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Thread: Software to help me visualise how product will look with different finishes

  1. #1

    Software to help me visualise how product will look with different finishes

    Hi All,

    I generally have a hard time trying to visualise how a project would turn out using different wood types, stains etc?

    What program do you recommend that I can use to design my own coffee tables, shelves etc in, and also render them in different wood types, different wood colours, grain patterns etc.

    I have used Sketchup (freeware), but it only has basic wood coluring etc, unless there is a way to upgrade this?

    Thanks
    Eoin

  2. #2
    You can add any materials you want to your SketchUp material library and apply them to your models. Here's a couple of examples I made.


    The chalkboard with the writing is also a material.






    If you want a more photographic look you can send your SketchUp model through a rendering application. there are a number of commercially available (read that "not free") renderers some of which operate as plugins inside SketchUp or you can use a free rendering application such as Kerkythea which is the one I like.

    These were rendered in Kerkythea.



    Although they aren't difficult to make, I don't care so much for trying to make photo-realistic images and prefer to give them more of a hand drawn look. I did this plate rack last night in SketchUp. the model was rendered in Kerkythea to get some reflections and the soft shadows but then I did some simple manipulation of the resulting render to get this.



    And because of the era of the piece, I decided to get rid of the color.



    You can do many different things with your SketchUp model.

  3. #3
    Dave,

    That's exactly what I am aiming for - is there any tutorials or instructions on how to do this?

    Thanks,
    Eoin

  4. #4
    Well, I've written about the parts of the process on the Design. click. Build. blog on Fine Woodworking's site (I think the mods will delete any link I make to it considering it self-promotion but it's easy enough to find.) As for doing the renders, there are loads of tutorials available for the different rendering options. If you go to Kerkythea's website you can get a lot of detailed info about using the program. If you want more of the hand drawn look, I can help you out with that. It's mostly just stuff I've made up as I go. I like to have drawn edges in most of my images and I've create more than 100 different hand-drawn line styles for use with SketchUp. I also make most of my own material images of wood grain materials but I did a blog post on that, too.

    Edited to ask: What would you consider your level of SketchUp experience to be?
    Last edited by Dave Richards; 02-21-2013 at 9:03 AM.

  5. #5
    Dave,

    Have you posted any Kerkythea rendering tutorials?


  6. #6
    I did on Sept 23 or last year. It's not very in depth but it would get you going after you look at some of the tutorials on the KT site. My use of KT is very basic but it is plenty for what I need. Often I just make a clay render to get the soft shadows and maybe some reflections and apply the materials from SU over that render in my image editor.

    I did that for these.





    This one used the OEM granite texture for the top but the rest is just the white, front face material.


    And sometimes I don't apply materials at all.

  7. #7
    By the way, I forgot to mention this but you can represent different stains used on a wood grain material by editing the image in Photoshop or another editor. You would save these materials with different names and you could then easily show the difference between, say, red oak with a blonde finish or red oak with a walnut stain.

  8. #8
    Wow Dave thanks for that. I'm classed as a beginner when it comes to sketchup- looks like I've a lot to learn!

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Dave Richards View Post
    By the way, I forgot to mention this but you can represent different stains used on a wood grain material by editing the image in Photoshop or another editor. You would save these materials with different names and you could then easily show the difference between, say, red oak with a blonde finish or red oak with a walnut stain.
    You'll see that Mark Crenshaw has mastered that technique if you review some of his guitar-building posts. I hope he's doing OK—we haven’ heard from him in quite a while.


  10. #10
    Eoin, drop me a PM if you need a hand with it.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Dave Richards View Post
    Eoin, drop me a PM if you need a hand with it.
    Thanks Dave - do I need Sketchup Pro for will the free version do?

  12. #12
    The free version will work just fine. There isn't a single thing I've shown even in the drawing of the models that can't be done with the free version. Well...there is the matter of the sketchy line styles used in most of the images. I made those myself and you need Style builder for that. Style Builder is part of the pro package but there are sketchy styles included with SketchUp, there are some commercially available styles and some of mine are even out there online. Unfortunately I can't post a link to them without running afoul of the self-promotion prohibition (even though some of them are free).

  13. #13
    I just thought I would add a comment about material images. Most of the materials you'll find out there are square images. Some of the wood grain materials are designed to be seamless. If there's any figure to the grain you'll necessarily get tiling, though and in my opinion using no materials would be far better than that. I've written a long blog post on this topic but I thought I would post this as an example anyway.

    So here is an example of a commonly available wood grain material.


    It looks pretty nice as it is but if you want to use it as a material in sketchUp, it'll look like this.


    Not very realistic at all. I would recommend you don't even waste your time with those dinky little squares unless your projects are made of dinky little squares.

    I make my own textures from images of entire boards so they scale out to somewhere between 4 and 13 inches wide depending on species and 7 to 16 feet long. I have no interest in seamless materials. Wood doesn't come out of the tree that way so.. The long material images allow me to pick and choose sections just like I would if I was cutting up a real board so I don't tend to get as much repetition or if I do, it isn't that noticeable.

  14. #14
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    Eoin - I use the free version and have learned from David how to make some very nice drawings by building my own materials library and then applying them correctly. As you can see David has lots to learn too . Someday, when I grow up ...
    "... for when we become in heart completely poor, we at once are the treasurers & disbursers of enormous riches."
    WQJudge

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