I am a landscape designer, and have been enjoying sketchup with my hardscape designs. There are not a lot of trees, shrubs, and other plants in the sketchup library, and I really would like 3d. I believe one can purchase additional libraries. If anyone has a good source, please let me know. I realize some are free, and some you need to purchase. I also know these kind of objects can slow down my designs. I also am not sure once I find a good source, how to add this to my sketchup 19 pro.
I use laubwerk for trees but I think they only work as “proxies” and the tree will only be seen in its full glory inside a renderer… not sure if there’s a way to “explode them” so they can be seen in SU as a tree and not a cartoon proxy
Yes, only work with certain renderers such as Vray.
Laubwerk would be the right sort of quality for a professional landscape designer though (unless you don’t do any renders and rely mostly on SU and layout).
I second Laubwerk but as already mentioned, that requires a render engine such as VRAY or Thea to work. FYI - They don’t work with Enscape yet either. The short answer is that there is NO great one stop shop for good quality plants. High quality/geometry means for purchase and not in a SketchUp-friendly format and can bring most models to a crawl. That said, without using the "proxy-to-render engine’ method like Laubwerk or Enscape, you’re pretty limited to how many high-poly plants you can reasonably use.
Here are some various links that you may have already come across:
FormFonts 3D Models & Textures - this site is great but requires a paid subscription. The optimize 3D trees to work well with no render engine.
Redirecting... - this one is in development and we’re all eagerly awaiting it’s launch hopefully soon.
If you scroll enough, there’s a whole section of “low poly 3D trees.”
Here’s a cool one!
I find the render times aren’t too bad as long as you don’t add any properties to the leaf’s render material like transparency, subsurface scattering, or something.