Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Sketch Up!


A friend of mine in Madrid that does a lot of 3-D computer modelling recently showed me this program that he is playing around with. I thought those of you that are architecturally minded might be interested. I was truly amazed watching him pull corners and stretch shapes all the while instantly rendered (it even has some "sketchy looking effects"). Nothing like the old days in Chicago watching Alex pound away in the computer lab until his hands were simply bloody stumps and then sitting in despair to wait for the render to not work out correctly.
The photo is a concept building design that Javier imported from another modelling program.

1 comment:

Pete said...

They have this Sketch-Up program in the architecture lab at school, though I haven't used it yet. I've opened it and poked at it a bit, it looks like AutoCAD on a diet. I think it's for drafting ideas, before one would make the actual construction drawings.
And yes, the interfaces for these kinds of programs have improved ten-fold over the last decade.
One interesting thing about the architecture field is that, since being an architect means you have to wait till your forty to make anything like "your vision"; a lot of young architects are carrying over their architectural dreams into game design. Because real estate and building materials in virtual reality is much cheaper.
So will this recipricate into the actual built environment? Will most of our designers and architects in the future switch real-designs for game-space designs willy-nilly?