchup to blender in a clean fashion. 

lets say object is a crate with a texture that makes it look like a crate.
Id like to see object created in blender. go from blender to SL Next create same object in sketchup. go from sketchup to sl, No importing from one application to the other.

To be clear you would create the same crate, from scratch, in each program. Texture in each program. Take a screenshot to show what they look like in each program. Then screenshot each of those items when uploaded to sl. And detail if there were any problems. hope that makes sense. Have not seen anyone do that yet. and Im on the fence about sketchup which seems to be simpler and easier to use than blender. 

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, Tenly said:

Maybe I do not understand what is happening but seems to me if you take a blender object then import it to sketchup then export it you are not comparing sketchup to blender in a clean fashion. 

lets say object is a crate with a texture that makes it look like a crate.
Id like to see object created in blender. go from blender to SL Next create same object in sketchup. go from sketchup to sl, No importing from one application to the other.

To be clear you would create the same crate, from scratch, in each program. Texture in each program. Take a screenshot to show what they look like in each program. Then screenshot each of those items when uploaded to sl. And detail if there were any problems. hope that makes sense. Have not seen anyone do that yet. and Im on the fence about sketchup which seems to be simpler and easier to use than blender. 

Well that would be a good project for you and I am sure it would be good to post your findings. Basically Sketchup just doesn't work well in SL (or in many other platforms). It is easy perhaps but .....   :D. 

So go forth and do that experiment. 

[Keanu Ronwood]

Well problem is I really like sketchup, I can build so much into it, just physics really suck, even if I use cleanup in sketchup. I can build really nice stuff. No what I did was used sketchup, exported it to Dae, then imported it to blender with out touching it, then exported to dae, and uploaded to second life. then I took same item, exported it to dae, then second life. Had diff amount of vertices, so wtf changed, I didn't do anything. I'm guessing it might be something in the import, or export. Personally if second life made a baby with sketchup up, that would be revolutionary. I can do blender, more like a beforeartist, I love that set up. Just problem I have with blender really needs guildlines, like sketchup. Ive been looking for more accurate program then belender.

Edited April 7, 2018 by Keanu Ronwood

[Beq Janus]

14 hours ago, Keanu Ronwood said:

Just problem I have with blender really needs guildlines, like sketchup. Ive been looking for more accurate program then belender.

Have you tried this...https://blendermarket.com/products/snap-utilities

It's not exactly what you are after but it might go some way.

 

[animats]

Moving models back and forth between Blender and Sketchup has to be a mess. Blender is a mesh editor. Sketchup is a constructive solid geometry editor.  CSG systems have real solids, not just faces. All CSG objects are "watertight".  Mesh to CSG is not likely to work too well, especially if the mesh isn't watertight.

[OptimoMaximo]

On 7/4/2018 at 6:32 AM, Keanu Ronwood said:

Just problem I have with blender really needs guildlines, like sketchup. Ive been looking for more accurate program then belender.

Accuracy is one of the most hidden features in 3D modeling softwares other than CADs and solid constructors, but they are there. It needs much dedication to the software and gathered experience to find them out and start to use them properly. I use Maya and it allows me precision down to 1/1000th of a centimeter at its default settings, and can be set to even higher precision.

[animats]

The Sketchup CSG approach has potential as an in-world editor. Look at the Sketchup UI. The basic operations and 3D navigation are consistent with SL's metaphors. You move around the model, touch, point, pull, push, and drag. 

In-world editing beyond the prim level would give SL a big edge over the competition. SineSpace, High Fidelity, and Sansar don't have in-world editing. But look who does. Minecraft. Roblox. Even Fortnite. The worlds that have far more users than SL.  SL is missing out here.

Face it, the typical user is not going to learn Blender.  Even getting them to use Sketchup is tough. But give them an easy to use in-world building tool, and they can do things. Prims were the right idea for the late 1990s, but there's been progress in 3D editing since then.

[animats]

Just to see what would happen, I tried generating a Collada file in FreeCAD and uploading it. Uploading a simple cube and sphere worked. Uploading an entire architectural model of a real world house produced "Error: element is invalid" from Firestorm upload, without more useful information on screen or in the error log.

[Keanu Ronwood]

See what i dont understand is why the dev arent working on new building tools, instead of adding new feature to a old system that still need to be updated.

On 4/15/2018 at 12:08 AM, animats said:

The Sketchup CSG approach has potential as an in-world editor. Look at the Sketchup UI. The basic operations and 3D navigation are consistent with SL's metaphors. You move around the model, touch, point, pull, push, and drag. 

In-world editing beyond the prim level would give SL a big edge over the competition. SineSpace, High Fidelity, and Sansar don't have in-world editing. But look who does. Minecraft. Roblox. Even Fortnite. The worlds that have far more users than SL.  SL is missing out here.

Face it, the typical user is not going to learn Blender.  Even getting them to use Sketchup is tough. But give them an easy to use in-world building tool, and they can do things. Prims were the right idea for the late 1990s, but there's been progress in 3D editing since then.

mats, someone understands.See what i dont understand is why the dev arent working on new building tools, instead of adding new feature to a old system that still need to be updated. Ive tried to use sketchup and then blender. Used meshlab to try to clean it up from sketching, im trying diff things.

Edited October 2, 2018 by Keanu Ronwood

[animats]

8 hours ago, Keanu Ronwood said:

See what i don't understand is why the dev arent working on new building tools, instead of adding new feature to a old system that still need to be updated.

Very limited resources. The LL devs have to maintain a large system with a team that's small for the job.

SineSpace recently incorporated Archimatrix into their system. This offers a useful level of in-world editing. You can move and scale prebuilt components, and they react intelligently. If you stretch a staircase, you get more steps, not higher ones. Users are starting to expect that kind of fluid editing, because, Fortnite.

[Keanu Ronwood]

Ty animats, just wish blender was easier but im really trying to learn. There not really any updated tutorials for second life, and blender. There all kind of old to tell you the truth. I wish someone make one on how to fix a google sketchup model in blender for second life, or is it sketchup exporter. Ive been part of second life for while building is important, mabe more then lots of things, so yeah update the building tools, makes sense to me.

[ChinRey]

59 minutes ago, Keanu Ronwood said:

Ty animats, just wish blender was easier but im really trying to learn. There not really any updated tutorials for second life, and blender. There all kind of old to tell you the truth. I wish someone make one on how to fix a google sketchup model in blender for second life, or is it sketchup exporter.

I may have some bad news for you there. My friend Hattie Panacek of Ex Machina started working in SketchUp when she switched to mesh and she made some really lovely models with it. But she never finished them, quit SketchUp and learned Blender instead. When I asked her why she didn't import her SketcUph models to Blender and clean them up, she told me it would have been easier to rebuild them from scratch. I've only tried to do it myself with some very simple ground meshes so I don't really know but that's my impression too.

 

59 minutes ago, Keanu Ronwood said:

Ive been part of second life for while building is important, mabe more then lots of things, so yeah update the building tools, makes sense to me.

Since this thread is open again, I guess I'll post the reply I was going to last time but forgot.

I fully agree that Second Life needs a relevant inworld buiding tool. It lost something very valuable when building was effectively taken off-world. But such a tool has to be based on procedural materials, not on polylist meshes for a large number of reasons. I've already mentioned some of them here and in other thread but animats gave us a new one:

On 10/2/2018 at 7:59 PM, animats said:

SineSpace recently incorporated Archimatrix into their system. This offers a useful level of in-world editing. You can move and scale prebuilt components, and they react intelligently. If you stretch a staircase, you get more steps, not higher ones. Users are starting to expect that kind of fluid editing, because, Fortnite.

Archimatrix is a very good example of what can be done with procedural building tools but not with polylist meshes. And it's also a very good example of moden post-polylist 3D modelling.

I know, I know, prims are primitive, limited, old, outdated and all of that. But consider this:

Most people familiar with 3D modelling know SpeedTree by now. It's the professional industrial standard for creating procedural vegetation. It's used by many properiatary game engines, it's commonly used in Unity and UE4 and it's even common in the film industry. Unigine is the only engine I know of who has chosen to develop their own alternative instead.

Compare SpeedTree to our "beloved" system vegetation. It's like night and day, isn't it? It wasn't always so. SL system vegetation started off as a SpeedTree clone and did pretty much the same job back then. The difference is that SpeedTree has been constantly upgraded while SL system vegetation became a victim of LL's relase-and-forget policy - as did prims ... and sculpts too come to think of it.

Imagine an evolved prim system, based on the one we have today but as different as SpeedTree is to system vegetation. That is the inworld building tool SL needs. It would probably be quite similar to Archimatrix.

Edited October 13, 2018 by ChinRey

[Klytyna]

13 hours ago, ChinRey said:

When I asked her why she didn't import her SketcUph models to Blender and clean them up, she told me it would have been easier to rebuild them from scratch. I've only tried to do it myself with some very simple ground meshes so I don't really know but that's my impression too.

I once was part of a games modding team, whose "3d concept artiste" insisted on using Gurgle Screwup to make their meshes, using nothing but the extrude tool, in about 2 hours...

The moron never could understand why it typically took the actual 3d modelers on the team, about 20 hours to take their 2 Hour Screwup meshes apart, uv map them, divide them into material zones, clean up the crap, reassemble the meshes and convert them to an in-game format...

 

[ChinRey]

33 minutes ago, Klytyna said:

I once was part of a games modding team, whose "3d concept artiste" insisted on using Gurgle Screwup to make their meshes,
 

Perhaps it should be mentioned that Google has nothing to do with SketchUp anymore, except they may still use it themsevles for some Google Earth stuff.

SketchUp was launched in 2000 by a company named @Last Software. Google bought the whole company in 2006 but only held on to SketchUp for six years before they sold it to Trimble.

It's not a bad program as such either. It's just that when people try to use ot for game/virtual world modelling, they're expecting it to do a job it was never meant to do. SketchUp is an entry level CAD (Computer Assisted Design) applications, it's meant for static models where it doesn't matter much if the model is so high poly it takes a minute or ten for it to render.

It's actually a bit of the same with Blender and Maya. They too are mainly made for high poly static meshes. But unlike SketchUp they come with a lot of extra functions that allow you to make render efficient models. If you know about those functions and how to use them that is. Many don't and that is one of the reasons why SL can be so laggy.

Edited October 14, 2018 by ChinRey