FSMC, thanks for the feedback.  Sounds like this would be a good topic to include in the documentation when I get to that point.  Perhaps some pointers to "best practices" that are readily available as e.g. YouTube tutorials?  It is certainly possible to create effiicent models in SketchUp if you follow the rules.

At the end of the export process my tool shows a summary that includes a polygon count.  Somewhere in my Googling I ran across polygon count recommendations for various object types in Daz; perhaps I can add some kind of check/warning about excessive polygon counts (if I can find those recommendations again).  In Trainz there is also a "polygon equivalent load" for each texture (about 300 polys, IIRC), that is also taken into account in determining the overall model load -- is there an equivalent in Daz?

Regards,
Mike

The scaling part I see as being very useful. You might want to include some kind of optimizer for the textures and/or mesh with the plugin as the majority of models in the warehouse use a ton of textures/are not UVMapped at all and are not properly modeled for other use. Looking forward to your progress.

The version of this tool for Trainz has about 5 years under its belt at this point, with almost 13,000 downloads so far, and I have indeed heard the same comments from my fellow Trainz community members.  After several attempts to automate the cleanup of SketchUp models, I finally concluded there was no single good way to do that which would suit everyone, and in the end I elected to simply transfer the models as they were, without any optimizations other than those that are standard for this type of work.  For example, my exporter can automatically eliminate unused faces; but you are right, there is no UV mapping and so textures are brought over in a fairly brute-force fashion.  If there are a lot of textures, and the creator used large images, then the model will be inefficient.  In fact the Salty Dawg Saloon is a terrible model - it has over 70 individual textures.  But it looks good; and if I want it (or something equally bad) for a backdrop in my scene, and am willing to take the performance hit in Daz, then I think that should be up to me.  By extension, I believe that same decision should apply to any potential user of this tool.

Bottom line, my goal is simply to provide a means of transferrring data intact from one environment to the other, in a relatively fast and painless way, and leave the optimizing up to the user (and leave the arguments about the "goodness" or "badness" of SketchUp to others as well).  Hopefully that makes sense.

Regards,
Mike

 

valid points, I was just looking out for other DS users as many have no idea of efficient modeling or UVMappiing, or how bad warehouse models are compared to other, more standard models. i develop for the MS flightsim community and there there have been numeruos attempts at using sketchup warehouse models in that game also from users that had no modeling experience and ran into these same issues. In the past with DS, performance wasn't as much of an issue as it is now with IRAY and models could be used that incorportaed inefficient modeling, but now vendors really should be looking at DS design the same way game develpers do with resources and performance in mind, but we are a long way off from that still.

Thanks for the hard work on the plugin, looking forward to it.

The scaling part I see as being very useful. You might want to include some kind of optimizer for the textures and/or mesh with the plugin as the majority of models in the warehouse use a ton of textures/are not UVMapped at all and are not properly modeled for other use. Looking forward to your progress.

The version of this tool for Trainz has about 5 years under its belt at this point, with almost 13,000 downloads so far, and I have indeed heard the same comments from my fellow Trainz community members.  After several attempts to automate the cleanup of SketchUp models, I finally concluded there was no single good way to do that which would suit everyone, and in the end I elected to simply transfer the models as they were, without any optimizations other than those that are standard for this type of work.  For example, my exporter can automatically eliminate unused faces; but you are right, there is no UV mapping and so textures are brought over in a fairly brute-force fashion.  If there are a lot of textures, and the creator used large images, then the model will be inefficient.  In fact the Salty Dawg Saloon is a terrible model - it has over 70 individual textures.  But it looks good; and if I want it (or something equally bad) for a backdrop in my scene, and am willing to take the performance hit in Daz, then I think that should be up to me.  By extension, I believe that same decision should apply to any potential user of this tool.

Bottom line, my goal is simply to provide a means of transferrring data intact from one environment to the other, in a relatively fast and painless way, and leave the optimizing up to the user (and leave the arguments about the "goodness" or "badness" of SketchUp to others as well).  Hopefully that makes sense.

Regards,
Mike

yep.. thats the biggest issue I have with Sketchup models... Thanks

A very useful endeavour.. One thing I find is that a lot of Sketchup models have flipped normals (in Sketchup, swith the face view to monochrome, anyting that sgows as pale blue is flipped) Will your utility be able to handle ths? Nornally what I do, is flip the faces in Sketchup, then export as OBJ, Import the OBJ into Bryce, than export as a new oby and import into Daz.. That seems to work, save for the excessive scaling that importing from Bryce does..

The Ruby plugin part of my tool looks at both front and back faces during export.  If a back face has a texture and the front does not, then it's assumed that this is an inside-out face, and the exporter auto-selects the back face.  Is that what you are asking?  The user does have control over this auto-selection algorithm, and can choose from several options for which geometry gets exported.

In terms of scaling - as I noted above, my tool does translate SketchUp units (internally it uses inches) to CM as required by Daz, thus (hopefully) eliminating an additional step.

HTH
- Mike

A very useful endeavour.. One thing I find is that a lot of Sketchup models have flipped normals (in Sketchup, swith the face view to monochrome, anyting that sgows as pale blue is flipped) Will your utility be able to handle ths? Nornally what I do, is flip the faces in Sketchup, then export as OBJ, Import the OBJ into Bryce, than export as a new oby and import into Daz.. That seems to work, save for the excessive scaling that importing from Bryce does..

The Ruby plugin part of my tool looks at both front and back faces during export.  If a back face has a texture and the front does not, then it's assumed that this is an inside-out face, and the exporter auto-selects the back face.  Is that what you are asking?  The user does have control over this auto-selection algorithm, and can choose from several options for which geometry gets exported.

In terms of scaling - as I noted above, my tool does translate SketchUp units (internally it uses inches) to CM as required by Daz, thus (hopefully) eliminating an additional step.

HTH
- Mike

I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes of this.  There's an amazing variety of models already available for Sketch-up and, while they're not really detailed enough to use in closeups, it's one of the easier programs for creating unique background architecture.  As it is, though, the commercial version with all the export options is a bit too pricey so a simplified way to get those models into DAZ would be extremely useful. 

I completely agree I am definitely interested in this.

However, until a better option (such as your project) becomes available, I will point out that there are free Sketchup plugins for Sketchup anvailable to export the Sketchup models in obj format which can be imported into DAZ.

A very useful endeavour.. One thing I find is that a lot of Sketchup models have flipped normals (in Sketchup, swith the face view to monochrome, anyting that sgows as pale blue is flipped) Will your utility be able to handle ths? Nornally what I do, is flip the faces in Sketchup, then export as OBJ, Import the OBJ into Bryce, than export as a new oby and import into Daz.. That seems to work, save for the excessive scaling that importing from Bryce does..

UPDATE:

I have posted a progress report at https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/169576/sketchup-importer-early-progress-report

Regards,
Mike

UPDATE:

A progress report has been posted in The Commons at https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/169576/sketchup-importer-early-progress-report

Comments are welcome (moderators, please let me know if I should be posting this kind of thing here instead - thanks).

Regards,
Mike

Hello all,

I posted a little while ago about an idea I had for making a direct SketchUp-to-Daz transfer path, based on a set of tools I had previously implemented for the Trainz Railroad Simulator.  I am pleased to report that -- while I am by no means even close to being finished, and there is considerable work yet to be done -- I have made significant progress and it seems that this is going to be a viable project worth pursuing to the proper conclusion.

Here is a model from the SketchUp 3D Warehouse, displayed in SketchUp 2017 (free version).  It's the "Salty Dawg Saloon", the author is JCHarrist.

Here is the same model in Daz Studio.  It was exported from SketchUp using the Ruby plugin portion of my tool, then imported into Daz and reconstructed using a very early version of what will eventually be the Daz Script portion of my tool.

As you can see the model comes in already scaled properly -- note the human figure vs. the building (it looks correct to me, at least).

It took 27 seconds to export this model from SketchUp (screen snip from the export log created by the Ruby script).

It took less than 5 seconds to import it into Daz and reconstruct it (screen snip from the Daz Script output window).

So... the total transfer time for this model, direct from SketchUp to Daz Studio, was about 1 minute, including the time needed to switch between applications.  The PC used in this example is a Lenovo ThinkPad laptop running Windows 10 Pro 64-bit, with a Core-i7 at 2.5GHz, 16GB of memory and an SSD main drive.

As you can see, the model sems to have transferred with good fidelity (at least I think it looks acceptable so far).   I do realize that I still need to work on texture transparency; in Trainz we have the luxury of having the graphics engine create opacity maps automatically based on the alpha channel of the image, but in Daz it appears that I will need to generate true opacity maps as separate images.  For the moment, for my "does it even work at all" testing, I am simply using the same image as is used  for the texture, but will of course be pursuing the correct solution.

As I said: Lots more work to do, but it appears this is a feasible project worth pursuing.

Thanks for your attention... comments are welcome.

Regards,
Mike

There's a free one at the Sketchup 3d warehouse, and it seems to import well into DAZ.. here's a qucik test with rudimentary texturing

Thanks for the feedback.

It's my impression from research conducted so far that SketchUp-OBJ to Daz is problemeatic in terms of material transfer and other isues.  There is also the need to have the Pro version of SketchUp in some cases.  It's my hope that the exporter I have in mind will provide a direct path from SketchUp to Daz that transfers a model with everything intact; but of course time will tell.

In Trainz, the SketchUp models came in as scenery items; in this case I envison them coming in as props.  At the moment I have no illusions of anything grander than this.

Regards,
Mike

I've had nothing but problems importing Sketchup-generated OBJs into Daz Studio; the meshes and UV mapping look just awful. The best technique I've found is to export .skp to .3ds, then import the .3ds file into Blender, and from there, export to either .dae* or .fbx*, then import that file into Daz. Complicated, yes, but it works - or at least it did work until my Sketchup Pro trial expired. There's no way to export to .3ds without buying Sketchup Pro, hence the need for a Sketchup-to-Daz plugin.

*OBJs are static props, whereas with .dae and .fbx all the components of a mesh are (usually) kept separate, which gives me more control over posing. It's a personal preference; others might find the static-ness of .obj more convenient.

definitely of interest to me too

I do export sketchup models to iClone 3Dxchange and also via a Sketchucation obj exporter using older versions but not without issues especially in DAZ studio.

It was actually the first 3D modeling app I ever used back in 2009 before I found Carrara 5.

Is it TIG's exporter? If not try that one, it's much better then the older one. Also I find doing DAE to Blender and Blender to OBJ is even better.

And there is ThomThom's Quadface Tools too... That has a pretty good OBJ exporter.

TIG OBJ Exporter: https://sketchucation.com/pluginstore?pln=OBJexporter

ThomThom Quadface Tools: https://extensions.sketchup.com/en/content/quadface-tools

BTW- Have you heard of WrapR?... It's a simple UV mapper based on Roadkill that work from SketchUp... I've tried the beta (it's taking a while) and it's pretty good for simple stuff.  WrapR: http://www.wrap-r.com

definitely of interest to me too

I do export sketchup models to iClone 3Dxchange and also via a Sketchucation obj exporter using older versions but not without issues especially in DAZ studio.

It was actually the first 3D modeling app I ever used back in 2009 before I found Carrara 5.

I can't help with the scripting, but most of the models I have made and uploaded to ShareCG were made in SketchUp, so I find this interesting.

Don't be discouraged if there does not see to be interest, I think a lot of people base their opinion of SketchUp on bad 3D warehouse models and are not aware of all the plugins available beyond the basic install of SU.

Good Luck.

Hi, everyone.  I'm new here, so please bear with me as I try to get my bearings.

I come here from the Trainz Railroad Simulator world, where I am the author of several software tools that community members have found useful over the past several years.  One of these is a plugin for SketchUp that allows models to be easily ported into the Trainz environment with just a few mouse clicks.  This tool works by creating an XML file that is then passed to a Trainz import utility, which in turn creates the necessary Trainz-format geometry files.  My plugin also creates all the other files needed by Trainz (configuration and so on).  After exporting from SketchUp, the user switches to Trainz Content Manager and imports the generated files directly, where they become immediately usable in the Trainz world-building application.  The models that transfer into Trainz are very high-fidelity and carry all the original textures, transparencies, and so on.

I am interested in doing something similar for Daz.  To that end I am considering writing a script in Daz that will read the XML files produced by my SketchUp Ruby plugin, and render the geometry and materials directly in Daz, after which they could be saved in a native Daz format and become useful in that environment.  I found the geometry pipeline example, which seems to show most of the functionality needed to do this, but I am having a hard time with what seems to be a lack of comprehensive documentation for Daz scripting.  I have consulted the Scripting API web pages, but have also found that many of the functions used in the pipeline example do not appear to be documented at all.

I am a professsional software engineer by trade, 33 years in the business, so writing the code is not the issue.  What I would kindly request is some pointers to places where I can find more information related to what I am trying to accomplish, and/or some script examples that might send me in the right direction.

Any help would be appreciated, and of course comments on the idea of a SketchUp-to-Daz pipeline are welcome.

Thanks for your attention.  If anyone would like to see what I've been able to accomplish for Trainz, please feel free to visit the relevant page of my web site at http://www.dhobh.net/trainz/GoogleSketchUp/RubyTMIX.htm.

Regards,
Mike

Hi, everyone.  I'm new here, so please bear with me as I try to get my bearings.

I come here from the Trainz Railroad Simulator world, where I am the author of several software tools that community members have found useful over the past several years.  One of these is a plugin for SketchUp that allows models to be easily ported into the Trainz environment with just a few mouse clicks.  This tool works by creating an XML file that is then passed to a Trainz import utility, which in turn creates the necessary Trainz-format geometry files.  My plugin also creates all the other files needed by Trainz (configuration and so on).  After exporting from SketchUp, the user switches to Trainz Content Manager and imports the generated files directly, where they become immediately usable in the Trainz world-building application.  The models that transfer into Trainz are very high-fidelity and carry all the original textures, transparencies, and so on.

I am interested in doing something similar for Daz.  To that end I am considering writing a script in Daz that will read the XML files produced by my SketchUp Ruby plugin, and render the geometry and materials directly in Daz, after which they could be saved in a native Daz format and become useful in that environment.  I found the geometry pipeline example, which seems to show most of the functionality needed to do this, but I am having a hard time with what seems to be a lack of comprehensive documentation for Daz scripting.  I have consulted the Scripting API web pages, but have also found that many of the functions used in the pipeline example do not appear to be documented at all.

I am a professsional software engineer by trade, 33 years in the business, so writing the code is not the issue.  What I would kindly request is some pointers to places where I can find more information related to what I am trying to accomplish, and/or some script examples that might send me in the right direction.

Any help would be appreciated, and of course comments on the idea of a SketchUp-to-Daz pipeline are welcome.

Thanks for your attention.  If anyone would like to see what I've been able to accomplish for Trainz, please feel free to visit the relevant page of my web site at http://www.dhobh.net/trainz/GoogleSketchUp/RubyTMIX.htm.

Regards,
Mike

You can look at the Google Warehouse for Sketchup. They often have downloadable OBJ and DAE to download and if not you can download an old version of Sketchup and export in the needed format. I think you need version 6 or version 7 if you were to do that.

The Montreal skyline is pretty impressive approaching it from Vermont.

Is there a working way to import a model from Daz into Sketchup? Collida is supposedly a direct route, but it only imports the figure, not the pose.