Organic modeling with the Artisan plugin

Organic modeling with the Artisan plugin

SketchUp plugin wizard Dale Martens (a.k.a. Whaat) recently released an amazing and incredibly useful organic modeling toolset called Artisan. Based on Dale’s popular Subdivide & Smooth tools, Artisan is perfect for people who want to use SketchUp to model organic shapes and terrain features. Artisan includes a set of “deformation” tools that allow you to sculpt, smooth, flatten, pinch and apply textures just like you would with a brush.

The toolbar for Dale Martens' Artisan Organic Toolset for SketchUp

Eric Lay modeled Patrick Beaulieu's "Bobby Bubble" character, then rendered him (her?) with Twilight Render.

Use Artisan's Sculpt tools to "paint" 3D deformation onto surfaces.

You can add or reduce polygon complexity in your model, allowing for more or less detail. There’s also a suite of vertex tools that you can use to model based on controlling vertex points. Oh—and did I mention that it’s a ton of fun to use? Have a look at some of the features yourself...


As anyone at the office can tell you, I’m no artist or designer, but I thought I would give the Artisan tool a try over the weekend. Below is something that I whipped up; not too shabby for an hour’s worth of work.

I modeled this hamburger. Er, yum?

If slimy, unappetizing hamburgers aren’t your thing, no worries. It’s not a stretch to see how the Artisan tools might be applied to a whole range of different markets and use cases: character design, product design, environmental design, construction, civil engineering, architecture and, of course, landscape architecture.

Peter Stoppel modeled this scooter.

Peter also modeled this wedge of landscape.

Artisan is also incredibly useful for freeform terrain modeling. This model is by Daniel Tal.

For more information and video tutorials on the Artisan Organic Toolset for SketchUp, check out this website. You’ll also find a great writeup on the Artisan tools in SketchUcation’s February issue of the CatchUp news magazine.
Thank you to Dale for building this great plugin, and special thanks to Eric Lay (a.k.a. Boofredlay), Peter Stoppel (a.k.a. Solo) and Daniel Tal for your great graphics.

Posted by Chris Dizon, SketchUp Sales

Use a Raytracing Renderer to Make Photorealistic Images

Once you’ve modeled something in Sketchup, it’s hard to resist the temptation to show it off to anyone who’ll look. But even with a wealth of style and lighting options, it’s hard to really make an object in Sketchup look great, or anywhere near photorealistic. Fortunately, there are 3rd party renderers that make up for this deficit.

For a free option, you can try Kerkythea. It's a freeware renderer with a Sketchup plugin available and can put together some pretty decent renders. For more information about how to setup and use Kerkythea with Sketchup, check out this blog post.

Image By: Alex

If you’re ready to move onto something a little bit more powerful, there are some relatively affordable renderers available, such as SU Podium, which has a free evaluation, and sells for $180. Unlike the previous renderer, SU Podium works directly within Sketchup, so you don’t have to start up a separate program, then export and import a sketchup model to make a quality render.

Image By: Evil Elvis

Of course there are also more advanced, general purpose renderers such as V-Ray that can be used to make photo-realistic images of your models, but these carry an industrial-strength price tag, sometimes running into the thousands of dollars.

Image By: tranganhhp

click pic for full view..