Another Soul Lost to SketchUp
Hitting a link shared by Unstoppabot, who really needs to get around to fixing his feed linking policy (“View this site”? Lame!), I was seized with another spasm of appreciation for the deliciousness that is SketchUp.
I did a moderate amount of 3D modeling back in the day. The specific day in question would be the one where we all thought that images of rendered 3D models and, whenever possible, blobs of text were the absolute last word in Great Web Design. Remember that? Wasn’t it fantastic? When every page title could be a bunch of extruded and beveled sans-serif letters viewed slightly from above, with the whole mess of text angled away from the observer?
Good times.
So anyway, while I was cranking out renderings of page title text and university logos, I also spent some time creating scenes of other stuff. You can find some of the results if you dig deeply enough here on meyerweb, but that’s not my point. What I’m trying to say is that I enjoy a bit o’ three dee more than most, and have some knowledge of how difficult it can be to construct models.
When I first heard about SketchUp, I was intrigued but didn’t really buy into all the hype. It couldn’t be that easy, could it? And then I watched someone using it—at An Event Apart, as it happens; and no, it wasn’t one of the attendees—and was captivated. I downloaded the installer while I was sitting there, watching him create and modify shapes as easily as sketching them on paper. And then I left it uninstalled, because I was afraid of what it would do to my free time.
A few days ago, I finally broke down. I actually did have a legitimate reason to install and use it, a really good one, but of course I’d been waiting for any reasonable pretense to launch the .dmg and make with the modeling. So I did.
Color me deeply impressed. While you’re at it, add some heavy tints of addicted. I started by modeling our kitchen, and now I want to do the whole frickin’ house. I’m starting to eye local landmarks for recreation and contribution to the Warehouse and Google Earth.
I don’t have time for this. I need help. Stop me before I model again!
