Playing around with SketchUp and POVRAY

[f700es]

A guy on the SU forums made a POVRAY (free raytracing rendering engine) export so I have been playing around with it a bit....

In SketchUp...
http://mars.walagata.com/w/f700es/Thompson.jpg

In POVRAY...
http://mars.walagata.com/w/f700es/Thomaston-Win-2.jpg

It is OK for a first attempt but it did something funny to my roof texture but only did it on one plane and not the back plane :huh: might have to do a bit of playing. ANyway thought I would share for any SU users outthere.

Cheers :)

[erona]

Hey that's cool! I have POV-Ray on my machine. Can you share us how you did it? I mean export it.

Thanks

[hyposmurf]

Where can I get POV-Ray?

[DANIEL]

thats pretty sweet looking, can you give the bricks and other surfaces a color?

[f700es]

Ok, I'll try to answer all at once....

1. There is an export plug-in for SketchUp that you can use to export a .pov file for POVRAY to use. It is pretty simple but you do have to have SketchUp to use.

2. www.povray.org

3. Sure you can, you can use any image as a texture. I usually use real loking textures but I was trying to get a "cardboard" model effect so I made some textures from AutoCAD hatch patterns. I made some rectangles in AutoCAD, hatched them and then printed them to .jpg files. I then cropped them in Photoshop and used them as hatch patterns in SketchUp.

http://mars.walagata.com/w/f700es/Thompson-2a.jpg

[erona]

Okay, so where can I get his plugin? I went to Sketchup but I can't find it there. :cry:

[f700es]

Okay, so where can I get his plugin? I went to Sketchup but I can't find it there. :cry:

http://amazone.crai.archi.fr//Ruby/RUBY_Library_Depot.htm

:wink:

[erona]

Got it.

I exported some of me old models done in Sketchup to POV but when it runs, it halts to a parse error. It says it can't open the JPG file I used in the scene. The image file is stored under Sketchup directory. Is there something I should do to make it work? I do not have in depth knowledge about working things around POV-Ray.

Thnaks anyways

[f700es]

Got it.

I exported some of me old models done in Sketchup to POV but when it runs, it halts to a parse error. It says it can't open the JPG file I used in the scene. The image file is stored under Sketchup directory. Is there something I should do to make it work? I do not have in depth knowledge about working things around POV-Ray.

Thnaks anyways

RTFM! ;)

you will have to either copy or move the textures used in the model to the place (folder) where the POV file is located. I usually make a new folder for this. I also use the .obj export plugin from the main SU site to help me do this. When you export an ,obj file from SU it copies the textures used into a new folder. You also might also have to rename a few textures to name that POVRAYwill like better. Say..."brick-texture" will have to be renamed "brick_texture". POVRAY will highlight texture names that it cannot find. Here is what I do...

1. Export my model from SU to a .obj file.
2. I make a new folder for my exported model..say "house 1" folder.
3. Use the POVRAY plug-in
4. make sure all textures are in the base folder "house 1"
5. Run the POVRAY file..
6. Fix any texture error messages you have..

Sure not a simple setup but after a few it gets pretty easy. Good luck :)

[erona]

I was too quick to talk. I forgot to go thru the provided tuts. Silly me :?

Anyways, I got it working but there seems to be a funny thing that happens with applied maps. This is very noticeable wih the sofa.


http://www.cadimage.net/postimages/livingrm.jpg

I fixed your image setting - F7

[DANIEL]

sweeet

[f700es]

yeah, something weird going on with that. Not sure what though :?

Sweet image though :D

[erona]

Thanks guys... could've been sweeter if I had the correct settings for the sofa. :P

At first, I was too afraid messing with the text inside POVRAY. But with a couple of reads, fixing the final image is much easier within POVRAY. Very nice program... :thumbsup: