Making of Rural House – SketchUp Styles & Picasa 3.9

This is the workflow I use to produce what I call high impact NPR images in a simple and fast way, using only two software: SketchUp and Picasa 3.9. I will now describe the main points of each image in this tutorial. 1. In this first image below the house has been modeled in 3D using SketchUp. It is a rural house that is going to be built here in Sardinia.It is important to note that in the picture below I have summarized and condensed everything that has been useful to build the model. I used a lot of 3D objects which are freely downloadable from the 3D Warehouse and some of the plants have been added by using the plugin 3D Tree maker. Most of the textures have been found by simple searches with the Google search engine and others come from a fantastic collection at sketchuptexture.com. I have applied a default style to the model, only editing the Edge options.

Summary of 3D Objects and Textures Used

2. The default Style I used was Landscape Architecture Style.

Default Style Used ‘Landscape Architecture Style’

3. To make it easier for modeling I edited the edge settings by giving them an Extension set at 6. This lets me better identify the junction points of the lines.

Extension Set at 6

4. With the model completed (in this case our rural house) and only at the end do I apply the Style Black H2O Effect by Dave Richards, varying it only a little. This Style is freely downloadable from the website sketchupartists.org and you can find it in the 2011 collection of Styles .

H2O Style from sketchupartists.org

5. The image below better explains the Style I used.

H2O Style

6. As you can see I have only made changes to the Edges. Specifically, I have added Back Edges which displays the back edges dashed. I have also edited the Style slightly by clicking on the Edit tab and set Extension to 5 and Endpoints equal to 3 and finally, ticked the option Jitter, which gives it a sketchy effect. All the other remaining settings, Face, Background, Watermark and Modeling settings are left as they are.

Further Edge Settings

7. Next I am going to add Shadows.

Select Shadows

8. I give Shadows these parameters.

Shadow Parameters

9. At this stage I saved the image by going to File>Export>2D Graphic.

Save Image

10. This is the final output image from SketchUp without any post-production. You might be happy with this, it may be suitable as it is, but lets do a bit more…

SketchUp Output Image

11. Now in Picasa I choose my first filter effect called “I feel lucky”.

Apply First Filter ” I Feel Lucky”

12. I then applied a second filter called “Orton-ish effect”.

Orton-ish Effect Filter

13. These are the settings for the “Orton-ish” filter.

Settings

14. the third filter applied is the “Cinemascope” effect.

Cinemascope Effect Filter

15. These are the “Cinemascope” effect settings.

Settings

16. The fourth and last filter (this particular sequence of steps is very important) is the “Focal Zoom” effect.

Select Focal Zoom

17. These are the “Focal Zoom” settings.

Settings

Final Image

Final Image

That’s it and thanks for giving me the opportunity to explain my workflow. I hope you may find it useful in some of your own future projects.

Gian Martin Corso

You can find out more about Gian and his work on his website: www.madeinsketchup.com