Hello all! I just picked up SketchUp about 20 days ago. I went straight into the Pro trial so that I could see all of the features it has to offer. My main use will be in designing bathrooms and kitchens since that is what my business is. I used criteria from a previous client to create this space. I am hoping the experienced community here might be able to give me some constructive criticism so that I can improve going forward! My workflow was garbage as I learned different controls and proceeses that made things go faster. I also couldn’t just sit down and work as this is a side project for work. I’m sure this model doesn’t look like it, but it is the culmination of 20 hours of work. I’m pretty proud of it! I look forward to your comments!
For anyone that cares, here is a detailed breakdown of the model and design choices:
The design criteria was: a clean simple shower with 2 functions, a spacious area for cosmetics, and maximized use of a 7’ x 8’ room.
It is certainly not the smallest room, but it did pose a few interesting design challenges.
The vanity is a custom design by me (which is why it is not the greatest looking), but a similar unit could be made or bought elsewhere. the top is a polished concrete form with some light blue marbling to add interest. This allows for the custom sink bowl off to the side as well, and opens up the main counter area for a makeup station. On the wall is one of the major set pieces of the room: a 40" Robern vitality mirror. Creating a ring of 4000K light you will get an accurate reproduction of outdoor lighting hitting straight on to make sure you look your best. As a bonus you don’t have to wait until the room cools off after a shower. Its built in defogger keeps the mirror crystal clear at all times!
A single stationary pane of glass separates the shower area. This area continues to be built with the same poured and polished concrete as the vanity to create a continuous flow through the room. The linear drain creates the smallest interruption to the overall look of the area. The shower is equipped with Grohe’s SmartControl system which I have raved about before. It still stands as the best multifunction shower solution on the market. Suspended from the ceiling is the new Euphoria 260 which I’ll have some more info on later! On the wall is a Power and Soul handshower, a classic piece of GROHE’s catalog.
Sitting opposite of that is a Toto wall-hung toilet. Even though we don’t normally carry Toto I used this more as a stand-in for any wall mounted toilet to demonstrate how much space is saved, and how clean of a look it provides.
Continuing around that wall is a Runtal North America’s towel radiator. This little guy will keep towels toasty and heat up the room as well! Its stylish matte white looks don’t hurt either.
The floor is covered in a bamboo hardwood and the walls are adorned with a grasscloth wallpaper. This use of material will let you sleep at night as well since all of it is sustainably sourced and ecofriendly!
To keep moisture from building up in the room each of the 3 recessed lights double as exhaust fans. Provided by PanasonicIAQ each fan is capable of moving 80CFM of air to keep the room fresh and free of any mold that may buildup from steam or other condensation!
Hi,
You’ve done a nice job here!
Small rooms are hard to present with SU… and so I think I’d like to make a comment about a couple of options which can often help with managing the tight spacings.
The Section Tool:
SU has a section tool which you can insert into the model in order to cut through walls. and you can have multiple section cuts (in place) at once, in order to make cutouts with more than one active cutting plane and direction.
Field of View settings:
SU’s camera lens mimics what’s available in traditional photography… and the field of view settings can be adjusted to change how the depth of field looks.
Putting these two options together, you can have greater control over how you get to look into your model, as well as how the overall distortions of perspective resolve.
What you’ve displayed is nice, and I’m not critiquing the chosen view angles which were used. I just want to make sure that you’ve used them by choice, and not out of necessity, because you were limited to using them given the dynamics of SU’s default settings.
Hiding walls as you’ve done also can work… as it already has here.
Did you use Photoshop or the likes after the renderer? It’s a good practice. The countertop is blown out in highlight. Photographically, PS processing may or may not be able to bring that back. If not, run another render that doesn’t blowout the counter. It might otherwise look too dark over all, but working on it in PS will fix that while still giving detail in the counter.
Design wise, the overly bright counter might signal a tweak to the lighting design, such as a dimmer source or greater distance between source and surface somehow.
Thank you! This was all done with Twilight Render v2 on High+ Settings. The blowout is because I wanted to make a realistic circular light mirror so I placed 16 point lights in the circle and made it an emitter to boot. I’ve since tuned them down to lower output. However my work computer has no video card so the render time is hilariously bad with integrated graphics running the show. I haven’t made a new HQ render yet, but I am eager to see the results come in.
I’ll definitely consider taking the render to GIMP and tweak it out though! Thank you very much for your thoughts and advice! I look forward to making better models in the future.
Thank you very much for your comments! I was using the FoV settings, but I didn’t want to go too extreme to make it feel unnatural. I didn’t know about the section tool! I must have missed it in the tutorials I read and SketchUp Essentials videos I watched. I’ll definitely have to give that a try because although hiding the walls works, it was a pain to coordinate and not have look awful. I’m still not fond of seeing into the walls now (I was going to run piping in the wall too, but I just didn’t want to at this time. Maybe in the future.
Thank you very much for your advice! I’m looking forward to making better models so any help I can get is always appreciated!
The New Section tool now comes with a (poché) Section Fill settings that can help obscure these voids.
Look for the range of section fill settings in the… >Styles Window >Edit (tab) >Modeling options pane.
Impressive for an initial attempt. I would only add that you may be wise to make use of LayOut as part of your presentation. Then you can include not only perspectives but also plan, elevations and section views. These can be rendered as well if you like. You also can include dimensions to augment the customer’s comprehension of the work.
I see it sitting there asking me to use it, but it scares me a little bit! I will definitely hunker down and play with that next. It will surely help me in the future. Do you know of any good sources that break down the basic utilities of LayOut and/or other tutorials?
Thank you very much for that information! I’ll go try it out now!
Take a look at these tutorial vids:
I have a new model! I didn’t want to keep making new threads so I hope this will still get some attention. I had to build a specific toilet for a new project: Viper by Gerber. Please take a look and let me know what you think of it. I’m hoping to eventually be of the caliber that I can release to 3D Warehouse for others to use. This is a far cry from anything that good I think though. The geometry is messy since I ad hoc’d a few things I am sure have much more elegant solutions. I am hoping that I might be given some of them as feedback even! Thank you for your time as always, I love how supportive this community is.
Just a tip: For showing your Sketchup-models, take a look at Lumion. It’s a software made for setting up a scene for rendering and doing the render. My workflow as an architect is to draw the house in Revit or Sketchup, then send it over to Lumion. I then add all the details like soap, towels, flowers, tv’s - all the details in the scene as well as lights etc. and apply realistic materials to the surfaces from the Sketchup-model. Then do a rendered image or video (images takes seconds to render out). Updating the model is as easy as resaving it in sketchup, and reload it within Lumion (two key presses).
Lumion has an extensive library of texdtures and models, but the real power is in the ability to import anything from pretty much any 3D-program - So I’ve made my own libraries from 3D-objects I have created in Sketchup (or gotten from 3D warehouse) and edited to my liking and placed into Lumion.
I’d check it out if I were you, as it can really give you a nice edge on convincing the clients that your design is the right choice, and you can even move the camera around the scene real-time with all the realistic lights, shadows and reflective bumpmapped texture-surfaces in real time with your client.
Thank you for your info! This sounds quite interesting. Once I got to:
I was immediately sold. Definitely checking it out now.
For a beginner your results are amazing!
Thank you so much!
Hello,
Very good comment to me :
“I would only add that you may be wise to make use of LayOut as part of your presentation. Then you can include not only perspectives but also plan, elevations and section views”
I actually have an issue with scales with Layout, thus forcing me to make my presentations with a 2D program to be at ease with precise scales, Sketchup for 3D vues and Indesign to put the different 3D (layers issue).
Problem, I can’t put both 2D and 3D vues on one sheet of paper unless I work around by importing a jpg or pdf in my 2D program (CadWork), witch take time and is not good with text.
Is there a way to do a presentation with Layout including a 1:100 project, few details 1:10 and 1:20 and a perspective?
In the example I send you I had to use Indesign to do the 3D presentation by importing 3 pdf (with different active layers in 3 different Sketchup files) and do a separate pdf with CadWork so I have correct scale on the 2D presentation.
At the end I have 2 A4 sheet instead of 1 A3 and the graphic result is not homogeneous (Cadwork is not top for text)
If you got a clue for me, I would appreciate.
Best regards
Edgar Schnegg
180817_OCTO_2D.pdf (164.1 KB)
180816_OCTO_3D.pdf (634.7 KB)
Actually, you should be able to export scenes representing both 2D and 3D views directly into LayOut. It’s impossible to tell what issues exist by looking at your pdf files so uploading your LayOut and SketchUp files may provide an opportunity for users to observe and possibly understand what you experienced.
If either file exceeds 3mb, use a cloud based file sharing service such as Dropbox, Google Drive or a similar service. Remember to include the necessary url address to allow us to access the uploaded files.
For future reference, when introducing a new topic you should start a new thread rather than appending to a thread started by someone else.
Pretty impressive for a first attempt. What rendering plug-in do you use? EDIT got it Twilight2!!
… all i can say is i wish my first 20 minutes in sketchup were hat productive it took me days just to re train my brain from the camera /view controls as they were somewhat inverse to what i was used to in other games lol