SketchUp

[Andre_1th]

It takes some time to work with this prg but it's great fun.
I wish to thank escpecially Martinez for teaching me the very basics, but you're proberly still not happy with my amount of object poly's
But you are very right to try to keep it all as 'small' as possible.

I found that working with jpg's in SketchUp is (for me) the most difficoult part. I mean to import a jpg in a model and mess around with those axes...

This is my first created house and I gladly want to get some critical comments about it. No mercy
What I did: found some jpg on the Inet (more or less 2D) imported in a SketchUp model (just a square) and build it manual into a 3D model.

However I'm not too happy about the end result in rFactor, see pic (from left to right) Maybe something to do with sun&shadows ? too gray imo. Btw on the right side of the building, wich you can't see, it's brighter.

 

[mianiak]

Well done! I admire your your persistence and dedication.

It looks a bit crooked, what you can do with the image as a bit of preparation, in Gimp use the perspective tool to straighten it so it seems as if you are looking at it straight on. Use guides to make a square. (see attached pic)

As for the lighting, that would be your normals. try setting the normals properly in xpacker (don't set up normals) also make sure you have no lighting in the sketchup scene before you export it

 

[Paul Minnaar]

Double

 

[Paul Minnaar]

Well done, good work so far.

However, I strongly suggest you get working with Blender soon, in the long run it will be better for you. Its more advanced, is faster once you know the interface, can UV map better etc. And has no hang ups.

All in good time.

 

[Andre_1th]

Tnx guys, get into Gimp and Blender.
Another little issue: On track (rFactor) I can look right through my houses
Something to do with transparency none/alpha/chroma ?

 

[martinez]

Interesting... What kind of texture are you using? I know nothing about rF, sorry Will check your object you've sended to me at the evening (busy days came...)

 

[R Soul]

It could be that the faces are inside out, in which case you need to change the direction of the normals (think of vectors and planes). I don't know if sketchup has that ability, but Blender and Anim8or do.

 

[Andre_1th]

rebuild house

@Martinez and R Soul: Created new house, not as good at first but maybe you can figure out why it's transparent in game. Yes I know there are 3 textures too much, no time to rebuild all.

2 files:


tia !

 

[R Soul]

The texture sizes are wrong. The dimensions must be powers of 2 (4, 8, 16, 32 etc). rFactor tends not to give error messages, but scene viewer (from ISI) does. It wasn't specific but it did complain about materials. I looked at the textures part of XPacker and there was a warning about texture dimensions.

There's another issue with the object:

I loaded the object into Anim8or and then selected all faces. The yellow colour shows the front of a face and the blue shows the back. By default rFactor won't show the backs of faces. There are two solutions. The quickest is to set the material to be double sided, either in XPacker or just in BTB. That's a sloppy solution because you'll needlessly increase the polycount of the object. It's okay if you only have a few objects to sort out, but not if you have many. A better solution is to reverse the normals of those blue coloured faces. I don't know if sketchup has that function so you'll have to look for it.

With the yellow faces, the normals are pointing outwards, at a right angle to the face. With the blue faces, the normals are pointing inwards. Those ones need to be flipped by 180 degrees so that they're pointing outwards.

 

[martinez]

I see - the same thing with Sketchup - front sides are white, back sides are blue - sometimes you have to turn the view around, because when looking at them from a side, they all look like gray. But if you apply some texture to the faces, the only way to check it is to look at them from the back (like looking from inside of a building) - if the object is completely "closed", hide one of the sides (faces) and look inside

 

[Andre_1th]

Yes I know the textures sizes are wrong, didnt had yesterday time for resizing
Allright it's become more clear now, and yes I did double sized the material in XPacker , fast and sloppy , haha.
I'll start all over, house 3 wil be perfect!

And yes R Soul its possible to reverse normals/faces with SketchUp.

Tnx guys, for taking the time to help me out here, very appreciated.

 

[martinez]

Oh, yes - I forgot - to reverse faces - right click on the face(s) and choose an option

 

[Andre_1th]

Oh, yes - I forgot - to reverse faces - right click on the face(s) and choose an option

Very good, found it my own way via top tabs/Edit/Face/Reverse, right click much faster, tnx !

 

[Andre_1th]

Well done! I admire your your persistence and dedication.

Tnx again sir, but to be honest: there are so many aspects where you have to jump in, it's almost
impossble to learn it all in one life time. Wish that people understand the amount of time to create a track or even some objects. Hehe, my nickname is the Hunter, never give up :work:

It looks a bit crooked, what you can do with the image as a bit of preparation, in Gimp use the perspective tool to straighten it so it seems as if you are looking at it straight on. Use guides to make a square. (see attached pic)

Yep, jumped into Gimp, nice prg too !

Hope you like this:



Some other comments.
I don't like Blender. Working now with SketchUp6, APCS3, Gimp2.6, (learning) 3dsMax9 (donations very welcome) , and offcourse BTB, BTBXPacker and on the background in case needed Gmax, SketchUp7, Anima8or, Zmodeler2.
Any more prg's to jump in ?

 

[martinez]

Jump into RBR You will see my new track tomorrow probably

 

[mianiak]

Any more prg's to jump in ?

3dSimEd http://www.sim-garage.co.uk/

 

[Andre_1th]

Lol, thought I had it all.
It's like learning to swim again but you don't have any idea what's going on under the surface.
There are some Objects with invisible Materials without any Texture's at all so your Normal Face will be eaten as fast as your Spline was created in the first square.

hmm red wine makes me funny.

 

[Andre_1th]

SketchUp 6 nightmare axes

Still messing around with too many programms.

However I found this.
At first, remember my 1th house object , I did it with SketchUp 6, the terrible
nightmare axes, right? to get a jpeg fit exactly into your square ?.
Forget it.

Start SketchUp 7, create the square, import the jpeg and done !
And when you prefer to work with SketchUp 6 just save it at 6.
Another approach: Start 6, create square, select paint bucket, create new material
from texture image. Add material into your square and play with the Edit option,
weidth/hight.

Saves me lot of time

 

[martinez]

I think it's a good idea to try with 7, but then collada files from 7 doesn't work, so you have to save as 6, open in 6 and export to .kmz from 6...

 

[mianiak]

I use only 3 programs, BTB, Blender and SimEd. I like the simplicity of object creation in sketchup, but the mission to get it into btb made me give it a miss.
You really only need to use 2 programs, BTB and Blender. SimEd is a nice addon to the process to clean everything up at the end.

Andre you really should give Blender a go. Try this, open blender, right click once on the cube, look on the bottom left of blender is 'Link and Materials', in there click 'new'. Then up the top, click file > export > 3ds. Then import that 3ds into xpacker, you will get a texture error but don't worry, it will assign one for you, the important thing is that now that cube is ready to go into your project. It's as fast and simple as that.