Alex Schreyer's Blog, Projects, Books, and More
On the day of the 9/11 anniversary, I was looking at Google Maps (as you can see – on the iPad). Because I also have the Esri app installed, I went to check out their (and Bing‘s) imagery as well, which led to an interesting discovery that neatly illustrates quality differences between all of these prime mapping […] Read more..
Here are two videos that nicely illustrate how traditional timber framing (and even panelized light-framing) has evolved from the chisel to the CNC cutter and the nailing gantry. The first one is a more hands-on approach where power-tools are used to do individual cuts. The second one is a fully CNC-based process, where every single member is […] Read more..
Okay… admittedly SketchUp itself looks in the latest maintenance release that came out today (Version 8, Maintenance Release 4) much like it did before the update. What has changed, though, is the logo/icon and therefore, the brand of the software. Here are the changes: New Icon Old Icon SketchUp LayOut Style Builder You can now […] Read more..
[sketchfab id=”vj4S4foHFOZ8Lv9ckcyA0cAhdXQ” start=”1″ spin=”.5″ controls=”1″] Model with shininess (Phong shader) If you export a COLLADA DAE model from SketchUp (using either the 3D Model Export feature in SketchUp or my Sketchfab plugin), then you will notice that any materials in the model (colors or textures) look flat (like you can see in the model shown […] Read more..
Although there are ways to get SketchUp models to display on the web (most notably using the 3D Warehouse or VRML if you have SketchUp Pro), none of those technologies are as elegant as using WebGL. This technology needs no plugins and relies only on 3D display capability that is already built into modern browsers. While […] Read more..
This extension adds a menu item “Upload to Sketchfab” to the File menu in SketchUp. After uploading your model, you can edit parameters and materials, grab a thumbnail or adjust the default view on the Sketchfab website.
On the heels of the announcement that SketchUp has been sold to Trimble comes another announcement from Google, this time related to Google Earth. As described in various press releases and posts, Google will – among other changes – implement automated building (and vegetation!) generation from flyover data for major cities. The following video explains this: […] Read more..