sketchup to cheetah

sketchup to cheetah

well... a new project has come up that exceeds my demands of sketchup and i was looking into getting either cheetah or cinema. i would much rather perfer cheetah but i keep running into a wall going from sketchup to cheetah. i dont know how everyone posts how easy the transition is, when i bring in a 3ds model straight and hit render... i get a very sub-par small rendering. is there any tutorial of this process? this would open up many doors for me i think. i used to do this type of thing going from autocad to 3d studio years back... only now i dont remember how to do it. granted i have very limited knowledge back then too.

one of the biggest problems i run into is bringing in an model and working with it in cheetah. i can seem to change materials. the whole thing seems to be grouped together. when i select it and make it editable... then only polygons are selectable but i still cannot change materials and stuff.

i guess i am just running on short fuse due to my stress level... i am supposed to learn the program and be able to design, model and render a retail store prototype for a client within the next few weeks. all this while the regular projects are still there.

any help or point in the direction of a tutorial or guide would be helpful.

thanks everyone... and on your part... keep up the great work.
 
SketchUp:
Try export as objects by geometry, export 2-sided faces by material, preserve texture coordinates.


Cheetah:
Make sure you have the camera light off. Use one distant light for a sun and shadow or area light with attenuation on. Use an hdri for general lighting. Distant light at .4 or so and the HDRI you'll have to experiment.

Post some shots of what you have so far.
 
When importing in Cheetah 3d, make sure the import scale (preferences->import/export->.3ds) is correct. My settings are usually 0.001 since I'm working in millimeters. The whole scene is now imported in one folder. Open this folder and you'll see the seperate objects. Behind these objects is a sphere that shows the material. Double click on this sphere and you'll be able to modify the material. If you want to move an object, make sure you're in "object mode". That's the fourth cube in the upper menu. If you have more questions let us know!!
Good Luck and like Jake said, post some pics :)

Regards,
Peter
 
TrevorM-L said:
Jake...

what is the difference with exporting as 2-sided faces by material or by geometry...

cheers
Trevor

Good question Trevor. The only difference is one works for me and the other doesn't. Seems there is always problem with the model and materials when I export as geometry. The SkecthUp exports are goofy anyway. Somewhat unpredictable results.
 
how to work scale?

well... i think my scale is off and it is making it hard to navigate through the model. much less setup any kind of renderings or anything....

anyone know how to work this on the mac?

i changed it from model units to inches to feet... all the same

here is a view of the imported model.... with a 1x1x1 square in the background.
 

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Look for stray geometry that is far form your model. That could mess up viewing. Also, try the perspective view instead of the camera view.
 
now what...

ok jake...

i deleted every hidden thing in the scene from sketchup other than the main model....

exported again... and again... it is tiny.

when i switch to 4 view mode to try an move the camera to where i need it... well... when i try to zoom into the model with the camera selected... there is a point where things just eventually disappear... and i am telling you it is because it is too small.

trust me on this.... i just dont know what to change on which end to get this resolved.
 
oh... sorry peter...

went back up and looked at peter's comments again... since peter was talking about sketchup properties i thought when he mentioned the scale he was talking about sketchup... i wondered earlier why i did not see a numberical value for the scale export in sketchup. found it in cheetah and changed it to 1 instead of 0 like it was set at.

now i have a good size model.

is there a button for zoom extents?

plus... is there any way to change lights once you have dropped them in... say i put in some point lights and now i want them to be spot lights instead... do i have to erase and input... or is there a replace feature i can't find.

and... when i bring in a model... that has components and groups... is that bad? they are still grouped in cheetah but i dont know how to edit them and assign textures to individual faces. and why are the simple faces all triangulated when i select make editable? what is up with that?
it happens with every one of the "models" shown in the object browser. how do i apply materials to these things? again... do i have to explode everything before it comes into cheetah. how do i merge triangles?

i am coming up with these as i go along... but i am excited to have full size model... :)

thanks guys...
 
Longhorn -> OK, I should have said that the preferences where from Cheetah. And now we're looking forward to the final rendering!!
Glad we could help.

Regards,
Peter
 
Hi,

I didn't see this mentioned so I tought this could help too.
Here are the settings I use. And since then, I have not had any problems at all when transfering .3DS files between the 2 apps. Even group names and cameras are sent and displayed in C3D.
A couple of points :
- In SU, avoid using layers or use layers and move everything back to layer 0 before exporting.
- In SU, group everything you want into one object of the C3D object browser and name the group
- All SU materials for that group will be into the same C3D object. No need to reaffect the material. Just the transparency/reflexion/specular parameters have to be set in C3D
- The SU group name will be the object name in the C3D object browser (very handy)
- The SU .3DS exported file name will be the name of the folder in C3D (very handy to import several objects/scenes at different time into C3D and to be able to identify them easily)
- The SU pages are converted into camera objects (very handy too)
 

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Hello

Here's a new reply to a very old post.

I'm trying to export a SketchUp model to .3ds format so I can open it in Cheetah. But every time I do this SketchUp either crashes or I just don't get anything (no .3ds file exists).

Here are the settings I'm using. Are these correct?

Thanks!
 

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Ooops! I wasn't looking at a full version of the discussion when I posted my reply so I didn't see the screen shot of the settings that had already been posted.

Does anyone have any changes to the settings that Francois uses?
 
Hi Fred,

Ooops! I wasn't looking at a full version of the discussion when I posted my reply so I didn't see the screen shot of the settings that had already been posted.

Does anyone have any changes to the settings that Francois uses?

Things have changed since that time ... :cool: ... so, I would have to re-read my post to see if it's still valid ... :cool:
SU crashing ? Which version are you using ? What's your OS ? Size of your model ? Keep in mind that the 3Ds format is limited to 64k vertices if my memory is correct
But, since you're exporting in .3DS, you have the pro version. Then, you're now better to use the .FBX. A quick search on this forum with "Sketchup" will give you a lot of links with various tips on the Sketchup/Cheetah3D link. And you can always call for help here if needed.
 
Hello Francois

Thanks for your reply.

I'm using SketchUp Pro 7 on a MacBook Pro with OS 10.6.4 (Snow Leopard). The model is 14.4 MB in SketchUp.

I've been able to export an .fbx version, but I'm still frustrated that .3ds keeps crashing. Oh well.

I'll do a search for the best settings for .fbx exports.

Thanks again.

Fred
 
Hello again

OK, I've been able to import SketchUp projects into Cheetah. Large ones as .fbx, smaller ones as .fbx or .3ds.

Now I have a different problem. I select the model and ungroup it, but I can't change materials on only one element. For example, if I try to drag and drop a wood texture onto the floor, the whole model turns into wood. And if I try to select individual sections, I find that the model is composed of triangular sections, which don't follow the walls and floors (see attached views, one rendered, one in polygon mode).

I need to add a material to one wall, or one floor, etc.

Please help!

Thank you!
Screen shot 2010-08-12 at 9.16.12 AM.png
 

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Hi,

... Now I have a different problem. I select the model and ungroup it, but I can't change materials on only one element. For example, if I try to drag and drop a wood texture onto the floor, the whole model turns into wood. And if I try to select individual sections, I find that the model is composed of triangular sections, which don't follow the walls and floors (see attached views, one rendered, one in polygon mode).

- Why ungroup the model ?
- Make sure you have groups in SU and name them ( 1 group for Wall, 1 group for floor, etc ... )
- See the export options ( uncheck triangulate all faces )
- eventually zip and post a small part of the model or post a screen copy of your C3D object browser and SU Outliner
 
Hi,



- Why ungroup the model ?
- Make sure you have groups in SU and name them ( 1 group for Wall, 1 group for floor, etc ... )
- See the export options ( uncheck triangulate all faces )
- eventually zip and post a small part of the model or post a screen copy of your C3D object browser and SU Outliner

Hello Francois

Thank you for your help! I did what you said:

- I just assumed I'd need to ungroup the model in Cheetah so each wall and floor would be separate. Wrong!
- I made the groups in SU, but don't know how to name them. I made one group for exterior walls and one for interior walls. The floor is all one piece so I couldn't make a group.
- I kept the 'triangulate' box unchecked
- I attached a couple of renders and the C3D object browser and the SU outliner.

Doing all this gave much better results, but there's still a problem: as you can see from the render, some of the interior walls are in the same group as the floor so they took the floor texture (see first render). When I then added the wall texture to those walls, it added it to the floor (second render). Any suggestions?

Thanks again for all your help.

Fred
 

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Hi,

- I just assumed I'd need to ungroup the model in Cheetah so each wall and floor would be separate. Wrong!
Without seeing the file, it's difficult to say but that could work too. Can't you post a small part of the original SU file with just the walls and floor ?

- I made the groups in SU, but don't know how to name them. I made one group for exterior walls and one for interior walls. The floor is all one piece so I couldn't make a group.
??? see the SU help file
- Naming groups : select the group and enter name in the entity window
Even if the floor is one piece you can make it a group. Double-click it to select it and then Cmd-G

some of the interior walls are in the same group as the floor
Then you need to correct that in SU. Ungroup these groups and reselect/regroup one by one. You could do that in C3D but it may be more difficult. Can't really tell as your copies of the object browser and outliner are not detailed enough. Make sure you also don't export double-sided faces (see SU options)
See the attached example (SU and FBX). Then delete the FBX and export it again yourself to see if you get the same thing.
 

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