Presentations

We have always been fascinated in experimentation with the use of SketchUp alone or in combination with other different applications in developing unique and visually attractive techniques and styles of presentation. We have witnessed some great styles and techniques that have evolved over time and here we will be presenting some of them with all credit given to their original and rightful authors with links to their work.
So let us simply call this “presentation possibilities” whether it is the use of Sketchup Styles, Photoshop or some other image editing and/or post – process techniques, the use of a rendering application or any combinations of these. Whatever we decide the ultimate aim is to produce a more visually attractive output and final presentation.

TECHNIQUES
Probably the most popular and widely used technique was developed by Dennis Nikolaev at the former SketchUp Last forums. The secret here lies in exporting three images,the color texture with shadows, line art and line art with shadows, overlaying and manipulating them in Photoshop. Over time, there has been many many variations that have developed out of this original style. Here are some of those original the images created by Dennis.

block_a_2

block_a_3

block_a_4

neighbor_web

web_ready

web_ready06_20

There is a direct link to that original PDF tutorial and also there are more great techniques to discover here.

STYLES
Another great way to enhance your final presentations is with the use of a special feature in Google SketchUp called Styles. Styles are collections of display settings, including new options like Watermarks and Sketchy Effects, saved in the new Styles palette. You can use Style Builder to create custom non-photorealistic (NPR) Styles for SketchUp. NPR Styles can make your models appear hand-rendered, super-technical, and everything in between. You can create, save, and organize Styles as well as share Styles with others.

Here is a slide show to help you visualize  different styles applied on the same model.  Most of the styles  presented here are Winners Stlyles from Google SketchUp Style Buider Competition , so if you are using SketchUp 7 you allready have them installed inside your styles folder.

draftsmanwatercolor1

felt_tip_pencil

hand_drafted_with_mask

light_grey_freestyle

lines_with_wide_marker

pencil_edges_with_white_border

pencil_on_graph_paper

pencil_on_light_brown

pencil_sketch_with_darker_traced_lines

rough_pencil_styles

stain_edges_with_frame

tech_pen_endpoints

thin_wet_watercolor

There are more styles and links to them on our Styles page .

If you have yourself created created some unusual styles  or techniques and would like to share them with the community we certainly would like to hear from you.

DESIGN – CAR DESIGN

A while back we figured it would be fun to start a new category in our presentation series called “Design”  and so this week  we kick off  with  Car design where we will focus on some great tutorials and presentations out there.

At first glance you may think what has this got to do with SketchUp ?

Since we at Sketchupartists are primarily focused on presentations and post-process work rather than on modeling itself we thought that the following  post process tutorials created by some of the best artists and designers in the industry would be a valuable resource for all your professional post process work, regardless if you use SketchUp, draw by hand or use a combination of  different techniques.

With the help of these great tutorials, some imagination and a little practice we believe that you will be able to create great and unique personal styles of your own , or as Allan Macdonald rightly put it:  “these tutorials aim  to inspire… not to instruct!. Read more and see the tutorials here….

In our following articles we hope to cover Architecture, graphic, product and in fact any other type of professional design presentations out there.