Hi everyone,
I have been poking at Sketchup Free for years in my off time, have gotten semi-serious about it over the last two. Here is one of my most recent warbird builds, a Junkers Ju-87B Stuka. I feel good about the way it has come together, but I would appreciate if people who know what they are doing would pick it apart and tell me where I need to improve. Thank you for looking.
Here are a few of my other models:
Douglas SBD-3 “Dauntless”
Aichi D3A1 “Val”
Grumman F4F-3 “Wildcat”
Hi Bill, if you want us to pick it apart you would have to share the real models, not a link to a viewer…
Thank you. Let me try again…
Junkers Ju-87B 2024-11-19.skp (2.1 MB)
Aichi D3A1 2024-07-15.skp (2.6 MB)
Douglas SBD 2024-01-17.skp (1.7 MB)
Grumman F4F-3 2024-07-15.skp (1.4 MB)
For all your models, edit the style and set the Profiles off.
Then the models goes from excellent to superb.
Very good job.
Thank you, Jean. That actually raises another question for me. What would be a more professional looking method of showing separation for things like control surfaces?
Slightly different materials ? Just a bit off so you see the difference ? Or 3d groves / ridges.
I tried with profiles brought back and then set to 1.
The look is not bad at all.
Nice work on your models. A few suggestions:
First, before adding materials you should ensure the face orientation is correct. There should be no exposed blue back faces.
Also, instead of turning off edges in the style, turn the edges on and soften those between faces.
Here I’ve corrected face orientation and softened edges. I also set Profiles to 1 as was suggested.
Note that fixing face orientation before adding materials is important as it saves you work. Here you can see the faces that will need attention with the Paint Bucket after correcting the faces.
Good catch on the Wildcat. That’s an older model of mine, and I hadn’t gone back through and oriented the faces. How embarrassing.
No need to be embarrassed.
FWIW, here’s the cleaned up model. BTW, I’m happy to see you used components for the left and right counterparts. Made the clean up easier.
Grumman F4F-3 2024-07-15 fixed.skp (1.4 MB)
Hi Dave,
Thank you for the time you spent helping me clean up this model. As I’m going through it now, I’m seeing a number of things that I did months ago that could be better. I hope to show progress on it in the near future. I’ll be sure to credit you.
I can say that I am pretty impressed by your work @loughlin74! I personally find making curved items like airplanes to be somewhat tricky although maybe I just have yet to find a workflow I can wrap my head around for it. Either way, your models look good.
If you are working with the free web version and are just looking to make some pretty screenshots, my recommendation would be to find a program that will let you produce a render of some kind from your SketchUp files. Last time I looked Twinmotion had a free hobby version although that was a while ago so that may have changed. There is also Blender although I personally find it a bit hard to use. If you have the Pro version, there are plenty of extensions that can assist with rendering too and while it won’t prodice wuite as nice of a result, diffusion is neat to experiment with.
If you intend to make assets for a video game or animation you amy need to learn some additional programs and skillsets and while that falls outside my area of expertise, I am sure there are others that would be happy to assist you in that .
Finally if your goal is to 3D print these, I would recommend doing some separating your colors into individual prints where possible. It can sace time later on and can really make the prints look awesome if done correctly.
Regardless, I just want to encourage you to keep at it and continue to share your work with us. I can’t wait to see what you do next!
These look great!
Thank you, Casey! I had contemplated all of those goals long term; for the short term, I just want to “finish” (are projects ever TRULY finished?) a few to put on 3D Warehouse for people to enjoy and use. I want to make sure first that I am producing quality models, so that people will WANT to use them. Thank you for the encouragement!
Thank you, John!
其实你可以试试 画现代的战斗机 你那个是古老的战斗机了 太老土了 搞F22或者F35吧！
I think my Zero might just be ready to release into the wild on 3D Warehouse. I would appreciate it if anyone has time to give it a once-over, and let me know if you see any red flags that say otherwise.
@DaveR I have gone through the Zero thoroughly, and have not found a single inside-out polygon.
@CaseyG I checked out TwinMotion. You are correct, it is still free to use for anyone grossing < $1M/ year. However, since I am running Linux, I would have to run it under an emulator (e. g. Wine), so I’m keeping that back-burnered for the moment. I have the page bookmarked and the installer downloaded, I look forward to seeing photo-renders of my models. Thank you for that tip.
@jean_lemire_1 I’m still using the free version of SU for the moment, so profiles are still all-or-nothing for me. Working on getting a subscription now so I can dial back those imposing outlines.
