STOP and POST - Aug 05

**Ross Macintosh** · 17 August 2005, 05:09 AM

James -- SketchUp is excellant software that is a joy to use. It is a modelling program and does not incorporate advanced rendering capabilities. That said it can still be used to develope quite nice images. It imports & exports similar to other 3d modeling programs. To get a head start be sure to review the training movies prior to using your eight hour demo. People who do that often achieve amazing results in that eight hours. The training videos are at the SketchUp site. The forums at the SketchUp site are also an excellent resource. I'd also suggest checking out FormFonts.com to review the high quality components (models for importing) available and as representative of what can be done with SketchUp. The gallery at the SketchUp site is primarily architectural but that shouldn't stop you from thinking of it as a general-purpose 3d modelling program.

Note that its best thought of as a low-polygon oriented program. Importing & working with the bloated high-poly models produced in other 3d programs can bring SketchUp to a crawl. Still it is amazing what can be done with relatively low polygon counts.

Be sure to use your mouse wheel to zoom, pressed down to orbit and shift+pressed down to pan. That interface feature quickly becomes so intuitive you'll be trying to orbit in all your other programs!

Regards, Ross

PS - do a search here and in the 3d graphics forum for 'sketchup' and you'll find other SketchUp+Xara stuff I'd done.

**Egg Bramhill** · 17 August 2005, 05:56 AM

Ross
Unfortunately the Search feature was lost at the same time Image attachments went down.
It's always great to see your sketch-up images. Keep them coming.
Egg

**Ross Macintosh** · 17 August 2005, 06:30 AM

Egg -- huh? Search still works. Here's the result page searching this forum for SketchUp.

**Egg Bramhill** · 17 August 2005, 08:03 AM

My apologies Ross. The search has been very tempremental however.
Egg

**LogoVend** · 17 August 2005, 10:02 AM

I've had a little pay round with the demo today and it's well good - as you said - really easy and quick to use - even built a little gallery model with some of my painting in there. So I've got to grips with the textures as well. Was only wanting to do low polygon stuff anyway.

What I couldn't get to work though is getting a 2D export from SketchUP into Xara - but as a vector - any thoughts? Have you been able to do this? Xara doesn't seem to be able to handle the EPS - could reistall my copy of Illustrator and see if I can do it that way I guess. But is there a quicker way?

**Ross Macintosh** · 17 August 2005, 11:17 AM

James - the times I've done it I used an old copy of CorelDraw 10 which will import a sketchup pdf. From coreldraw I export a cmx that imports into Xara.

In this old thread John Clements describes how he gets SketchUp geometries int Xara -- again via CorelDraw.

What we really need is for someone who really understands eps formats to figure out what's wrong. If we knew I'm sure the folks at @Last (SketchUp developers) would do their best to fix it.

I can imagine SketchUp could be useful in your work. Gary Boulton (3d forum here and featured in one of the XaraXone.com galleries) regularly uses his 3d program (not SketchUp) with Xara X for great illustrations.

Regards, Ross

**a4hire** · 22 August 2005, 03:31 PM

Here is the last thing I worked on in Xara X1, besides my 69 Camaro, but I sent that picture to Gary for the show and I will possibly post that here later. This one is a Hillbilly biker. This was requested by a customer. His bike club was doing some kind of ride and wanted something to put on T-shirts. They are in West Virginia , so he thought the rider should be a hillbilly. The shirt could only have 6 colors, the shirt was black so if you count the black then I have 7 colors.

**simsmj** · 22 August 2005, 07:51 PM

Continuing the Xara3D series I started with the Astrolabe and Armillary Sphere, this is a WIP of a sextant or more strictly an Octant, (the arc being an eighth of a circle) that I started recently. It has been pretty straightforward so far, but I need to add some mirrors and filters at the left hand side, and so far can't see how to position/orient them correctly.

I may have to cheat and do them in a separate X3D file, and join the images up later in XaraX. There are still some screws and so on to put in, and the various engraved bits of lettering and scales to create, but these shouldn't present too much of a problem. Anyway, it keeps me off the streets, as they say!

Mike

**LogoVend** · 22 August 2005, 08:44 PM

This is a portrait that I've been working on of my girlfriend's buddy, a techno DJ who lives in Berlin that we visited at the start of the month. May I present, the one, the only ... Prince ElBee Bad! A really nice gentle chappy.

This picture is 100% Xara X1 vector ...