15 - [Inner] The Ward of Erahum [Mouse]

[Mouse]

Thanks Kacey

Sketchup is very user friendly, but I can imagine it would be fairly trying without a mouse or a pen to control it properly. Especially the push pull tool!

Vue is tricky, until you get used to doing everything by editing the function nodes, and also become familiar with all the different kinds of node and what they do - both for the terrains and the materials. The terrain you like is created by importing a very simple height map into a terrain function and applying plenty of 'river valley' erosion to it - a procedural terrain modified by painting. (Maybe that's why I'm getting artefacts)

I was thinking of using the Vue terrain for the background to a GIMP map, but the shadows would be tricky, since they would be underneath everything, and although you can render the scene without any shadows by modifying the material so that it doesn't allow shadows to fall on it, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to render nothing but the shadows to add as a separate layer in GIMP. That's when I decided that if I was going to use 3D modelling to create the shadows, I'd have to go the whole hog and do everything as a 3D model from scratch - terrain, buildings and the majority of the texturing as well.

Once I've built the model in Sketchup, I'll probably still need to touch it up in GIMP. But at least I will have a complete 3D model I can not only map, but take a range of perspective scenes from as illustrations

[J.Edward]

Thanks, John. I'm not finding it half as taxing learning Sketchup as I am GIMP or Blender. Vue also took me a long time to grasp properly, but I hit a wall with that since it doesn't allow any real modelling. Sketchup seem to understand that 'user friendly' goes a whole lot deeper than a standard list of menus, and their training vids are both excellent and totally free (which is sadly more than I can say for Blender these days).

Thank you so much for the style advice! I have lovely muddy grey lines now. They aren't half as distracting when you zoom out to view the whole model

Curves - I successfully created both a dxf and a dwg file of contour lines in my 20 yr old Corel programme - lovely and smooth they were... but on importing them not only had they been converted to straight segments, they were in lots of tiny individual pieces! LOL! Maybe pro is different, but I think I will carry on drawing my jerky contours in Sketchup, since at least the segments are all in one long string and can be moved in one go.

I sort of recall feeling annoyed when i imported curves... maybe it did the same thing to me.
Sketchup, as originally designed, was actually not meant to be so full purpose.
It was just to be a fast way to do a rendering of an architectural image.
They never dreamed so many people would be trying to model so much with it.
So, yeah, there will be glitches where things don't import right. It is a great program though.

And they've always offered a free version, which is cool.
Companies did not always do that.
I recall the trouble i went through to get my free version of Vue 2 way way back.
I think I stopped upgrading at Vue Infinite 8, as the price curve was beyond painful.

[Mouse]

Vue Pioneer is the free version nowadays, and they do a new edition of it every year, but you have to buy at least three add ons to go with it in order to do anything really useful with it. I decided against struggling to continue with Vue because its only any good at landscapes, vegetation, and oceans. Not a place you can build a city from scratch.

I'm enjoying Sketchup for the most part, though I realise now that I won't be able to do the whole map with it. The terrain building is based on triangulated mesh, which is very difficult to edit, so even when you export it to Blender you can't really do much with it. As you can see below there are problems with mesh accuracy, shown where the gorge that is supposed to exist beneath the tower is partly filled in with 'landslides' of inaccurate mesh that have jumped past the lower contours of the gorge.

Sketchup Version 01.jpg

However... even though contour manipulation is tricky in Sketchup before you even get as far as adding a mesh to the contours, its a lot easier than building contours in Blender, so once the contours are drawn as a 2D drawing in Corel and arranged in 3D in Sketchup, they can then be exported to Blender, where I can use them as guides to shape a better more detailed landscape. This I can then export back to Sketchup to build the city on it.

Its a lot of work, but I can't see a better way of doing it to a sufficient level of quality and accuracy that make the process worth while.

[Mouse]

Well... the theory was sound, but in practice this is what I ended up with once I'd done a bit of work in Blender on the Sketchup contours and imported it back into Sketchup. Between Blender and Sketchup only one format of file works both ways, and that's the COLLADA format (.dae files)

COLLADA export import test.jpg

Half the mesh is missing, as are all the textures I carefully painted onto it in Blender.

I might just have to do the basemap in GIMP, import it to Sketchup and do the buildings there, or... I might just go back about a fortnight and do the whole thing in GIMP - despite not really having the drawing skills required for all those buildings.

Sketchup is great at buildings, and probably great at cities too (as long as they are on level ground), but like J.Edward said it was never designed with the kind of thing I'm trying to do in mind

[kacey]

I tried using sketchup for my guild city map as well, and ran into the same problems, but I know it's possible, just look at the work that Ilanthar does with it. I know I can do it in zbrush too, but the steep learning curve is a little discouraging. Maybe we'll be lucky enough to see an Ilanthar sketchup tutorial on the forum one day. And just out of curiosity have you tried out the bevel, and embossing add on for gimp yet? Because you should be able to generate some decent shadows with it if that's the route you end up on.

[Mouse]

Ilanthar is one of the poets of cartography we are lucky enough to mingle with on this forum. It would have to be a really detailed tut for me to understand what he does in order for me to get even half way close to emulating his work in Sketchup

In the meantime... I'm looking back over my shoulder at the mainly GIMP map I was working on before. I think its the green green grass that's putting me off - that and the rather stilted relief shapes. Its too green, and too blocky. If I sort both those things out I might feel more like carrying on with it in GIMP

GIMP add ons? Hmmn. Not convinced by the two I already have. Script Fu and GMIC. Script Fu processes can be downright destructive if you aren't careful. The bevel in that pack overwrites any layer called background, even if that just happens to be the main map! LOL! And that's one of the better known ones. I find it faster and less risky just to fake the effects with a couple of overlays.

I tried Affinity, and the effects are just light years ahead of anything GIMP can do. But there's a terrible delay with both tablet and mouse as you start each stroke, so although the effects are live like PS, its not a tool I could use. I'm thinking of trying Artrage, but with my background (semi professional landscape painter) I'd probably disappear into painting landscapes forevermore - never to be seen again, if I set off in that direction

[Mouse]

John - just a quick question...

How do you turn the snap function off in Sketchup? I'm using the freehand tool to draw things, and every time I get a bit close to something else the tool snaps to it.

[J.Edward]

John - just a quick question...

How do you turn the snap function off in Sketchup? I'm using the freehand tool to draw things, and every time I get a bit close to something else the tool snaps to it.

I believe it is a setting in Model info [click the 'i' in a blue circle for Model Info]...
Then go to units and uncheck enable snapping in both places
Clipboard04.jpg

Edit - nope. That doesn't appear to be it.

Edie-Edit... actually, that might do the trick for you on freehand tool
Give it a try.

[Mouse]

Well it certainly makes for an interesting sort of cubist style

I can partly prevent it by zooming in really close, but on a laptop screen that's a bit like looking at the map through a narrow slot.

[Mouse]

Its still jumping.

This is an exaggeration because I've deliberately drawn a scribble here, but the nodes on the existing line are marked with blue, and the red arrows mark where the new line was drawn. It zigged and zagged every time I drew across the old line except where I just happened to cross it at a node.

jump.JPG

Please don't worry about it too much, John. Thanks for seeking a solution for me