Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
a series of submodels and work on them simultaneously as a team.
Of course, we were going to use component instances, but with a bit
of know-how, they can become a very sophisticated tool for group
designing.
2.
Easy design evaluation of bridge forms:
The position and sizes of the eight bridges were pretty much fixed at the
early stage of design. We needed to know how their formal variations
affect the views from various viewpoints, at different stages of their open/
close cycle. The second part of the following steps deals mostly with
setting up the file structure for quick design evaluations.
3.
Quick rendering of still images:
We picked Podium as our renderer because it has a very fast rendering
engine, and it requires no importing/exporting of files as long as it is used
with SketchUp. Converting files from one piece of software to another
is usually a very time-consuming, painstaking process, even when it
claims smooth file conversion. So being able to create renderings within
SketchUp was a big plus for us.
Other software used to complement SketchUp and Podium were
Vectorworks (2D drawings, annotations, and page layout) and Photoshop
(fine-tuning of renderings from Podium and adding Depth of Field [DOF]
effect with layers). I also used Moment of Inspiration to create a couple
of form studies with complex curves, an area where SketchUp is particu-
larly weak.
New Approaches
The key functions of SketchUp in this particular design process are the
following:
1.
Component instances:
We used component instances to speed up the design evaluation
process. The decrease in file size brought about by instancing was
not the only reason to use components: they were also used to
speed up the overall workflow. Prior to modeling several schemes
for the bridge, we spent some time setting up the file structure with
component instances so that we could minimize modeling time
but still being able to review various aspects of each scheme. Of
course, as I stated earlier, being able to work on a model as a team is
always a bonus.
2.
Animation export:
We did not make any animations at this stage, but the function is very
useful for batch-exporting scenes to high-resolution image files.
3.
Fog:
I learned this unique way of creating depthmaps by using SketchUp's fog
function from my friend Lewis Wadsworth. Depthmaps are used to give a
DOF effect of camera lenses to exported images from SketchUp. They add
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