English may not be your first language, but when you say ‘supported by’ it makes it look like you are sponsored or are in partnership with those companies. I’ve had clients say these sorts of things and get nasty letters from their legal teams.
You might want to say ‘inspired by’ - but honestly I’m not sure why you need to use their logos on your site. It sounds like you don’t have an official partnership with them.
That’s fair. I was thinking about that chair / sofa you took apart in the other thread. That to me doesn’t look like native SKP. Maybe it is. My experience with organic forms is a bit dated doing softgoods design in SKP using SubD and Vertex Tools.
But, it begs the question - if one is making this with SketchUp why is it so heavy? Especially if it’s claiming to be ‘optimized’?
Seems it would have less geometry for typical arch-viz requirements. I’m not going to use their gaming chair if it’s going to be for product design - I’d do that myself. But for interiors, arch-viz, etc… IME this stuff does not need to be so heavy.
I can confirm it is.. (for the most part) 
I took it apart even more, so that’s my ultimate take on this.
with a bit of experience and a couple of plugins.. so.. why not? 
Yeah, this specific model is not that much “optimized” for sure.
Again.. it depends.
It depends on the distance, it depends on the render resolution, it depends on the kind of quality you are after for a specific usage.. many archviz models are even heavier than this, and they can be converted into proxyes, so there are definitely some situations in which the usage of stuff even way heavier than this can be totally justified.
Of course the quality should be worth the model wheight.
This is not the case for the model I reviewed here. Maybe other models are better.
I’ll try to brakdown other models in the future.
That’s a great video. Thanks for taking the time to make it. I learned a lot…
@bmike We have addressed and corrected these issues. Also, English is not our first language, as we are based in Bangladesh.
Thank you for the model breakdown. We reviewed your feedback and will use it to make our models more efficient and convenient for SketchUp users.
You say you model everything on Sketchup, if that’s the case I suggest you to create low poly models using quads, that way if the user requires smoother surfaces, it´s easy to add subdivisions and make them more realistic. There are some render ready assets that other plugins sell, they work like Chaos Cosmos own library, it means that on the model they´re low poly, but on the render they display all the details without consuming more memory, Or create models with full details and use V-Ray´s proxyfy tool, so you can offer the models ready to render and very low poly. I checked some of the models and the UV mapping is also a bit messy, usually AI generated models dont deal well with UV mapping, You should correct that if you want good quality models.
Glad if that helped a bit.
Maybe sometimes I could do more model breakdown (even from other sources) or maybe a before/after guideline video for general quick optimization.
Unfortunately I can’t do something like this right now, because I’m on pretty tight deadlines, but if this video “format” is appreciated, maybe we can do some more in the future.
Please stop suggesting that those models are AI generated.
They clearly are not, as exhaustively demonstrated in the video mentioned above, which you probably missed, if you keep saying that.
Maybe they are not the best possible models ever made and can be definitely improved with some constructive criticism (for example your suggestions of creating low poly unsubdivided versions, properly UV-mapped is a 100% valid point, which I raised in the video as well), but the “AI slop” accusation is completely unfair here.
I believe these guys deserve also some encouragement because the idea itself of creating models “in Sketchup for Sketchup” is pretty nice and should gain some support.
will do. Thank you
Hi Sketchshaper folks,
Interesting direction, it feels like a modern alternative to the old SU 3D Warehouse, though as others noted, the file sizes do seem on the heavy side. A “lightweight” version of each model might be worth considering.
It reminded me of o2c, a format still bundled with DataCAD today. Back in the early 2000s, o2c was genuinely impressive, it could compress full architectural models down to something smaller than a long email, yet still allow real‑time viewing, animation & even ray‑tracing via a tiny browser plug‑in.
Its downfall wasn’t the technology, it was the death of browser plugins. o2c relied on ActiveX & once Chrome, Safari & Edge blocked ActiveX‑style controls for security reasons, the web‑viewer side of o2c effectively became obsolete.
Even so, DataCAD still ships with o2c export/import & there’s even a standalone viewer (o2c_2Go) for e-mailing models to clients. The format proved something important, 3D doesn’t have to be bloated to be interactive.
Maybe that’s the opportunity here, Sketchshaper could offer both high‑detail assets & a lightweight, compressed variant for fast loading & broad compatibility, just a thought.
You are literally describing the gltf file format (or the glb format, which is the binary/embedded variant of it).
This format (often referred to as “the jpeg of 3d modeling”) is nowadays the golden standard for anything related to low end games, VR/AR applications, mobile/web stuff..
The gltf uses super-efficient mesh compression, simple shaders (with PBR channel packing in ORM maps for supreme efficiency) and it’s widely adopted and compatible with basically any kind of 3d software, including SketchUp (at least the more modern versions) and in recent times even the 3d Warehouse itself is using it as an option.
Bear in mind that, although its compression makes for super efficient storage and transfer/upload/download bandwidth optimization, in most cases it still needs to be decompressed at runtime in order to be rendered, so that for actual performance gain, geometry and texture optimization is still required.
No file format is a “magic bullet” by itself.
Hi Panixia & all,
Yes, glTF/glb is the current standard for compact, distributable 3D. It achieves what formats like o2c did in principle, but with modern, browser‑native technology & proper mesh/texture compression.
My o2c reference noted portable 3D isn’t a new idea, albeit on older formats that eventually disappeared.
Where this becomes relevant to Sketchshaper is the file size issue. Their models are created in SketchUp first, as I understand & the .skp format is not a compression‑efficient delivery format as it provides:-
full‑precision geometry
uncompressed or lightly‑compressed textures
SketchUp‑specific metadata
component definitions & style data
hidden geometry & layers unless manually cleaned
Therefore, SketchUp’s format is optimised for editing, not distribution, exported assets tend to be heavier than equivalent glTF files.
By contrast, glTF/glb supports:-
Draco mesh compression (reduction in vertex/index data)
KTX2/Basis Universal texture compression (GPU‑ready, tiny file sizes)
binary packing with no editor‑side overhead
This is why a glTF version of the same model can be a fraction of the size.
For Sketchshaper, a practical solution would be to generate two outputs per asset as touched on previously:-
Full‑detail SU model (for editing)
Optimised glTF/glb variant using Draco + KTX2 + texture downscaling
That would give users a high‑fidelity option & a lightweight, web‑friendly option without changing their modelling workflow.
Yep. It was exactly what I’m trying to suggest here..
Albeit, there are a couple of caveats.
I personally go even further than that for my custom assets, in particular when they are targeted for VR/AR/web.. I usually use the hi-poly (let’s say 2 or 3 subd levels) as source of details that then I can bake into the Normals/AO map of the uv-unwrapped low poly mesh (usually lvl 1 sudb or in extreme cases, even unsubdivided/decimated).
I usually do that in Max and/or Substance, but can be also done in Blender, Marmoset, Maya and whatnot.
Then I do not downscale the textures and let the mip-mapping of the target engine (Babylon, ThreeJS, Unity or whatever) make that job properly at runtime.
BUT, let’s be honest, I guess we are asking a bit too much in therms of web optimization to the current level of experience of these guys.
In addition to that, you have to take into account that the intended target of this model repository looks like “just drag and drop it Sketchup”.. so you would lose 90% the benefit of draco/ktx and whatnot.
Last but not least, you said:
Well, that’s true in many cases (basically in engines natively supporting glb like ThreeJS and such), but when you import it in Sketchup you will have quite a lot of overhead in order to decompress the mesh/textures and re-create all the proprietary metadata which Sketchup needs (and that you correctly listed above).
Hi Panixia & all,
There are several architectural 3D libraries that are software‑agnostic, but none that seem to match Sketchshaper’s “architectural components” niche exactly. The closest equivalents that an Internet search found for Architectural bias items: BIMobject, Modlar, ArchiUp & the architectural sections of CGTrader & TurboSquid, many of which now offer OBJ/FBX & increasingly glTF downloads.
The UI’s of these looks quite cluttered to my eyes & not intuitive, one that looked less so in my opinion was ArchiUP & they also state; “Full functionality for free, no hidden costs & total transparency for our users”
However, most architectural libraries are either BIM‑heavy (IFC/Revit) or CG‑heavy (OBJ/FBX/glTF), so Sketchshaper is filling a gap I guess for SU users by offering, ready‑to‑use architectural elements built in SketchUp. A lightweight glTF variant would make it even more accessible across platforms.
