SketchUp to Artlantis :: SketchUp 3D Rendering Tutorials by SketchUpArtists

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SketchUp to Artlantis New eBook SketchUp to Layout

By Mr Wip

In this tutorial we are going to go through the basics from import of

SketchUp model to final render. I
will touch on all the important elements required to achieve your final render including the following:

Model Import, Cameras, Sun, Materials, Environment, Lights and Rendering.

You can also visit my website to see more of my work and further tips.
Matt
Donley's 'SketchUp to Layout' is the
essential guide to creating construction
documents with SketchUp Pro & Layout.
Now updated for SketchUp 2015!!!

Styles

Styles
The Beginning
A clever way to enhance your final
presentations is with the use of
Let’s take a simple SketchUp model with some colored boxes, a plan and a texture…there you are,
SketchUp Styles. Styles are collections
the stage is set.
of display settings. You can also use
Style Builder to create custom non-
photorealistic (NPR) Styles for SketchUp.

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NPR Styles can make your models

appear hand-rendered, super-technical,

and everything in between......Read

Latest News
Topographical Landscapes – hills

Topographical Landscapes – mountains

Topographical Landscapes – terraces

Digital Watercolor Painted in Photoshop

by Thanet Chanasakul

Making Of: “campus aerial” illustration

by Kirk Fromm

The Making of Oculus by Victor

Hernandez

Making of 3 Storey House Exterior by

Myren June

Changes affecting SketchUp 2013 and

SketchUp 8.

Basic Model Car Paint and Studio Setup – SketchUp

and V-Ray by Majid Yeganegi

PlusSpec Challenge – Present +

To import a SketchUp
model into Artlantis, you just have to choose in the first window that pops up Document – The SketchUp Layout
the skp. file type, and then the program will be able to load it
directly.  If everything has worked fine, Competition!
you should be looking at
something similar to the image below.

Artists/Authors
Adam Billyard

Adam Warner

Alex Hogrefe

Alex Jenyon

Christopher Polanski

Daniel Tal

David Macdonald

Do Phu Hoang Nguyen

Eric Lay

Frederic Yves Moro

Gian Martin Corso

Ibon Enriques

Jacques Cleghorn

Jason Christiansen

Jean-Pierre Hurel

Jeremy Kay

Jim Leggitt
Import Model
John Higgins

Jonathan Pagaduan Ignas

It is useful to keep in mind the fact that Artlantis separates the model file and the pictures (of the
Kate Marshall
textures) when it saves (SketchUp puts everything together in a kind of archive). So if you don’t want
to be surprised by a large amount of picture files around your model,  just place it directly in a folder Ken Nguyen

of it’s own, from the beginning and everything will be just fine. Kirk Fromm

Laurent Brixius
The software interface is, honestly, quite simple.

The right window shows a real-time preview of your render. Navigation inside this space is close to Les Chylinski

the SketchUp one. Lewis Wadsworth

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There are four principal toolbar: Majid Yeganegi

1. Main setting categories (sun,cameras,materials…). Mario Goleš

2. Navigation tools (zoom,rotate…). The first button disables the realtime rendering, allowing quick Mateo Soletic
manipulations of the model. Matthew L. Facundus
3. Rendering and view options.
Michalis Zissiou
4. Multipurpose toolbar, where all operations will be done.  It changes according to the type of
element selected (sun,materials…). Mr Wip

Nguyễn Ngọc Phúc

Nguyen Tran Huy Vu

Nick Howlett

Nomeradona

Oliver Shea

Ricardo Cossoli

Robh Ruppel

Rocky Vezeau

S.Porobic (AKA `Sepo´)

Samuli Lautjarvi

Scott Baumberger

Snoopywang

Steven Man

Teofilo Pardo

Tina Stiles-Bryant

Troy Homenchuk

Victor Hugo Hernandez

Will Anielewicz
Software Interface Zernan Suarez

Recent Comments
zahid on The Bottom Line – Making
Money with SketchUp

arsitek rumahan on SketchUp to Thea –

quick render process

arsitek rumahan on SketchUp to Thea –

quick render process

admin on Making of 3 Storey House

Exterior

Bernard on Making of 3 Storey House

The Cameras
Exterior

A render first requires the choice of a point of view. In Artlantis they are displayed as cameras, which
you can
find in the side panel. Any displayed views are related to SketchUp Scenes. However, do
not panic if your model does not have any Scenes (everyone makes mistakes…), Artlantis
automatically creates one camera called ‘Sketchup’, matching your last viewpoint.

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Camera Scene

Navigating in space and moving the camera are, at first, two linked operations. So in order not to lose
a good point of view while sightseeing, it’s necessary to create a copy of a camera already setup, by
pressing the ‘+’ icon (a new thumbnail is then added to the menu). Finding and manipulating
precisely
a camera is made easier by the use of the 2D view in which the active one is displayed as
a small red dot. This panel is able to display different views (plan, façade etc.) useful in the coming
steps.

Copy Camera

Every camera has its own focal which can be easily adjusted from a pan view to a zoom.

Unfortunately focal angles are the only things that do not travel well from SketchUp to Artlantis and
you will have to readjust them by hand to
get a satisfying result…

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Focal Angle

Camera and Sun

When you know what to look at you can move on to creating a realistic environment. In that way, the
sun is the first thing to set up properly. For each camera there is a sun. In our example, the camera
‘view1′ is linked to the sun ‘view1′, and it goes the same for the other ones. Through the menu, it’s
then possible to assign any sun to any camera, regarding what suits best for your render (for
example, let us be crazy,
camera ‘View4′ with sun ‘view2 ‘).

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Assign Sun to Camera

Similar to the camera menu, the sun menu shows in the right columns the list of those present in the
scene.

Again, pressing ‘+’ add a new one in the menu. In order to see clearly the real effect of the sun,
enabling the shadows is obviously necessary. A slider allows an adjustment of their sharpness from
strong, like in SketchUp), to smooth which is much more realistic.

Using the sun requires an adjustment of some parameters (date, time, location…) through the first
icons and sliders of the toolbar (if you don’t understand by yourself how they work, sorry, but you’d
better stop reading this tutorial right now…). By the way, the 2D view also shows the sun position,
as
the north angle, so it’s possible to adjust it there.

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Adjust Sun Parameters

A ‘natural ‘outside lighting solution is made of two separate elements:

1. The sun: a direct light that creates clearly defined shadows.

1. The sky: a diffuse uniform light emited by a dome surrounding the model.

The sky light allows a much more realistic illumination of the area non-directly hit by a sun ray
(shadows in fact…)

Intensity of both sun and sky are linked directly to dates and time settings, but it’s possible to
overwrite them through some sliders.

Natural Outside Light

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Settings

Settings

All About Materials

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Playing with the sunlight is useless if the presented objects have no style, so…

The selection of a material is made by a simple click on the geometry in
the model view, or directly
through the menu, but then you have to already know the name of the material, and it’s often not the

case.

Material Selection

One of the main elements that brings realism to a material is its level of reflection and the quality of it.
Those parameters are directly
adjusted by two sliders in the toolbar:

1. Reflection: Allows adjustments from a barely reflective surface to a complete mirror.

2. Shininess: Changes the quality of the reflection, a bigger value enhancing its quality.

Transparency is also adjustable in the same way, and settings made in SketchUp are recognized by
Artlantis.

Reflection and Shininess

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Adjust Reflection

Adjust Shininess

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Adjust Transparency

It’s possible to change the tint of a

material within Artlantis by right clicking on the colored panel which
makes a color chart appear.

Color Chart

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Select Color

A material is rarely just a simple colored surface. If it contains a texture, it’s possible to edit the

basics, transparency, reflectivity etc.. but it’s also easy to add
an efficient bump effect through a
slider.

Adjust Bump Slider

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Adding Bump with Slider

The Environment

When the scene begins to have an interesting look, it’s necessary to take a step back and pay

attention to the surroundings. Initially, the background is a ‘physical’ sky, a colored dome relating to
the sun position.

It’s possible to add to this realistic sky a wide range of cloud formations. If the automatic sky does not
suits your needs, you can replace it, through a menu, by more classic elements: solid color, gradient,
picture etc.

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Environment Settings

Sunlight Settings

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Tick Cloud Selection

Gradient

Illumination

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The sun is an efficient light source in many cases but for indoor rendering or night
rendering,obviously it’s quickly limited. It’s then necessary to take a look at artificial light sources
(let’s consider the virtual sun as a natural one). Lamps are arranged into groups linked to every
camera by the lighting panel. By the way, a night effect is achieved easily by deactivating the sunlight
in the same menu.

Lighting Settings

To create a lamp, select a light group in the menu and press ‘+’. The lamp appears at the same place

as the camera and you then have to manipulate it to place it where you want. To do so, use the2D
view, where lamps appear as yellow dots. As for the sun, lamp’s shadows are not automatically
enabled, and the
related box has to be ticked to create a more realistic effect. All lamps are spots,
and you can see and adjust the three elements that define them (source,target and angle) in the 2D
view or by numerical input.

Lamp Creation

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Shadow Settings

Angle Setting

To get an omnidirectional light source, just set the spot angle to 360°. Light intensity can be seen

directly in the preview window and once again adjusted by a slider.

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Omnidirectional light

Light Intensity Setting

To create a new lamp, it’s of course possible to press again ‘+’, but it’s more interesting
to ‘right click-
duplicate’ on an existing light in order to
copy and paste it in place. Again the 2D view is useful to
place it well.

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Duplicate Lamp

Rendering

The model is now ready to be rendered and there’s just some general settings to adjust before it will
be done.

Through the settings tab it’s possible to change the rendering size, which will be adopted by the
preview window, allowing a better framing of the render. The picture’s quality depends on its size but
also on the calculation precision.

The main parameters are Anti-aliasing (‘sharpness ‘of the picture) and Radiosity (light calculation
quality).

It’s then up to you to choose how to adjust them, regarding the time left for the rendering process.

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Some Render Settings

Anti-aliasing and Radiosity

The render window asks you to save the picture, and allows a final settings adjustment before the last
big step.

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Final Settings

Well done! Now you just have to wait patiently for the result…

Final Render

Thank you for reading this. Its all you need to know to get started.

Mr WIP

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22 Responses to “SketchUp to Artlantis”

Mike on
April 11th, 2010 12:35 pm

I am a new one in using Artlantis from Skectch up- your instruction is so handy to
me. THanks much

Takorn W. on
April 25th, 2010 7:54 am

I ‘m still waiting to get continue one. It ‘s good to understand very easy.

Thanks For Good Things.

tareq on
May 11th, 2010 6:24 am

hi,

first thnx 4 instruction , its very easy to understand.

i have one problem , that i cant import the sketchup file in artlantis ..?

can you learn me how to do it stip by stip plz.

thnx

St. Remmy on
June 2nd, 2010 10:04 pm

Exellent Presentation, Richly informative, and Succinct…….. thanks Mr Wipp

samuisketchup on
July 15th, 2010 7:57 am

thank you very good to learn

TRinne on
July 26th, 2010 3:55 pm

This is not good, it is EXCELLENT! Thank you sir, to help me with this “simple”
program! Regards from Finland ;D

Gustavo Solis on
July 26th, 2011 4:21 pm

Good tutorial very educative

kingsley on
October 12th, 2011 8:41 am

can i insert my picture ( i mean my own personal picture) in artlantis before

rendering?

admin on
October 13th, 2011 4:33 pm

@Kingsley, I don’t use Artlantis but what I have researched seems to show that
the easiest way to replace a background image is to drag and drop any image you
like from the inspector background submenu or even drag and drop an image file
from your computer directly to the background of the model, and should work as I
believe.

mario sergie on
December 8th, 2011 3:00 am

thank you to help me with this “smple program’ it is very easy to understand..i
hope you will release 64bit I ‘m still
waiting to get 64bit artlantis…..thank you

Alex on
February 9th, 2012 12:24 pm

Mr WIP, you are an absolute star. I never normally comment on things like this, but
seriously, you are a massive, massive help. Thank you so so much!!

rob on
May 6th, 2012 7:08 pm

Like Alex, i would never normally comment on tutorials… but this was fantastic

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so very very helpful. I can now start creating some excellent renders for my
architecture course

thanks very much…. good man!

san on
May 18th, 2012 3:02 pm

thanks for this information! but I still have one problem.

when I put shaders on my model, for instance there are strange patterns in the
bricks.. paraboles and half circles.. if you zoom in close enough they disappear,
but if you want not only a rendering of a couple of bricks then the paraboles and
circles appear ..

do you guys know how to get this thing normal?

thanks!

nico on
June 26th, 2012 1:56 pm

perfect tutorial, thank you! But I have one question. Do you know how to open a
3D Section (made in Sketchup) in Artlantis so that I can render it?

3d-Architect on
June 30th, 2012 10:04 pm

Very simple, but very handy tutorial!

alejandra on
July 6th, 2012 9:52 pm

hello, I need to edit a object. Is an external object, I want to make an object from
the object to move that part,

if you know how, please tell me,

thank you very much

samuel on
May 28th, 2013 5:23 pm

thank u very much. i am encountering a certain problem.every time i

click the
render button ..the render window is just being filled with a
blank white color.. how
can i go about with this?

olethomas on
October 30th, 2013 4:56 pm

I got the same problem as you samuel, I can see the project in everywhere else,
but when I try to render there is nothing but white!

Any feedback would be much appreciated!

Nur on
November 4th, 2013 2:21 pm

Hello I have a problem about sketchup materials. Some of them are opened in
artlantis but most of them are not visible further more they got connected to each
other and this white color is called as defult front color in artlantis. eventhough
they werent component in sketchup how come they became together and how I
can break this unity? I would be
so much glad if I get can answer for this
problem…

josef on
January 9th, 2015 2:29 am

I am Want gate Software Sketchup to Artlantis

hannah on
January 28th, 2015 1:27 am

hi I’m using sketch up pro 15 and i can’t upload my skp file in artlantis studio 5. Is it
not supported or do i have to do a
conversion? Please help me, my submission is
tmr.

admin on
January 30th, 2015 9:49 am

Does this help you hannah http://www.artlantis.com/en/downloads/

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