Tips for Rendering in V-Ray

Posted on December 02, 2022December 12, 2023 by Charlotte Lee

The V-Ray 3D rendering engine is so revolutionary, it won both an engineering Emmy and an Oscar for advancing the use of ray-traced rendering. It’s the go-to choice for the world’s finest architectural designers, CGI experts, landscape designers, VFX professionals, and many other creative artists.

At the same time, V-Ray is so beginner-friendly, you don’t need to be a 3D pro to take advantage of its features.

Using V-Ray with SketchUp makes it even easier to bring your designs to life since the two applications integrate seamlessly.

With that in mind, observing a few V-Ray render tips will help you get the most realistic results, streamline your workflow, and have fun while you’re at it.

Let’s get started!

V-Ray Rendering Tips

The top mistake among new V-Ray users is diving into 3D rendering without proper research or preparation.

With these V-Ray render tips, you can avoid making the same mistake and make sure you set yourself up for success:

1. Ensure more than adequate system resources

V-Ray 3D rendering is a resource-intensive program – this means it requires a powerful processor and a good amount of RAM to get the job done.

As an example, here are some of the minimum system requirements for installing V-Ray for SketchUp:

Minimum of 2GB hard disk space
Minimum of 8GB RAM
IPv4 TCP/IP
For GPU support, NVIDIA card(s) such as Volta- and Turing-based units with the latest video driver
Windows 8.1 for the operating system
And more

Anything below these specs won’t cut it. If you don’t have enough RAM or even a good graphics card, your renderings will take too long to process, or the quality will be too low.

On top of that, it’s also a good idea to exceed the minimum system requirements so that you can render faster and with higher quality.

For example, 2GB of hard disk space will allow you to run V-Ray for SketchUp, but with 12GB, you can easily download additional content without compromising the performance of your system.

Also, if you’re using a laptop, ensure it has an external power source, as V-Ray’s rendering process can be very energy-intensive. If you’re using a desktop, be sure to sync up the power supply with your graphics card.

2. Use GPU rendering

V-Ray is designed to use either the V-Ray GPU or the V-Ray rendering engine.

GPU rendering is faster and more efficient because it lets V-Ray use your system’s GPU cards to execute the ray-tracing calculations instead of the slower CPU.

To use GPU rendering in V-Ray, you will need to have a supported GPU and enable it in the V-Ray settings.

3. Make the model render-ready

Another overlooked V-Ray rendering tip is ensuring that the initial 3D model is ready to render.

Sure, you can skip this and go straight to rendering, but expect poor results and lengthy rendering times.

Instead, prepare your model by checking that it’s correctly textured, lit, and has all the necessary materials set up.

This means that all relevant objects should have the appropriate materials and textures applied, and that all surface shaders, displacement maps, and other materials have been established properly in SketchUp.

4. Clean up your model design

A big part of preparing your 3D model is cleaning up the design as well as you can.

Any unnecessary detail will bog down the rendering process and use up valuable time and resources.

For instance, look for stray lines that don’t serve any purpose. You can usually find these in the model’s outer faces, hidden edges, and other places.

Aside from that, check that all irrelevant components are removed from the scene. As an example, let’s say you’re rendering a living room. In this case, unused components can be things like a bedroom door, non-essential furniture, and other elements that don’t belong in the scene.

When you’re creating your model, we also recommend separating components into layers and properly labelling each layer. This will help you keep your model organised and make it easier to find any component you may want to adjust. Additionally, create layers for your materials and textures and make sure that each material has its own unique ID.

5. Properly orient faces

A render-ready SketchUp 3D model should observe the proper orientation of faces.

Faces in SketchUp have a front and backside. As a default, the material shows the back as grey and the front as white.

V-Ray and other software may render back faces invisible, which will result in inaccurate renderings and artefacts.

To prevent this, check that faces face inward and that all the normals of the faces point in the same direction. This will help create a cleaner render, as V-Ray will not have to work as hard to render the scene. On top of that, it also helps to remove any hidden faces or objects, as these can cause problems with rendering. Utilising the “Check Intersection” tool can help to quickly identify and fix any issues caused by incorrectly oriented faces.

6. Leverage V-Ray materials

You can use SketchUp materials to render in V-Ray, but if you want the best results, use V-Ray materials instead.

Materials in V-ray allow you to manipulate attributes like the glossiness of the surface, the reflection of light, and the opaqueness of the material.

Additionally, the V-Ray material library comes with pre-loaded materials such as wood, metal, glass, and more. Still, you can find even more materials for V-Ray online in the form of downloadable content from various websites, so take time to explore.

7. Optimise cameras and lighting

In SketchUp, the default settings for 3D models are one camera and one light.

By comparison, V-Ray offers a wider selection of lighting styles and types, along with multiple cameras. Take advantage of these tools to better emulate how the lighting behaves in the real world, including sunlight.

8. Make use of render-ready assets

To save even more rendering time, consider using render-ready assets in your 3D model.

You don’t need to create everything from scratch, nor do you need to clean up these components since they are already prepared for rendering.

Render-ready assets can include pre-made 3D trees, cars, animals, people, grass, water, and other common elements. With these assets, you can create more complex 3D scenes much faster while saving resources.

9. Optimise materials and colours

The colours you use in your 3D model can also affect the speed and efficiency of rendering in V-Ray. That’s because some colours are simply more demanding for rendering than others.

For example, off-white is easier to render than white because of the less intense colour. Similarly, diffuse materials are easier to render than glossy ones.

So if you’re looking for ways to reduce your rendering time, take a look at the materials and colours in your 3D model and adjust them accordingly.

10. Optimise lighting intensity

Like your colour choices, the intensity of lighting in your 3D model can also affect the rendering process.

Naturally, the brighter the lighting design, the more time and resources it will require to render it. So to optimise your lighting, cut down on the brightness as much as you can without sacrificing visibility and atmosphere.

Aside from that, be sure to use V-Ray’s lighting parameters like exposure, white balance, and light intensity to your advantage. This will help you achieve the best possible lighting while minimising the amount of time it takes to render.

11. Reduce hard edges

SketchUp 3D models use hard edges by default. However, rendering hard edges can lead to a jagged and artificial look, so you may want to smooth them out.

To do this, you can use either a chamfer modifier or a VrayEdgeTex Map to modify the edges. The Chamfer modifier lets you add edges to specific parts of your design, while the VrayEdgeTex Map allows you to customise the edge type, width, and opacity.

12. Add some noise

In terms of 3D modelling, “noise” refers to the variation needed to make a scene look as natural as possible. What noise does is that it helps to break up the monotony of a flat and uniform surface, adding depth and texture.

One way to do this is by using a Quadify Mesh with a noise modifier. You can control the level of detail and the strength of the effect, so you can fine-tune your scene to make it look more realistic.

Now to get rendering

Applying these V-Ray render tips will help you avoid common mistakes that can get in the way of creating beautiful and lifelike 3D scenes out of your SketchUp models.

Practising them consistently will also help you develop a strong foundation for working with the power of V-Ray and using its features to the fullest.

For instance, getting into the habit of cleaning up your 3D models, optimising materials and colours, plus strategically using render-ready assets can help you save time and resources when it comes to rendering with V-Ray.

Now it’s time to put these V-Ray render tips to the test!

Download and install V-Ray for SketchUp and start rendering. Don’t have SketchUp yet? We’re offering a FREE 7-day trial of SketchUp Pro to get you started. Good luck!

Sustainable Landscape Design with SketchUp

Posted on November 30, 2022December 07, 2022 by Charlotte Lee

The fight against climate change is the biggest battle the human race has ever faced, and fighting it touches every part of our lives, in every way. That’s why sustainable landscape design principles are coming to the fore, something every professional and amateur garden designer is taking into account. In our world, green sustainable landscape architecture means everything, a proven way to reduce CO2 emissions, cut down the miles the tools, equipment and materials travel, choose the least-damaging materials and products, and generally create a garden with the smallest possible environmental impact. If you’re busy researching sustainable landscape design, this article is for you. By the end you’ll know what sustainable landscaping is, the considerations and principles behind it, and how SketchUp will help you achieve it.

What is Sustainable Landscaping?

So what is sustainable landscaping? The term green sustainable landscape architecture describes landscaping that is sympathetic to the surrounding environment in every way, and involving naturally available resources. The idea is that a sustainable human-made landscape will exist in complete harmony with the surrounding ecosystem, moving to the rhythms of the wider natural environment without causing harm or disruption to nature.

What is sustainable landscape design? It’s much the same thing. Sustainable landscaping means focusing on both the input and output of a human-made landscape, finding ways to minimise both. It’s about living well now without compromising the future, about putting the environment first, and importantly, about thinking local, using techniques that are not only sustainable but environmentally responsible and, ideally, even regenerative.

The smaller the impact on the wider environment and nature your design has, the better. The less impact on the future, the better. If you can design a garden that enhances what was already there, doesn’t cause any damage during the creation process and does a good job of nurturing the environment into the future, you’re onto a winner.

Next, let’s take a look at exactly what all this involves in context.

Sustainable Landscaping Considerations and Principles

The main goals of sustainable landscape design are to conserve water and energy, reduce waste and decrease runoff. To achieve these goals in an ordinary residential garden you’ll need to adopt a specific mindset. It’ll mean treating water as a vital resource to be protected, valuing soil as an essential we can’t live without, preserving existing plants, and thinking carefully about how to conserve material resources. All this dovetails neatly into a few key principles that support sustainable landscaping.

Principle #1: Treat Water as a Resource – The first of our sustainable landscape design principles concerns water. Too much water is one thing, too little is just as bad. We’ve all seen the horrific impact of recent droughts on countries like Australia and the USA, where November 2022 saw a frightening total of 43 US states experiencing ‘moderate drought’ or worse. The demand for water is already at an all time high and all too often precious rainwater is treated as waste, sent away into drains. Instead you can make wiser decisions thanks to a careful selection of plants and by designing with irrigation in mind. Depending where you live, flood prevention will be just as important. You’ll need to try and strike a realistic balance between water conservation and flood prevention.

Principle #2: Value the Soil – Compacted soil in gardens causes problems because it makes hard work of drainage. The resulting run-off can cause flooding as well as pollution. Good soil helps more plants grow more healthily, supporting a more varied ecosystem. If you have patches of poor quality soil, they’ll be perfect for many wildflowers and native plants that don’t like a rich soil diet but thrive on soil with very few nutrients.

Principle #3: Preserve Existing Plants – Too many people clear every plant out of a garden to design or redesign it, but that’s the opposite of sustainable landscape design. Because every plant matters, a sustainable approach is so much better. Assess the existing plants, keep native species, remove non-native planting if it’s causing issues, and design around new and mature trees instead of cutting them down. A tree is a thing of wonder, beautiful all year round, and an invaluable way to lock up CO2 out of harm’s way.

Principle #4: Conserve Material Resources – The fourth of our sustainable landscape design principles is about materials. Many hard landscaping materials are very energy intensive, and the environmental impact is even worse if they’ve been transported a long way. A sustainable approach means reusing and repurposing, recycling old stuff and insisting on local materials. Using local rock, for example, from a quarry nearby looks right in the context of the surrounding landscape as well as minimising the miles it has travelled.

Using SketchUp for Sustainable Landscape Design

It’s great to know you can use SketchUp to support your personal and professional sustainability goals in sustainable landscape design. Here are some things to consider:

[h3] Keep existing plants and source locally

For both garden designs and redesign, it’s a good move to identify as many existing plants as possible to keep, and work them creatively into your garden design model. It’s good to source plants locally rather than buy from a long distance away, and be sensitive about which new plants to add to your scheme.

[h3] Choose to move away from block paving to prevent flooding

Floods and water shortages are as bad as each other, so think about them both. It’s important to take rainwater runoff into account and manage it optimally. You might, for example, reject the idea of block paving because it prevents water run-off and can cause dramatic localised flooding to gardens, driveways and roads. Rainwater collection ponds don’t just give you water to keep plants alive and thriving, they also quickly become home to an extraordinary range of wildlife, which often arrives within days of a pond being filled. You might want to think about fitting a number of water storage butts fed from the gutters of the house, to help see the garden through times of drought. When you design optimal water drainage, routing and storage into your garden design, you cater for every rain-led eventuality that climate change brings.

[h3] Source materials locally

Can you source local stone and aggregates? Is there a fencing company nearby? The more of the materials you can source nearby, the better. You’ll support the local economy as well as minimising the miles travelled. Materials like Indian sandstone are lovely but when you think how far they’ve been transported, at what expense to the environment, their appeal dims quite a lot!

[h3]Sustainable outdoor lighting

There’s nothing quite so magical as outdoor lighting, and there are sustainable ways to achieve that, too. Make sure your garden lighting is low energy, solar powered garden lighting using cool, energy efficient LEDs rather than ordinary bulbs. Just make sure you don’t design bright lighting that stays on overnight, because it disturbs the circadian rhythms of the plants, birds, insects, mammals and other wildlife. Like us, to get a good night’s sleep, nature needs darkness.

[h3]Design with wildlife in mind

Last but not least, design with wildlife in mind. A sustainable garden isn’t sustainable if it drives wild creatures away. Perhaps you could design a special area where ‘weeds’ can naturally grow. In a sustainable world there’s no such thing as a weed, every plant matters to the balance of the local environment, crucial for wildlife that feeds on it, breeds on it, and relies on it. Plant natives for birds, insects, butterflies, and all the members of the food chain that depend on them. Consciously create safe spaces and shelter for wild creatures.

Add a host of excellent free tutorials and learning resources, a free version to play with and a full version called SketchUp Pro, and the programme offers everything you need to place sustainability at the heart of your outdoor design life. We hope you’re inspired by the sheer potential this popular garden design tool delivers for doing things the environmentally responsible way. Now you’re ready to go create your first green sustainable landscape architecture design, we wish you a great time using SketchUp to achieve something special.

Using Materials for V-Ray

Posted on November 25, 2022June 13, 2024 by Charlotte Lee

V-Ray by Chaos® is an incredibly powerful 3D rendering plugin that’s used by professionals in diverse niches like film and TV, advertising, and architectural visualisation. It’s available for platforms like SketchUp, Maya, 3ds Max, Cinema 4D and more.

V-Ray is highly rated for its ability to produce photo-realistic visualisations with its cutting-edge ray tracing technology. Whether you’re creating interior designs, architecture, 3D models, or special effects for film and TV, V-Ray can help you bring your vision to life. Since it also renders faster than other 3D applications, you can work faster and more efficiently.

However, for V-Ray to render the perfect scene, you need to use the right materials. In the context of 3D design and modelling, “materials” refer to digital representations of the surfaces and textures that you’d find in real-world objects.

The materials can play a huge role in creating realistic visuals, so it’s essential to use the right ones for your project. In fact, 80% of the time, V-Ray materials are the only elements you need to get an amazingly realistic render.

In this guide, we’ll cover what V-Ray materials are and how to navigate the V-Ray materials library. Then, we’ll teach you how to get started with using V-Ray materials, including how to install them in SketchUp, plus helpful tips for making the most of this tool.

What are V-Ray Materials?

V-Ray materials are the main tool for creating shaders, aka surface textures, in your 3D scenes. They’re responsible for defining the look and feel of your models and can help you create everything from realistic skin and fur to shiny metals and glass.

V-Ray materials also offer a wide range of options for rendering your visuals, from photorealism to stylized. This makes them perfect for a variety of different projects, from product visualisations to concept art.

It goes even more detailed than that – materials for V-Ray allow you to simulate ultra-detailed representations of how elements like light, colour, texture, and reflection act on a given surface.

On top of that, it also gives you greater control and accuracy for complex materials such as metals, glass, and fabrics, all of which can be difficult to represent using less-advanced 3D rendering software. Additionally, V-ray materials also offer quick rendering times without compromising visual fidelity.

You can use materials for V-Ray on any platform that supports the V-Ray plugin, including SketchUp.

To access V-Ray materials in SketchUp, simply follow the steps below:

First, open the “Asset Editor” by clicking the corresponding button.
You’ll then see a preview of all the materials available in the library.
The material list includes all the design colours, and these correlate with the colours of materials in SketchUp.
When you select a material in V-Ray, it will also be highlighted and previewed in SketchUp.
Likewise, when you choose a material in SketchUp, it will be highlighted and previewed in the V-Ray asset editor.

Using the V-Ray Materials Library

Once you’re inside the V-Ray materials library in SketchUp, the navigation is intuitive.

First, you’ll see a left-pointing arrow, and clicking on this will pull up the V-ray asset editor. Click that, and you’ll be presented with a list of categories of V-Ray materials. These categories include glass, concrete, foam, metal, bricks and more – each category has a handful of preset materials as well.

While the left arrow in the V-Ray editor pulls up the material library list, the right arrow will open up the layered material editor.

Here, you can make adjustments to the material’s transparency, opacity, reflection, refraction and more.

For instance, you can adjust the roughness of a material or change the glossiness, and you can even fine-tune the colour and brightness settings to make it as realistic as you want.

To save time, you can also use the Quick Settings collection available in the V-ray asset editor.

This section includes a range of settings that you can apply with just one click, making it easier to experiment and find the look you want.

Note:

Installing V-Ray automatically downloads the materials library, but you can easily add and manage additional material libraries by downloading them from online repositories.

Getting started with V-Ray Materials

Beginners to materials for V-Ray will find the Quick Settings feature an excellent way to get started.

Simply pick a material from the asset editor and then select a preset setting. This will instantly alter the preview of your material to give you an idea of what it will look like in a render.

By default, the preview is set to show a ball or sphere, but this can be changed to better represent the model in your render.

For example, you could select the fabric option or a floor option or set the wall option to view the material on a flat plane.

Through the preview, you’ll get a better idea of how the material will look with applied lighting, such as how glossy or reflective the material will be.

Here’s a quick walk-through of how you can use Quick Settings in V-Ray to a colour material:

Open the V-Ray Asset Editor or the SketchUp materials window – remember that you can use either one, but some find it easier to use the asset editor directly.
Click your chosen material.
Click the drop-down that opens up – this will give you the available Quick Settings.
Choose a preset that looks close to what you want – maybe it’s a “metallic” setting, textured concrete, or something more reflective like glass.
Observe how this setting affects the preview in terms of lighting, reflections, etc.
Play around with the adjustments. For instance, tone down or brighten up the lighting or adjust the glossiness and colour of the material.
Once you’re happy with the settings, click Apply, and you should see your changes instantly applied to the preview in SketchUp.

Since the Quick Settings facility allows you to rapidly explore the available options, you can use this feature to get more comfortable with the various settings. Then you’ll be able to go in and fine-tune the materials as you get more experienced.

How to install V-Ray Materials

The default materials library that comes when you install V-ray is a good starting point, but for more control and variety, you’ll eventually want to build up your own library of materials.

Luckily, you can find many of these online, and the sheer number of options available means you can create almost any look you want.

For instance, this V-Ray materials resource has a massive selection of materials, such as:

V-Ray fur
Plastics
Liquid
Cloth
Stone
Transparent
Organic
Etc.

In addition, they also have special materials for architecture and automotive, along with special effects and textures.

It’s easy enough to find, download, and install these materials from online sources. Here’s what you can do:

To get started, find the material you want. For instance, you can Google the phrase “V-Ray materials for architecture,” and you’ll find many sources.
Next, once you’ve chosen a material set, download it by clicking on the provided link.
Most online sources for V-Ray materials compress the files into a zip folder because multiple files are typically involved in each material. Unzip this folder somewhere on your computer.

Now you’re ready to install the files in your V-Ray asset editor. Here’s how to do it:

First, open SketchUp or the V-Ray asset editor.
Then, go to the “Material” menu, then click on the “Get Material” button.
Next, on the top left-hand corner of the window, click on the arrow and select “Open material library.”
After that, you’ll be prompted to select the file you want to open. Go to where you unzipped the material files and select it.
Upon clicking, you’ll see all the materials in the set appear in a list.
Click on each material to preview it and decide if you want to use it.
Then, click “OK” when you’re done, and the material will be added to your library.
You can now use it in your project.

Keep in mind that the more complex the material, the more files you’ll have to install. So double check that you’ve installed all of the necessary files before moving on.

Make things easier with V-Ray Materials

It’s no surprise that V-Ray has won not just multiple awards but also the hearts of millions of architects, 3D designers, and visualizers who rely on its power to create stunning visuals.

Through features such as Quick Settings and the easy installation of materials, V-Ray makes creating photorealistic renders easier than ever, especially in tandem with platforms like SketchUp.

The materials library that comes with V-ray is an excellent place to start, but don’t hesitate to explore online resources to find the perfect material for your project.

Materials for V-Ray are just one of the many powerful tools you can take advantage of as a SketchUp user.

Check out our wide range of SketchUp tutorials to help you master 3D modelling, rendering, and more. Our SketchUp Pro resources and tips can also help you get the most out of this powerful 3D modelling software.

Finally, grab your FREE 7-day trial of SketchUp Pro by signing up here!

Garden Design for Beginners in SketchUp

Posted on November 23, 2022December 07, 2022 by Charlotte Lee

There’s nothing quite as lovely as relaxing in a beautifully designed, fit-for-purpose outdoor space, whether it’s something sleek and contemporary focusing on a variety of greenery or a bloom-filled space with traditional good looks at its heart. If you’re exploring the exciting subject of garden design for beginners, this article is for you. We’re going to reveal a host of cool and useful garden design tips for beginners, aimed to inspire. Read on to find out the steps you’ll need to take to design a garden, understand the space, and know the best tools for garden design. Welcome to our guide to simple garden design for beginners.

Steps to Design a Garden

So far all you’ve got is an empty outdoor space, with or without a lawn. Maybe you have a part-designed garden and you want to bring all the elements together in a creative way that works both visually and practically. Maybe you want to redesign an existing garden. Whatever your goal, it can be hard to know where to start. While embarking on a garden design project can be daunting, SketchUp makes the whole process fun and easy. So first in our garden design tips for beginners article, here’s an idea about the things you’ll need to think about along the way. For the purposes of this article let’s imagine you’ve been asked to design a garden for a client. But the steps are the same whatever your starting point, whatever the project, even if it’s you designing your own garden.

Step one is the initial consultation and brainstorming phase. If there’s no client you won’t need to figure out what they want, so you can dive right into the exciting brainstorming bit. What are the priorities you need to think about? Do you want it to be an entertainment space, or a place where gardening itself is the focus? Will children be using the space, and if so what age are they? Should it take safety into account for elderly people or does it need to be pet friendly, avoiding poisonous plants that can harm cats and dogs?

Step two in our guide to simple garden design for beginners is all about getting to know the site in intimate detail. A detailed site survey will involve essentials like taking accurate measurements of the space. Bear in mind it’s always best to measure at least twice to make sure you’ve got it right. You’ll also need to pin down peculiarities like drain covers and access to water and sewage pipes. You might need to think about electricity cables or the buried equipment feeding into a ground source heat pump. If the land slopes it matters because you need to consider drainage to avoid potential flooding and stop large amounts of water gathering. Then there are existing features like patios, sheds, ponds, trees and other planting. It’s important to know that these days, every tree is precious.

Step three involves creating your design concepts and mood board. Now you understand the scope of the space and you’ve decided on the client’s – or your own – requirements, you can get down to putting together an exciting collection of images, colours, materials and surfaces to play with, which represent what you’re considering for the final design. You might choose the elements based on their colour, the materials they’re made from, the fact that they flower or fruit at different times of the year, the maintenance, the weather, and all the things that will either restrict or direct the design.

Step four in our tips on garden design for beginners, you’ll draft a concept plan – and this is where SketchUp is extremely useful. It’s really easy and fast to draft garden design ideas in SketchUp, and the representations you make will look wonderfully realistic. Assuming you’ve got the measuring bit right from the start, your ideas and inspiration should flow. Aim to nail down all of your key planting, garden furniture layout, and every other key garden design aspect you’ve specified.

Step five is the stage at which you transform your ideas into full garden design plans, all based on your original ideas in SketchUp. It’s a simple matter to draft a complete garden design. You should include details of all the hard landscaping – whether it’s walls or sunken areas, hills and hillocks or flat areas for dining and entertaining, wildlife areas and water features. Plus the planting and any existing features you’re planning to keep and work around.

Step six is the build itself, the garden design implementation. Because you’ve taken such care and put so much thought into each step, this part should go pretty smoothly. You might, of course, discover unexpected features either buried or hidden in some other way, but SketchUp makes it really easy to amend designs as well, so all is not lost.

Understanding Your Space

A garden site survey can make all the difference at this stage in the garden design beginner’s process, simply because it’s so rare to find an outdoor space that’s completely flat and a perfectly regular shape. These details need to be carefully surveyed and accurate measurements taken. You’ll have to get to grips with the entire space, measuring it with great care to support your design. This means identifying, locating and measuring every element of the space that can’t be moved or changed, for example existing paths, steps, patio, garden entrances, drain covers, gutters, and more.

It’s also sensible to make a note of all the different materials used within the garden, including grassed areas and block paving, concrete and paving stones, gravelled areas, borders and the rest. This level of intimacy, also covering the types, locations and sizes of trees and shrubs, is well worth noting. In garden design this deep level of knowledge and familiarity can make your eventual build so much easier and faster, with fewer hiccups and less potential for delay.

Best Tools for Garden Design

There’s a lot to be said for designing a garden the traditional way, with pen and paper, and it’s still useful. Drawing by hand is also a pleasure for many. Plenty of garden designers genuinely enjoy the process of sketching by hand, at least when they’re getting their basic early ideas together. On the other hand SketchUp is a far more powerful and flexible design tool, as well as being faster and great fun. Once you’ve got to grips with the tool your garden design ideas can flow as fast as your thought processes, which makes designing even more of a pleasure.

SketchUp is ideal for quickly capturing creative garden design ideas. It’s also ideal for trying out ideas in a way that provides a realistic 3D view of what the finished garden will look like, without having to do any real-life landscaping or garden modification. This means simple garden design for beginners can easily involve test driving radical ideas without having to actually do anything radical on the ground. You’ll feel free to take your designs to the max and beyond with confidence.

The benefits of SketchUp are the same whether you’re creating a brand new garden design from a blank space or a garden redesign where you’ll be keeping some of the legacy features, either making the most of them or disguising them by rolling them cleverly into your design. And the 3D design capabilities of SketchUp are genuinely awe-inspiring. You can realise your proposed garden design virtually and evaluate it, along with your client if there is one, using 3D walkthroughs that look startlingly realistic.

It’s fast and easy to make design tweaks and changes are easily achieved in SketchUp too, and every step of the process is easy and intuitive. As a garden design beginner you’ll love the way it supports learning as well as creating a professional looking garden design easily, having had fun doing it. A huge collection of tutorials and learning resources supports you all the way.

Because SketchUp garden designs can be readily shared for comment and collaboration it saves time and hassle making decisions. And the programme’s superb augmented reality and VR capabilities really bring gardens to life for yourself and the people you design for.

Last but not least, SketchUp generates the design documentation you need for a professional job via Layout. There’s a free version to play with, offering lots of exciting functionality, but once you’ve got to grips with it you’ll probably want to move to the brilliant all-singing, all-dancing SketchUp Pro, widely used and loved by professional garden and landscape designers across the globe.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our guide to garden design for beginners. We’d like to wish you years of happy garden design!

How to Design A Garden In LayOut SketchUp

Posted on November 16, 2022December 07, 2022 by Charlotte Lee

The great outdoors matters more than ever before thanks to covid, which left millions of us wanting to create an outdoor space that looks great, is a lovely place to spend time in, and ticks all the right garden design boxes. So, how do you design a garden from scratch? Easy. Use SketchUp. SketchUp gives you a brilliantly simple way to create imaginative garden designs in a creative way that doesn’t drive you nuts with complexity or tie you in technical knots. It’s easy to use, fun to work with, and the results are outstanding. Here’s everything you need to know about how to design a garden layout using the world’s best-loved garden design software tool. By the end of it you’ll be raring to go, full of inspiration.

Designing Gardens in SketchUp

First, let’s explore exactly why SketchUp is such a popular tool for designing gardens. From a practical perspective it’s available in a free version, which gives you an excellent way into the intricacies of professional-style garden and landscape design. And it’s an exciting process to experience because in SketchUp you’re designing in a 3D space. The sheer realism of the images you produce makes it so much easier to appreciate the look and feel of garden designs. It’s easy for clients and other stakeholders to ‘get’ the design and know where you’re coming from.

SketchUp is also really easy and fun to use, and fast to learn. There’s no steep learning curve to navigate, just a set of simple actions designed to get you where you want to be, quickly. Your workflow will feel smooth and logical, and you’ll create great results in no time. You’ll find it such a pleasure to generate fantastic 3D garden designs. Because SketchUp is totally intuitive, every garden design barrier is removed. There’s no gap between your own creativity and creative expression.

If you’ve ever seen a SketchUp 3D garden design model rendered into a photorealistic image, you’ll know how startlingly powerful it can be, perfect for experimenting and just as good for convincing clients and others about your ideas.

You won’t waste any time with SketchUp, either. A lot of the hard work has already been done. There’s an abundance of excellent extensions and plugins to support every aspect of quality 3D design, including rendering tools to bring your ideas to vibrant life with natural and man-made lighting effects. And there’s the legendary 3D warehouse, packed full of pre-designed 3D models that you can simply drag and drop into SketchUp, ready to impress. There’s no need to spend ages drawing a tree when there are countless realistic, beautiful 3D trees ready for you to use in any way you like.

The 3D warehouse is stacked with every sort of garden related object and feature, including trees and plants, water features, lawns, ponds, rockeries, rocks, garden furniture, aggregates, exterior lights, mazes, fences, walls, hedging, and much more. There are even some excellent examples of Garden Layout designs pre-created in SketchUp, which you can use, manipulate, experiment with and enjoy for work or play.

The relationship between SketchUp Layout and SketchUp is worth mentioning. While SketchUp is all about 3D modelling, its partner tool SketchUp Layout is an excellent 2D partner, responsible for creating 2D documentation from your 3D design in no time. It’s perfect for collaboration, drives enhanced productivity, and makes your workflow more of a pleasure as well as faster and more efficient end-to-end.

How to Design a Garden Layout in SketchUp

Here are some step-by-step bullet point instructions revealing exactly how to draft a garden layout design in SketchUp.

Make sure you choose the right units – inches or centimetres – in SketchUp. It’s important not to get them mixed up or your scaling will be all wrong from the offset
Use the SketchUp drawing tools – the pencil, rectangle, arc and the rest – to draft the overall shape of your garden layout. Whatever drawing tool you choose you’ll find it intuitive and simple
Bear in mind the structures and buildings may already have been modelled
Draw your garden-paths, patio, borders, fences, walls and anything else you want to include
Set your dimensions to match the required layout design
Apply different materials to the garden surfaces. You might want to create a gravelled area, a tarmac turning circle for a driveway, or a beautiful grassed lawn
Check out the 3D warehouse to see if you can make any handy shortcuts by using pre-created features like trees, streams, rockeries, ponds and entertainment equipment like barbecues and outdoor ovens – then import the pre-made models you want from the 3D warehouse and scale them to match your own garden layout dimensions
It’s easy to move your imported 3D elements around in the space to create the garden design you want
Once the garden layout design is completed and looking the way you like it, it’s time to create your 2D layout
First, save your 3D model
Then, in SketchUp Pro, go to: File > Send to Layout. You’ll see the layout prompts for template selection – plain paper is usually a good option
It’s good to know the tools in Layout work exactly the same way as they do in SketchUp, keeping things nice and simple
You can easily switch back and forth between Layout and SketchUp, making changes along the way so everything’s perfect
SketchUp uses the concept of a camera to create views, and the results are amazing. Your Standard Views are: Top, Bottom, Front, Back, Left, Right and Iso
For your Garden Layout view you’ll want to make a plan (Top) view of your garden design
Select your Top view of the Garden Layout, then print it by selecting: File > Print
Alternatively, switch back into SketchUp to make design changes easily and quickly
If you ever get stuck or want to learn more faster, try the extensive SketchUp tutorial collection, a great way to learn even more about this popular 3d drawing and design tool

It really is that easy and pleasurable to learn how to design a garden from scratch. Once you’re into the swing of it, which won’t take long, you’ll be able to draw almost as quickly as your imagination works, opening up a whole new world of creative efficiency, professionalism, and variety. Enjoy your garden design job more, love creating a beautiful garden for your own home.. it’s all at your fingertips thanks to SketchUp.

SketchUp Plugins for Woodworkers

Posted on November 11, 2022March 23, 2023 by Charlotte Lee

So you’re exploring SketchUp woodworking? You already know it’s used by thousands of talented woodworkers and carpenters around the globe to design wonderful things quickly, easily and accurately. But you’ve also heard about extensions, basically the same thing as plugins, extra tools you can use to make your life even easier and more pleasurable. Let’s take a good look at the best SketchUp extensions for woodworking. By the end of this article you’ll know which plugins will support your work, enhance it, and bring you even more of SketchUp’s legendary functionality. Here’s how using SketchUp for woodworking will improve the way you work, speed things up, and open a brand new world of fresh ideas to take you to the next level.

What are SketchUp Plugins

First, what are SketchUp woodworking plugins? SketchUp Plugins are extra tools developed by members of the SketchUp community. They do it for free, dedicated to enhancing the programme’s excellent native tools and making SketchUp more useful by adding tools that are not available natively. Native, by the way, simply means the fixed tools designed into the programme.

If you’re wondering, the terms ‘plugin’ and ‘extension’ are mostly interchangeable in SketchUp. The difference is that plugins can have the .rb file extension, but extensions tend to be more robust, using the file extension: .rbz. Whichever you choose it’ll be intelligently designed to make your workflow easier, more creative, and faster.

You can install SketchUp plugins using the automatic method or the manual method. You install .rbz plugins from inside SketchUp itself with one click. The .rb format is just as easy to install but you do it manually using a simple drag and drop process. So which ones will you find you need to use the most often as a woodworker or carpenter? Next, let’s dive into some of the very best SketchUp Extensions for Woodworking.

OpenCutList

OpenCutList is available from the extension warehouse and it won’t cost you a penny. One of the best SketchUp extensions for woodworking, it’s free. The extension produces 100% accurate cut lists and cutting diagrams for woodworking or similar projects. A cut list is a list of all the parts needed to build a woodworking project, containing a number for each part along with its thickness, width, and length. Obviously it’s really important to get your cutlist right first time, since otherwise you could end up wasting money because you’ve bought too much of something or having to buy more because you didn’t buy enough in the first place, neither of which is good for clients, deadlines, and profit margins. Using SketchUp with this extension is a great aid for woodworking projects, and like everything to do with the programme it’s nice and easy to use.

This SketchUp woodworking plugin works by examining your components and the material properties of a scene, automatically creating a list of parts and cutting diagrams based on properties of the material, whether it’s solid wood, sheets of wood, dimensional timber or edge banding. You can change the grain direction, trimming sizes, saw kerf width, part oversizes, standard sizes of panels and more, and easily find parts in your model by highlighting them then indicating the grain direction and component orientation. It deals with offcuts and panels with ease. You can print or export the part lists and cutting diagrams and import objects from a CSV file.

CutMap

The CutMap extension creates in-model cutting diagrams or cutlists from SketchUp models. In-model cutlists let you use the power of SketchUp to view, examine, and modify your cutlists. Importantly, this means you can easily adjust them as you need to from inside your 3D design model. It’s yours for free from the extension warehouse. Sadly it isn’t compatible with the latest version of SketchUp… yet. The Beta version is available for you to play with, so watch this space. It’s such a handy tool it’ll probably be joining the rest soon.

GKWare Stairmaker

Whether you’ve designed a staircase before or not, you can probably appreciate how complicated they are to design, with so many design inter-dependencies and tensions. It’s a physics thing, and GKWare Stairmaker makes short work of it for you. It’s yours on a 7 day free trial basis then it costs just $50 for a non-expiring licence that lasts forever. One of the best SketchUp extensions for woodworking, this is a superb extension for the creation of curved and straight stairs and comes with a wealth of exciting options. There’s even a really good, detailed manual written by the plugin’s creator.

Stringers can be housed, also called routed, or sawtooth, also called cut. You can make closed or open riders with ease and flare or progressively flare the treads. It’s easy to change the thickness and depth of each Stringer and you’ve got total control over the thickness of treads, risers, landing thickness, nosing depth, bullnose radius and more. You can convert the stair tread drawings from 2D to 3D and name your own stair style with its own saved parameters. As you can imagine this takes designing staircases – even spiral ones – to a different level, making it easier to be creative while getting all the technical aspects right the first time.

VMS Up

There are free and paid versions of VMS Up available, and an annual licence costs $46. This is a complete set of SketchUp woodworking tools. The VMS-Up package is a virtual woodworking shop that taps directly into your everyday processes. It handles essentials like mortise and tenon machining, domino or slat assembly, groove and moulding machining, and hardware installation with flair, letting you focus on the creative side of things. It’s all about faster, more accurate, better quality design and modelling.

The tools in this set use the same language you already use in your working life, making it intuitive. Using SketchUp for woodworking is even more fun when you can easily design your model in three dimensions realistically and professionally, and know the manufacturing and assembly will go smoothly. The package is also great for making side drawings. The VMS-Up package is available only from Adebeo, and there are some really good video tutorials to check out. On the downside, many of them are in French. But you can still understand what’s happening on the screen, and Google translate can turn the transcript into English for you. Just copy and paste the transcript from inside YouTube then drop it into the online translator.

K2WS_Tools

K2WS_Tools is available in the extension warehouse and there’s a free version to play with. This is how you create real furniture joints in models. It’s important to know this one only works on components, so don’t try it with anything else.

The tool includes a Mortise & Tenon Joint Option, Loose Tenon, Biscuits and Dowels, Domino function, Box Joints, Dovetails, Screw Holes, and Pocket Screw Holes. Some people call it the Dovetails Tool, which makes perfect sense. It’s compatible with SketchUp 2021. If you’d like to check it out there are some YouTube videos to watch, including demos and a drawing scene. Apparently, although the author’s site hasn’t been updated since 2014, it still works like a dream.

SketchUp plugins and extensions are supported by a load of handy tutorials. You can use the extensions with SketchUp free, now called SketchUp Web, and the Pro version. Now all you need to do is go design something amazing!

Landscape lighting design in SketchUp

Posted on November 09, 2022December 12, 2023 by Charlotte Lee

It looks uncannily real. It optimises your workflow, brings your ideas to vibrant life, and delights your clients. We’re talking landscape lighting design, and SketchUp makes it ridiculously easy. You’ll quickly learn how to apply day and night, natural and man-made lighting, all with a few clicks. Creating an awe-inspiring variety of effects, from dawn to dusk, sunny to dull, summer to winter is simpler than you might think. So how do you design outdoor landscape lighting? If you’re researching landscape lighting design, this article reveals all about how to do it in SketchUp, one of the world’s best-loved 3D design tools. Here’s how to plan outdoor landscape lighting like a pro, creating hyper-convincing effects for fun and at work.

How to Add Light in SketchUp

It’s simple to add convincing lighting to a SketchUp model, whether it’s garden lighting or to show the way the sun shines on a space as the day passes. It’s a great way to figure out where the shaded areas will be, and where lighting might enhance a design as well as make the space safer after dark.

Interior light in SketchUp lets you present a huge variety of interior lighting as accurately as the real thing. Light your design with different colours, render realistic shadows, simulate bright sunshine and make reflections so real they’re photographic, it’s all so simple.

There’s a variety of SketchUp Extensions to do the landscape lighting design job, rendering light sources for you in no time, including the popular V-Ray extension. The V-Ray asset editor lets you fine-tune your render settings. Open the ‘lights’ tab to add sunlight by default. Choose another option from a menu of sun-related parameters including colour, intensity, and size. To turn the sun off, simply disable it.

An alternative light source like a dome light comes with exciting parameters, too. Increase the light’s intensity to brighten a rendered image if you like. HDRI – High Dynamic Range Imaging – is fantastic for making detailed shadows and real-looking highlights. Once you get going you’ll love producing such hyper-realistic renderings, and so will your clients.

You’ll also enjoy exploring the 3D Warehouse, stuffed with pre-made outdoor lighting models you can download, play with and use in your own designs. The outdoor lighting section for example, contains goodies like modern and traditional lamp post designs, wall lighting, pendant lights and loads more, all free to use.

How to Plan and Design Outdoor Landscape Lighting

3D renderings of landscape designs present many challenges, but SketchUp plugins take the pain out of the landscape light creation process, making it inspiringly fast – which drives better creativity and saves you a lot of time. It helps to get familiar with interior 3D rendering in SketchUp. So how, exactly, do you create realistic exterior renderings? For now, focus on just one extension, VRay. Once you’ve got to grips with it, the other light rendering extensions are easy to drive.

First, make yourself a pre-designed 3D landscape and take it to the ‘rendering ready’ stage. Choose a realistic height to create the rendered view from, usually head height, about 1.67 metres. Then set it using the lookaround tool. Try using the ‘two point perspective’ popular with architectural designers. Now you’ve completed the ‘shot’ of the 3D design, it’s time to set up your lighting options:

· Turn on material override

· Setup glass so that it can’t be overridden

· Setup draft render settings that render quickly as you make changes

· Set camera exposure settings

There are two options to light a daytime scene, Dome light and Sunlight. VRay Sun creates realistic shadows and reflections but uses a default background you might want to replace, something you can do via Photoshop. Dome lighting gives you the most realistic lighting, background and reflections. The only downside is the work you need to set it up.

You can use realistic materials on all the surfaces in the shot. Just select the right materials for each. You can also add more exterior 3D elements like plants, trees, and rocks. Just be aware it uses up additional SketchUp resources.

VRay’s lighting options model almost every kind of exterior lighting including Mesh light, Sphere light and Spot light as well as the sun. And you can put the lights anywhere in your design then adjust the parameters in VRay to get the perfect Light colour, Light intensity, the angle of the light and more.

These exciting landscape lighting design capabilities let designers model realistic light from all sorts of exterior lighting – from uplighters to spot lights to garden lights. You can light specific areas and destinations in the landscape, maybe a patio or seat where people will sit and relax, or an outdoor entertainment area with a BBQ, chiminea and garden furniture. Light a pathway, a gateway, an entrance and exit, a route through the landscape, anything you like. You can even try and test various lighting designs in the 3D model. Once you’ve configured the lighting the way you want, you can change the camera settings to achieve perfect rendering.

Whatever you design for the great outdoors it’ll look so real it’ll convince every stakeholder, making it so much easier to get agreement, approval, and sign-off.

Now you know how to design outdoor landscape lighting, and how to plan outdoor landscape lighting with flair. Go create light, and make your designs more realistic than ever before. If you like, download a free 7 day trial of SketchUp Pro and have fun playing with light. You might also enjoy browsing through the many tutorials on lighting exteriors in SketchUp, designed to make life even easier.

Sketchup For Construction

Posted on November 04, 2022December 16, 2022 by Charlotte Lee

Using SketchUp for Construction Drawings

Have you been looking for information about SketchUp for construction? SketchUp construction design software is widely used in your sector, a respected and popular tool used to speed up design, making the entire process smoother and faster. SketchUp Pro lets you identify potential issues before they become real-world problems, figure out a fair price for a construction project, and help your clients understand the plans more clearly and easily than ever before. Here’s what you need to know about the benefits of creating top class SketchUp construction drawings. By the end of this article you’ll know exactly why it’s such a good idea to know how to build a house in SketchUp.

SketchUp 3D Construction Modelling

SketchUp 3D construction modelling capabilities provide incredibly valuable design visualisation. As someone who works in the construction sector building plans are second nature to you, but not necessarily for your less-experienced clients. SketchUp construction documents make it a whole lot easier for non-experts to understand your plans.

SketchUp Viewer lets people investigate, evaluate and explore construction design projects before they’re brought to life, something that saves money, time and hassle. It means you can carry out revisions at an early stage before actually committing to the final construction documentation. SketchUp construction plans even come with the capability to use AR/VR to evaluate the different construction design options virtually. It’s a powerful tool that’s very easy to use as well as fun. And that makes it the perfect choice for construction contractors, small and large.

SketchUp for Construction Drawings

SketchUp for construction, using SketchUp Pro in conjunction with Layout, is a brilliant way to create accurate, useful, clear construction drawings directly from 3D models. It can be done in two ways, each with its own pros and cons.

Firstly, you can get the 2d information from the model itself. This means the model has to be very accurate in the first place. It’s important to add colour and texture to the interior of the elements so the sectioned model is good and clear. It also helps to apply a different colour or texture to each different kind of material. Using this method means your plans and sections are always closely related to the model. When you make a change in 2d it doesn’t take much work to make it appear in 3d. On the down-side the modelling takes longer and you need to know all about the construction of the building in detail.

Alternatively you can generate a 2d group in SketchUp that contains all the 2d info you need, generated simply by right-clicking on the section plane. When you edit this group you can add all the fine detail you need to create accurate plans and sections. It’s handy not having to model everything in detail and being able to control the level of detail, but on the down side there’s no link between the model itself and the Layout presentation. Plus, the details of the section cut involves a 2d job, something SketchUp isn’t primarily designed for. On the other hand there are always TIG 2D Tools to rely on, and Layout itself helps a lot.

Layout lets you include essentials like dimensions, labels and text, all of which matter when you’re trying to get the details of a construction project across quickly, clearly and accurately. In exactly the same way you’d use old-school word processor tech, you type text into the drawing area. You can also import text from a file or even add Auto-Text defined on special fields inserted into the document. And the text can be formatted to your brand for great brand synergy.

Labels and dimensions are impressive. Labels come with an arrowed leader line which makes it easy to highlight individual elements. It can show Auto-Text as well as data from a SketchUp model. And dimensions display measurements either on the page or from a SketchUp model. You can share your SketchUp drawings in a variety of popular standard formats and import them into different CAD software tools. And you can print SketchUp for construction drawings easily, which is great when you prefer to work from printed diagrams rather than a screen.

Would you like to check out how to use more aspects of this great tool? Take a look at our tutorials, then figure out whether you need the free or Pro version via our handy comparison page.

Now you know what Sketchup drawings, Sketchup dimensions and Sketchup diagrams can do for you. Will you be harnessing the amazing power of SketchUp Pro for your next construction project?

How are arcs made? Every arc you draw naturally contains 12 segments, but you can ask the programme to use more or less. More segments will make an arc smoother, but it’s more resource-hungry for Sketchup. Using fewer segments makes things faster but there’s a pay-off in the form of an arc that might look a bit blocky. It depends on the purpose of your drawing. For client-ready work, you might want to make things look as smooth as possible. For an initial sketch or early draft you might be OK with fewer segments and a less-smooth Sketchup curved surface.

Designing a Water Garden with SketchUp Garden Design Software

Posted on November 02, 2022December 12, 2023 by Charlotte Lee

What a fantastic project! Designing a water garden is an inspiring task but comes with challenges. While things can get complicated, water garden design software handles a lot of the complexities for you. SketchUp garden design is a popular choice with landscape architects, garden designers and even ordinary homeowners who just want to design a water garden they’re proud of. If you’re bust researching software for water garden design, this is your page. By the end of it you’ll have a clear picture of how SketchUp supports design brilliance every step of the way by speeding up your workflow, enhancing your creativity, and convincing your clients. You’ll have a wonderful time creating beautiful outdoor spaces with a water focus. Read on to find out how.

Introduction to SketchUp Garden Design

SketchUp is great for garden and landscape design. It won’t take long before you’re using its water garden design software elements without thinking about it, it’s so intuitive. You’ll work with confidence and flair, quickly bringing your garden and landscape designs to life. You’ll make totally accurate 2D drawings in no time, which you’ll transform into stunning and highly engaging 3D models of your ideas. It’s extremely easy to get started with landscape and garden design using SketchUp, too. How come? You build realistic landscape surfaces and terrains with just a few clicks.

It’s a simple matter to import real terrain imagery of every kind via SketchUp’s geo-location facility, perfect when you need to be 100% accurate. And you’ll love the way you can import excellent 3D models from a choice of literally thousands of entourage objects, free from the SketchUp 3D warehouse and including essentials like vegetation, vehicles, garden features and garden lighting. They’re all free, and easy to use in your own designs in any way you fancy.

Designing a Water Garden with SketchUp

The SketchUp 3D warehouse is a massive resource for SketchUp users, and it’s growing all the time as users add their own pre-defined creations to the collection. If you want to add water features to your water garden design there’s a huge choice, from a variety of ponds to fountains, water features and garden furniture. But there’s a lot more than watery resources in the warehouse. There are also trees, shrubs and plants of every kind plus entire pre-created gardens for you to download and play with. There’s garden furniture of every type and style, lawns, decorative aggregates… and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

These cool pre-designed elements provide an abundance of inspiration for SketchUp garden design projects including water, as well as saving lots of time and effort when you’re designing a water garden. So how simple is it? Let’s take a look. Here’s how to use SketchUp to design a water garden.

Use the rectangle tool to define the basic garden shape
Use the 2 point arc tool to create curves wherever you want them
Create depth using the offset and push/pull tools
Remove unwanted lines
Group the pond elements into one object
Use the ‘Materials’ feature in SketchUp to create realistic surfaces on the walls and the ground, anything from real stone-effect to gravel, brick, paving, grass, you name it
To draw the water all you do is choose ‘water’ from the materials list, and use the bucket tool to apply water to the pond
Select items from the SketchUp 3D warehouse to complete your water garden design – such as plant pots, furniture, and water features like streams and fountains
Scale your design up or down instantly with the Scale tool

That’s it. See how simple it is? Can you imagine how much fun you’ll have when you get the basics sorted so quickly? SketchUp is such a great tool for garden design, the perfect way to fully express your idea and innovations, creativity and skill. The end result is beautifully-rendered, engaging 3D models that are hyper-real, with water that looks watery, lit to perfection using powerful exterior lighting plug-ins.

Inspired? Would you like to give it a go? Try the Pro version of SketchUp free for 7 days here. And explore the countless exciting tutorials we’ve put together to help you get where you want to be in no time. This is your doorway to everything that’s best about 3D design in one place.

The Best Free Extensions For SketchUp Pro In 2023

Posted on October 28, 2022May 25, 2023 by Charlotte Lee

Are you new to SketchUp? Maybe you’ve been playing with it for a while, now you’re ready to dive deeper. This article reveals the best free extensions for SketchUp to extend your capabilities, boost your creativity, save time, get more done and love the whole experience even more. Read on to find out which of the greatest free SketchUp extensions in town. Use these and your drawings will spring into even more vivid life. Read on if you’re an architect, want to design your own garden, create an interior for a client, or want to find out how far you can go with SketchUp. The answer is ‘anywhere you want’. Let’s go. By the end of this article you’ll know which best-rated extensions users like best.

Soap Skin & Bubble

Soap & Skin Bubble is a popular free SketchUp extension choice, a fluid and fast way to model curved surfaces. Think the roof of Brighton & Hove Albion’s Community Stadium, with its graceful open curved structure. How do you make a shape like that without using a lot of different steps and a lot of time? This plugin does it for you quickly, and the results are stunning.

It’s this simple. First make a Skin, a mesh you generate from a close-edge loop. Choose the edges, click on the Skin button, then give it a subdivision value and click Enter. The higher value you use, the smoother the surface will be.

Now you can pull the shape around to make bubbles. Select and click Bub to apply simulated pressure to the form and make it bubble like hills and valleys in a landscape, the curves of a human face, or curved furniture. You can inflate the surface in either direction, using positive or negative Values, until you get the shape you want. It is a lot of fun to play with, and the more you experiment the more useful you’ll find this cool tool.

Developed by Josef L and yours for free in the SketchUp Extension Warehouse, it makes curved surfaces super-easy. This is a safe and stable plugin, a dream to use and ideal for drawing organic models.

Tools on Surface

Tools on Surface is another of the best free extensions for SketchUp. It lets you use native tools like line, arc, circle, rectangle, and offset on curved surfaces, great news when you want to divide up your faces and apply different materials. You’ll learn how to draw on curved surfaces like circles, polygons, and rectangles quickly, and you’ll appreciate the inference mechanism, dedicated eraser, and contour editor.

This is a wonderful extension since SketchUp’s native drawing tools are built for drawing on flat surfaces. Because they don’t fare well on irregular and curved surfaces, Tools On Surface fills the gap. The drawing tools draw on anything and everything.

Maybe you want to cut a curved surface in half. The Line tool does it in a flash. Begin your line at the top of the surface, end it at the bottom, and the line joining them follows the curved surfaces perfectly for superb quality work. Perhaps you want to draw on a landscape. The same goes, it’s easy to draw loops of lines or arcs to cut things up, drafting on the terrain itself. This one’s been developed by Fredo6 and it’s free to download on SketchUcation.

Flowify

Powerful, fast and flexible, Flowify is a star. When you want to bend a group or component to match a quad surface – a target surface with four vertices – it makes life so easy. Align the initial surface perpendicular to your quad surface, select both geometries, then click the Flowify button. It is that simple. Compatible with both MacOS and Windows, it has been developed by Anders L and is free at the Extension Warehouse.

Getting practical, this popular member of our best free SketchUp extensions list bends geometry along a surface. It lets you design a segment of a complex decorated dome, say a sixteenth, then create the entire dome accurately and quickly in a few clicks. A spiral staircase design is just as easy. Create one accurate segment, map the geometries, and click a few times to draw the entire staircase. You can easily make patterns on complex faces, bend shapes along faces, and bend a logo around the face of a sphere. In a nutshell, it makes modelling along surfaces a pleasure.

SketchUp CleanUp

This handy free SketchUp extension is a fast and efficient way to optimise your models. It gets rid of everything you don’t need any more to leave your work free from messy hidden geometry, stray edges, and duplicate faces. It’s particularly good when you import .3dm and .3ds files full of resource-heavy geometry data.

CleanUp gets rid of unwanted data as well as cleverly merging identical materials and linked co-planar faces. It fixes duplicate component definition names in model scope, purges unused items and removes hidden geometry, erasing duplicate faces and lonely edges that aren’t on a cut plane. Extra edge material disappears. It repairs split edges to smooth and soften the drawing.

Leave it too long, let it get too messy, and your model can become hard to work with. This is how to make tidying up easy, great when you’re in full creative mode and not thinking about housekeeping. Developed by ThomThom, SketchUp CleanUp is one of the very best free extensions for SketchUp, yours for free at the Extension Warehouse.

Slicer

Slicer lets you slice up SketchUp models accurately and fast. It’s useful when you want to make models of designs, slicing them up to your specifications even when they’re very complex. You can slice 3D models into a specified number of pieces for 3D printing, laser fabrication, or cutting with a CNC router.

Take any solid object and slice it up any way you like, as long as it doesn’t have any holes in it. The tool only works with solids. Take a group of geometry then select the axes you’d like to slice it along. Set the spacing and thickness of the slices, and the spaces in between. Then slice the model along the x y and z axes, plus any custom axes you’ve made. Choose ‘flattened object’ and the tool lays out all the slices as components.

Quad Face Tool

Quads are faces with four edges and four vertices. Quad Face Tool is a well-deserved member of our finest free SketchUp extensions list, actually an entire set of tools for creating and manipulating quads in SketchUp. You’ll also need to download it to use other extensions, including Curviloft and Vertex tools.

Quad Face Tools gives you accurate quad analysis to colourise shapes based on their geometry. Select Ring expands the number of objects selected based on objects you’ve already selected. Select Loops selects an entire line, saving you loads of time. The Convert Sandbox is perfect for converting tri-shaped sandbox grids into quads for modelling. The Convert Wireframe to Quads function generates quad based geometry from a wireframe grid.

Convert Triangulated Mesh to Quad means you can take a piece of 4 sided geometry with a triangulated edge then convert it to quad geometry. There are Triangulation Tools to change the way quads are triangulated, as well as removing and adding triangulation to objects. You can Build Corners and Build Ends, and use UV Mapping Tools to map textures to quad faces. Smooth and Unsmooth Quads lets you smooth and unsmooth quads, and Insert Loops adds geometry between chosen objects.

Developed by Thom Thom, it’s available free from the SketchUcation warehouse.

Instant Roof

Instant Roof makes instant hipped roofs by default and lets you create a whole load of more types of roofs. Make roof gables, roof hips, rafters and beams, tiles, shingles, and all sorts of different roof styles quickly. It’s easy to learn and because everything you need is inside the menu, there’s no need to memorise the icons.

Here’s how simple it is. To draw a roof, select a face then go to Plugins > Instant Roof > Make Roof. It covers every aspect of roof design and construction, perfect for architectural design and landscape design, with excellent instructions online. There’s even a paid version with a bigger choice of roof types.

To draw a roof with a gable, select an edge to tell the script where to draw the gable, or select two edges to create gables on both ends of the roof. Select three edges to make a shed. Choose from pre-set roof parameters or change them to make almost anything you need. Slopes, eaves, fascia, rafters – they’re all infinitely adjustable.

Mission tile, standing seam, sheet metal, they’re all covered. No wonder it’s one of the best free extensions for SketchUp. It’s ideal for town and city designers, art directors, set designers, even artists. When you want to make a good-looking, convincing roof in no time, this is how to do it. Available free from the Extension Warehouse, Instant Roof has been developed by Chuck Vali.

There are plenty more excellent free SketchUp extensions to try, play with, experiment with and enjoy. And that means whatever you want to draw, you can do it with SketchUp quickly and easily. There’s a huge number of tutorials too, to help you get to grips with the brilliance of SketchUp Pro.