Make hand drawn render styles

Ahh @MikeWayzovski darn you and that list! :frowning:

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And it wasn’t even an affiliated link…:frowning:

I’ll hope to see some of your amazing work in the gallery!!

Dave, I have PMd you about your post.

Maybe you should look into SketchFX which allows you to layer styles and effects (much like photoshop) but directly in your SU model, rather than post.

TBH, I haven’t used it myself — just watched all their videos. I now have it on my list of extensions to purchase in the indeterminate future.

I know that Chip Walters has extensive experience with it (search Sketchucation for his Alamo posts to see some examples of the sketchy style(s) he created with it).

Ive got this plugin - its pretty good - processor intensive but good. You do need to spend some time with it to get results that don’t look a mess (or a melee of photoshop filters) but if you spend the time you can get good results.

I have heard that it takes some time and experimentation to understand what the results of combined filters will actually look like, but I’m OK with that learning curve if I can eventually produce the desired effect.

Do you also have their Ambient Occlusion plugin? Seems like a nice integration with SketchFX — though it requires the Pro version. Downside is that the combo ends up being awfully pricey for SU plugins.

Yes, I have both.
The sketch fx sort of incorporates elements of ambient occlusion. Each product mentions integration of each other but I’m not really sure how that works. If the combo suits your needs and ultimately it is quicker than manually doing it in Photoshop etc then it’s probably worth it

Good call on the plugin!! Been gooooooooogling about these and could be useful!
Cheers again :grinning:

Thanks for the info.

You’re welcome. Glad I could be of some help.

@ark I would second the SketchFX / Ambient occlusion plugin, I use it for my concept presentation work.
You can get some good hand sketched results out of it quickly once you understand how it works, and combined with photoshop it is great. It is pretty CPU intensive though!

I’m not 100% sure if you could replicate your example style above but you may be able too with a bit of work and while you can use the FX plugin without ambient occlusion, the results are not quite as good. AO adds a layer of shading depth.

However, i have noticed a possible bug with AO where turning on shadows does not use the sketchup time/day settings. I have reported this to @fluidinteractive so we will see if its something I’m doing wrong.

Refer comment below. Always check for updates before complaining :slight_smile:

Here are a couple made with SketchFX / Ambient occlusion. I really like that combo of plugins

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Chipp,
Thanks for the examples… these are great examples of just how far digital sketching has come over the years.

Ben,
Thanks for the recommendation bud… I suppose it makes me feel better reading your post as we need to create quick concepts to present to the client and SketchUp helps us to do this in a clean and readable format.

Cheers


SketchFX/AO

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No problem man.
If I remember ill upload some examples of the images I’m getting out of the plugin tonight. You can get things to look quite “sketchy”.

Also the bug I reported seems to be on my end. Needed the latest update apparently. Haven’t tested it yet but the makers told me they have already fixed it.

You don’t have to go as far as a Cintiq. Just an Intuos will do it. You scale it to your screen in the setup app. It will take you a day to get your hand/eye up to speed–draw on tablet, watch on screen. I use it as a mouse, it’s just a flick of the wrist with a programable tip, eraser, and toggle button on the barrel that I use for control click and double click. Draw with a mouse–yuck! A bonus is you can buy a 3DConnexion space navigator and use that with one hand and the tablet with the other. Tablet has programmable keys too and gestures, scroll/zoom etc. so maybe space navigator is overkill. PS ages ago someone was giving away render styles and I still have them so maybe if you search you’ll find a canned one that you like.

Just a couple more, both done in SketchUp



Here’s a bit of tutorial showing how the vignette is added in Photoshop. This particular tute is using a line drawing from KeyShot, but the same can be done with SU (as shown above) and the AO plugin.

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Here’s a couple of examples of how I use the FX plugin for concept presentations. This is just a test model I use to evaluate different workflow ideas, plugins etc hence the random slabs of brick texture.

I’m aiming for simple images to keep clients focused on macro issues (form, space, light, flow, function), so this minimal sketchy style is a good way to control the amount of information they have to think about.
Once you set up the workflow these images take anywhere between 10-30 seconds each.

You can go quite a lot deeper into the effects to create more layers of lines and styles. Essentially all the FX plugin does is allow you to layer different sketchup styles on top of each other and then assign different effects to each layer, think photoshop; overlay, multiply, blur, saturation, masks etc. Like everything it’s never perfect but it does what I need quickly. Plus you can always take the image into photoshop to take it to the next level. For example if I wanted a specific background image it would probably be easier in photoshop.

One issue is that FX/AO doesn’t seem to render the automatic section cut planes as they are not “real” surfaces. Most of the time this isnt an issue but if you set you sun to directly above a plan view you would probably notice it.

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Chipp Really nice drawings