How to create realistic object without using texture?

Hello,

Sorry for my english I hope you’ll understand me :slightly_smiling:

I’m a bit new to SketchUp and I want to use it to create and 3D Print objects like medieval houses, Castles…
My use don’t include of course the use of textures and I’d like to know how is it possible to create those objects with the time degradation.

For example: http://www.tabletop-world.com/townHouseII.php
All elements are “old” like beam with groove, wall where we see stones etc. Is it something possible in Sketchup? Do I need some extensions? or is there some tutorial to learn for this?
Well in the end I don’t want to create something perfect like actual houses for example but something old where effects are sculpted in the modeling process.

Thanks in advance

That house use heavy bump maps which apparently are later on imposed on the house. I also believe that there are some printers that allows you to select a texture bump to print onto some of the material.Or is that before printing? It is nearly impossible to model like that, especially in Sketchup.
You can model things up to a level of detailing but not like that, not even half of those details.

Thanks for your reply, I perhaps don’t want to go so deeper and this house I presume is not printed but done with some resine method (perhaps with molder or whatever). This was just an example to illustrate my words :).

It is possible to get a great deal of detail in SketchUp, the house you linked is something that might be better made in a different program if you need that level of detail. However, I find that with a little bit of effort and putting in the time, you can get a good amount of detail in your models.

One shingle component used to make a more complex component.

More tweaking tips and organic methods. The FredoScale extension is at SketchUcation. And there are other subdivision plugins which will further morph geometry - hope your computer can handle lots of polys.

Also look at Bitmap to mesh and Eneroth Fractal Terrain Eroder for a nice way to initially break up surface into a more organic form.

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Hi @FrancoisL,

The house model you linked to is probably cast plastic made from a mold created from an “analog”, hand-crafted clay/plaster model.

Although it would technically be possible to model at such a high level of detail in SketchUp, it will take you an innordinate amount of time and patience to achieve but regardless of wheter or not you would succeed into modeling at such a level of detail, you will also need a very capable 3d printer to satisfyingly reproduce this level of detail at this small scale (webpage states overall dimensions are of 11x11x20cm)

3d printing is fun and digital modeling equally so but analog methods might still be the best/fastest way to produce the object in this case… :slightly_smiling:

If you want you could start learning the SketchUp ropes by creating basic objects and then detailing them one level deeper as you get better.

You could later export from SketchUp to another package like Blender (free and open source) or Sculptris (free but closed source) to sculpt details on your model the same way a real-world artist would sculpt a block of clay.

Hello denisroy,

Indeed I have first to learn more and more :). I’m already working on this project by using Sketchup and learning each tools and how t build more simplest houses :). Of course with all what I see in this discusion I have a lot of to do before to arrive to something interesting for me.

The example I gave is made with resin and mold. This was just an interesting example to illustrate my purpose. I had not the intention to obtain the same result but just to know if in the end we can sculpt a bit beams, tiles, wall etc in order to give more reality without to have to apply texture.

I know that personal 3D printer is not capable to reproduce this example but for what I tested already I’m pretty sure I can obtain something interesting with it. After that there is also the possibility to make it print by a third party service like Sculpteo or others (of course the price is not the same but… this is an option).

Also I read this https://ultimaker.com/en/community/7699-how-to-add-texture-to-objects-surface where the discusion seems to be interesting for apply this after Sketchup.

So in conclusion it appear to be possible to do things but of course with a strong learning curve and I think a lot of component to create and reuse :slightly_smiling:

Thanks for all the comments, this was reactive and totally interesting. Perhaps I’ll be able in some weeks/month to show you something :slight_smile:

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