I design (freeware) scenery for flight simulators. Mainly airports and the structures that make up the concourses, hangars, etc.
The problem I have is that Sketchup Go makes doubly polygons for what seems everything. This seriously reduces the performance level in the simulation leading to stuttering in the animation.
In the past days, I created a stair set for a second floor door. When I sent the Collada exported file to my co-designer, he about hemorrhaged. I will share his thought on what I provided him:
>> Well, that’s disappointing. You’ll have to rebuild the stairs to get the poly count under control.
The high poly count with this new version is still being caused by the same issues that affected version 1 of the stairs. Most of the geometry is still double sided polygons, and the railings are still getting cut up when they intersect other railings. You also made a design change from v1, where you removed the side beam that was covering the edges of the stairs, resulting in a saw tooth side beam. That change increased the poly count, though not as much as I would have thought.
I spent 2 hours this morning fixing all the problems with the v2 set of stairs to see what the poly count could be:
So my question to you all is - is there a way to avoid this poly doubling? I hope so. I very much love Sketchup Go for its accuracy and ease of use. Thank you.
Exporting as DAE and from SketchUp Make 2017, SketchUp 2022 and 2024 is the same as from SketchUp Go, it creates each face separately and doubles the number of vertices.
Export correctly as an OBJ file, if you can use it instead of DAE.
I tested and checked in Blender. SketchUp Go exports each face separately, multiplying the number of vertices.
Probably an error that will be fixed now that you discovered it.
For the moment, fix in Blender by merging all by distance.
I think that the triangulation alone is responsible. If the software you are importing to supports polyfaces you could try leaving the triangulation turned off.
I would also try simplifying the railings as much as possible.
The only problem is that Blender, which my co-designer has often recommended, intimidates me as the learning curve is much higher. I am honestly a novice when it comes to architectural modeling. It’s not that I’m stupid. In fact I built a fully functioning flight simulator including software coding to interface all the lights, sounds, buttons, encoders, motors, etc. to work seamlessly with the software.
But I am very ignorant when it comes to Blender. I’ve tried to reproduce what I’ve designed in Sketchup Go with zero luck.
You can continue to work in SketchUp Go and create your models, then export them as DAE.
In Blender, you just import the DAE model (File > Import), select it, click Tab to enter Edit Mode, select All, M (merge) > by distance. Click Tab again to exit the Edit Mode. Export as DAE.
I must still be doing something wrong. I open Blender and there is that default box. I select and delete it to clean up the artboard. I then import the DAE model. It imports already totally selected. Hitting tab does nothing. Hitting “M” does nothing. I’m very sorry but maybe you need to dumb it down more for me. Again, very sorry and appreciative of your responses.
Can I send you the dae file and you try to use Blender to see if this even works? I would be interested to see if your method of reducing the poly count with Blender significantly works before spending countless hours trying to learn another software package. The dae (currently with 2896 polys) file can be found here:
Now that you’ve added the model you’re working with and I’ve been able to check how the geometry is created, you have just one more step to do - first join all the objects into one, and then apply what I’ve already shown you.
It only takes a few seconds to follow and learn these two steps.
Normally there should be a landing in the middle since construction codes limit the number of consecutive steps or the height between two consecutive landings.
I made progress. I watched your two video’s over and over and I was finally able to accomplish what you did in the second video whereas you joined / merged / etc. In fact, I ended up with the same numbers in the statistics window as you did. Following this, I exported the file as “untitled.dae” and then opened it up in the program (ModelconverterX) I use for processing. Upon opening I encountered immediate problems. Seems all the mapping I did in Sketchup, including many of the exported textures from Sketchup, were all absent.
Below is an example. The first image is how the file opens WITHOUT being processed in Blender. The second is what I find after being processed in Blender. Am I missing a step?
Is the SKP model correctly made? I imported your DAE file into SketchUp and it looks like a poorly made model, with missing faces and a lot of wrongly oriented ones (make sure the white is outwards, in viewing the Monochrome style).
I believe your confused. The side you are illustrating goes flush up against a building so you would never see those empty spaces. This is done intentionally to reduce polys. I will attach the skp file here in a few minutes.
