Over the years, we’ve talked quite a lot about SketchUp, Google’s amazing 3D modeling tool. Ultimately, though, many of these models are intended to become real buildings, so how well does the finished product match up to the original model? Google wants you to show them.
As they recently posted, they’re encouraging you to send in your SketchUp stories; a SketchUp model accompanied by a photo of the finished product.
Back in architecture school, I once had to lay out a parking lot for a building I was designing. What a terrible, terrible exercise in nitpicky details and perpetual re-arrangement. The solution I came up with accommodated all of four Smart cars and a unicycle. Awful. If only I’d had access to a tool like SITEOPS from BLUERIDGE Analytics.
SITEOPS is conceptual land development software for folks like architects, civil engineers, landscape architects and land developers. After you’ve brought in a site, you can combine building footprints with critical elements like parking, islands and driveways. These elements are parametric, meaning that they re-draw themselves on the fly as you change aspects of your conceptual design. SITEOPS even provides budget tools for estimating the cost of a project.
Want to see what a parking layout might look like if your building were on the other side of the site? As you slide it over, the parking lot automatically reconfigures to maintain the proper number of spaces. Too cool. This short video shows SITEOPS it in action:
Realizing that lots of their users are also SketchUp devotees, the good people at BLUERIDGE have added an Export to SketchUp button to their product. It lets you figure out the complicated stuff in SITEOPS, then visualize your project in SketchUp. It’s available to SITEOPS customers who have also purchased the Grading and Piping Module. These pictures tell the story better than words can:
This is a view of a 2D site layout in SITEOPS.
A 3D image of the same site in SITEOPS’ Grading and Piping Module.
The site after it’s been exported to SketchUp. The model includes all of the 3D topographical information from SITEOPS.With Halloween just a few weeks away, nerds here in the Google Boulder office are in a tizzy about their costumes. We take this particular holiday very seriously.
A haunted house I modeled years ago, with two pumpkins by IDW. He modeled them for SketchUp Island’s Pumpkin Patch collection on the 3D Warehouse.
This year, we thought it might be fun to host a SketchUp Halloween Challenge for folks who are looking for something to do in their spare time. The nitty gritty:
Categories
There are two: Use SketchUp to model either a jack-o’-lantern or a haunted house. Or both.
How to submit an entry
Judging
On Friday, October 28th, a group of us from the SketchUp team will get together to review the entries. We’ll be looking mostly at the images you submit; models will be examined when we’re picking the top three entries in each category. For an idea of what we’ll be looking for, consider these points:
Multiple Entries
Submit as many models as you like, but fill out a separate entry form for each one. The more the ghastlier!
Rendering Rules
You can (if you like) include photo-rendered images of your model with the images you submit. You have to have at least one unrendered image, though; we’d like to see your work in its purest, SketchUp-only state.
Deadline
The deadline for submissions is 11:59 PM PST on Thursday, October 27th 2011.
Prizes
For fun little modeling challenges like this one, we prefer to keep things simple. Instead of prizes, we’ll publish our favorite entries right here on this blog, on October 31st. The best three models from each of the two categories (pumpkins and houses) will be featured in the November edition of the SketchUpdate newsletter, which goes to millions of people around the world.
Why no fancier prizes? When companies host big, international competitions, it takes months for their lawyers to figure everything out. On top of that, people from certain places (like Quebec and Brazil) end up being excluded because of specific laws that apply only to them. Ugh.
Other Stuff
If you’d like a blank pumpkin to start with, this collection contains a few. Other questions about the Challenge? Please ask ‘em in the Comments for this post.