Production pipeline : Google Sketchup + Kerkythea + CubicPanoOut.rb + Panorama3D

[Wyz]

I've been playing around with this and I must say I'm impressed. Not that I can produce anything near to mode7's and anian's renders because those are simply breath taking.

The main issue I keep running into is textures, so here are a few questions in general.
Where to you guys find good textures, or perhaps do you make them yourself, or a combination of both?
Even if I had smashing textures to work with, I can not seem to get everything aligned properly. Do you have tips on how to align textures properly in google sketchup so they get exported properly also? Or do you use different programs to work on the texture placement?
I also tried to texture a terrain I've made with photo match, took 15 minutes of processing but when rendering in Kerkythea the texture coords appeared to be all messed up. But maybe that's just not really a good idea.

I'm also going to have a look at the tutorials anian linked, thanks.

[Anian]

Okay, really long post here, sorry about that.

Don't know what exactly was wrong with your textures, to be honest I haven't used Kerkythea in a couple of months so it's getting a bit rusty. Here's a Getting started guide: LINK

First of all Sketchup is best and made for - making buildings and other architectual models easily and fast (not only modeling but also texturing is basic and easy). It also has a set of tools for matching photos and drawing models from them and for making models for Google Earth and similar. Everything else is added and thus requires some more work.
For AGS integration, the best things you can take from Sketchup (even without any renderer, just a screenshot) - correct perspective, you can make basic shapes you need and see how they look in perspective, also see where the shadows need to be.

Textures, when you texture a surface (flat) right click on a surface it'll offer you an option Texture. When you play with that, you can also right click again and if you check/uncheck the Fixed pins options, you'll get more options. Try it out. Sketchup does a lot of work by setting up UV maps for you, so basic usage is really easy.
Textures sources, from dedicated sites LINK to just Googleing for what you need and then modifing it. In Vray and Kerkythea, they offer materials on their site as well (be carefull with VRay ones though, they're not always useable). By materials, I mean they usually even have some added settings to make them better not only a image texture.
On my sand floor in the image above, it's all one picture, I changed the camera to top view and parallel projection and then mixed differnent textures in Photoshop with an darken layer over them, so I can see where all the buildings are, but I believe this is more advanced than what is usually required.

And yes, you'll probably need to make some materials you'll need, but thanks to the internet, it's easy to find some stuff you can modify.

How big of a terrain are we talking about?
You can make a terrain and have a few basic tools for changing it - in both menu Draw and Tools you have and option called Sandbox. Also check the tuts on tools like Smoove and Drape and Stamp. For a basic terrain it'll be enough, you can also smooth the surfaces later.
For applying textures on curvy surfaces there's the texture projection method http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHsRRLCAOm8

To make a realistic terrain in Sketchup is a tad hard or maybe not so hard as much as you have to decide what you wanna do. SU is more architect oriented, you can even make terrain out of map contours.
There's a difference in say a background terrain or something to put the models on and where you want something to take action. Also plants (trees and grass) detailing makes a difference. Vue and similar programs have some tools that populate a terrain with models, you use it like a brush basically or can just put it all over the terrrain. They're also optimized to work with so much models in scene and with big terrains. With Vue, Sketchup is actually only used as a fast model and texture maker that you inport into Vue for everything else. Mode will probably know more about that.

In almost all 3d programs (if you're not going for like AAA material, but then you basically use complex software that actually simulates movement and particles) you basically try to disquise the lack of details not only cause of the time limits but also in say a game engine, it's just too demanding on the machine to render it all so it's playable in realtime. Even in most advance games today (except maybe Crysis or something) you'll notice that grass or open terrains have a texture on them and then randomly there are models of plants or not even models but 2d sprites.
In Kerykthea, there are some models and tuts on their site that show how to make grass, most are with bump/displacement maps, that is, you make the renderer draw the grass for you. It's a long process on any renderer though what you actually have to draw is not so much.

In Sketchup, you can mask the lack of terrain later in Photoshop for example by drawing in. If we're talking about simple stuff as surrounding a house or similar like
LINK1 - this is more than doable and even better results can be achieved
LINK2 - integrating a 3d model into an existing site is a perfect job for sketchup, or to make a model from a photo it's even better, it can put the textures directly from a photo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSuDoX8SPtU

[Wyz]

Yes very nice, thanks, that helped me greatly!

[mode7]

Oh and for textures: http://www.cgtextures.com/ you have to register and theres a daily download limit but apart from that its free and texts are nice

Here are some freeware texture tools:
http://www.bricksntiles.com/ - For walls and stuff
http://www.mapzoneeditor.com  - Very powerful but also very...confusing

[Monsieur OUXX]

The first answer to this thread was Babar asking me if I tested Kerkythea...
Well now I have! :-)

Only an uber-simple unfinished model with no textures and no colors but white, and yet, the magic of ray-tracing makes it look good instantly!



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EDIT:
It takes really 5 minutes :
- go to the Kerkythea website and download:
    1. the plugin for Sketchup
    2. the Kerkythea software itself
- put the plugin in the Plugin folder of sketchup (see the instructions in the readme)
- open Sketchup and use the new Kerkythea toolbar to export your model
- the first time it will ask you where is Kerkythea and it will open it with your export
BOOM, click on Render and there you go. Then File--> Save Image

[Igor Hardy]

Thanks very much for the Kerkythea recommendation Monsieur!

btw Does anyone know if the free version of Sketchup comes with some limited use license? It's a really powerful tool to be be given out for free (and I don't even see any ads).

[Anian]

btw Does anyone know if the free version of Sketchup comes with some limited use license? It's a really powerful tool to be be given out for free (and I don't even see any ads).

Thing is you're limited to formats you can save in (or rather export), that's about the only limitation, but if you have Kerkythea, you basically avoid it and even without it you can save as jpg or such.
Here's a comparison http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/product/whygopro.html
Sketchup doesn't have a nice render engine in it (it's just what you see plus you can download extra "styles" (you can find free ones on the net) that change the image a bit, but I still haven't found a good use for them - that's why they can't really hold you down like other softwares where they limit the rendered image size and use a water mark etc.

I also think there's some limit with making models for Google Earth, though I'm not sure, I haven't used that part of Sketchup that much.

Also SketchUp really quickly comes to a point where you really need some plugins for it, sites like Sketchunication offer a lot of free ones on their forums.

Kerkythea is cool and may be the only free renderer left for SketchUp, but it's controls are kind of clunky and not really similar to other programs or in fact SketchUp for example.