Transport Centre

Hey guys, sorry that is has been a while between posts again. I reformatted and massively upgraded my computer a month ago (just after my last real post BTW). Now have a Core i7-3770 processor, 16GB of RAM, a new monitor and a shiny new case. Setting up all of that took half a week, kid you not!

Saunders Street Stadium is now complete and has been for a short while, however I have been massively lazy in actually posting the renders. I need to scale them down, I was able to make really big renders because of my new system. Kickass.

Furthermore, I have spent a fair bit of time working on more of my model extraction projects, and I hope I can show you some of the work in the coming weeks. It is really sweet seeing them take shape. 

Anyway, this blog isn't a Where's PompeY2J?, this is a blog post about a project. This project involves the design of a multi-modal transport centre. This features four train platforms, soon to be a bus station and some other cool stuff coming soon. Renders were just completed a couple of minutes ago. The project is still in its infancy, so bear with the absent textures and general lack of work so far.

While I am at it, I want to wish all my followers a very merry festive season.

Take care until next time

PompeY2J

Sunbus Queensland

Sunbus Queensland:

3D model by Rexfan2

The generic Google bus, fitted out in Sunbus livery. Sunbus operate routes through regional Queensland, including the Sunshine Coast, Townsville, Cairns and Rockhampton.

Saunders Street update

It's been a while since my last update, been very busy so haven't had any time for this project. But I have some new images. Work is now occurring on the areas surrounding the stadium, with the HQ and training pitch work ongoing now.

 New shot of the stadium. One can see the trees lining the exterior of the stadium.

 Ongoing work on the training pitch and HQ. The training pitch would also serve as an area for activities on matchdays.

 Shot of the exterior of the stadium, with the approach to the stands highlighted.

 Shot on the concourse, one can see the trees through the spaces in the facade.

Work on the approach to the stands for the northern end.

TUTORIAL: Working with Layers

OK, so I have had a request for an explanation on how to work with layers. I’ve seen a lot of people, particularly newcomers, start working on a nice new model, and then all of a sudden, they abandon the project because Sketchup is too slow. Sketchup is by no means the most powerful software, but if used right, you can make incredibly heavy projects (I’ve made one over 34 million polys) and still have your program work. 

Alright, for this tutorial I will be discussing how to use layers. Layers are a means by which Sketchup temporarily hides parts of your models that you are not working on. This speeds up the model immensely as you don’t need to wait for it to do all the calculations on areas you aren’t working on. To do this, I will show you the example of a stand, which will have seating added, before I retroactively add the layers. Make a small stand, as seen below. 

Now, add your seats.

You may notice that the model is a little bit less responsive now. To rectify this, we are going to turn off the seats. To do this, select all the seats in the model. This is able to be done by going to the components menu (Window – Components), clicking the home button (it looks like a house), then right-clicking on the seat component and selecting ‘Select Instances’.

Your screen should look something like this.

Next, we are going to go and add these seats to a layer. Go to Window – Layers, and click the plus button. Name it ‘seats’.

Next, right click on one of the seats, and go to Entity Info. Click on the ‘Layer’ dropdown menu and select ‘seats’.

Back on the Layers menu, uncheck the box next to the layer ‘seats’, and you will notice that the seats in your model disappear. They are still there, just hidden. Recheck the box, and the seats will come back.

If you click the circle next to the layer ‘seats’, you will change the default layer. This means that all lines you draw, objects you paste and so on will by default be located on the ‘seats’ layer. This is incredibly handy if you need to make a lot of work on one layer and want to save time, but make sure that you change the default layer back when you are finished working.

I hope this tutorial has helped provide the basics of working with layers for all of you. Good luck and happy modelling!

PompeY2J