Digging through the Ruby script archive for SketchUp is just amazing. There is a great tool at every corner. Here’s one of them: The 6-sided cube panorama exporter. Together with a renderer like Kerkythea (and a stitching program), it is extremely easy to create realistic panoramas right out of SketchUp.
Use
- Download the Ruby-script CubicPanoOut.rb and put it into the SketchUp plugins folder. Restart SketchUp.
- In SketchUp, position your camera and select “CubicPano Out” in the Camera menu. Make sure you select the option to create pages (these will become camera locations after exporting to Kerkythea). Also remember the resolution you select here.
- In Kerkythea, render all six views using the resolution you selected above. Also, make sure that the camera focal length is set to 0.5 for all six renderings.
- Use your favorite stitching program to stitch all images into a QTVR panorama. Tada! Enjoy!
P.S.: I am assuming you have Kerkythea installed, if not read this post. Also, you will need a panorama stitcher. Some free ones are described here.
Sample Quicktime Panoramas
(Click your mouse into these to pan around. Of course, you need to have Apple Quicktime installed to view these.)
Blueprint-styled panorama directly exported from SketchUp
Rendered panorama (HDR-lighted Photon Map render in Kerkythea, photoshopped in the light region)