Floorplan 'growing' out of blueprints

Good afternoon all,

I have imported a DWG from Autocad into Sketchup and traced around the floorplan to make it 3D. When I render the image, I loose the DWG printed below the model.

Is there a way to render a scene with the blueprint still there to achieve the look of the model emerging from the blueprints?

Regards, James.

Edges aren’t displayed by most rendering applications. I can think of at least two options, though. One would be to export a hidden line image out of SketchUp using the same camera position as you use for the rendered image. Then combine the render and the hidden line images in an image editor. I use this method quite frequently, although not exactly for the same thing you are using it for.

This was done that way.

Another method would be to create a raster image of the floorplan and import that into your model as a texture on a face under the house.

This is as close as I’ve got to that sort of thing although admittedly not run through a rendering application.

As @DaveR mentioned, you can import a decent image of the blueprint as a texture and it will render just fine. Here’s a simple example using a floor plan I found on the Internet:

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Another way to do it is to render everything…then save the CAD linework from the same view to PNG or JPG. Then combine the two in Photoshop. Here you can see that I hid the lines of the buildings (3D elements - shown in magenta for reference) as I didn’t want the lines to show on those…just the 2D linework underneath:



Final composite:

Also, if you literally meant ‘blueprint’…that’s easy in photoshop as well. Add a blue background and Lighten the CAD linework export layer. You can achieve a similar effect using diagrammatic materials in the Material Override section if you’re using VRAY (as I am here).

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