Help with getting Sketchup into a walkthrough game

[Peter Freer]

Hi all, I’ve created a large regeneration model of a nearby town for urban design purposes. I am involved with community involvement projects through my job as a Planning Policy Officer and I’m trying to see if I could import my sketchup model into some further freeware which would allow people to freely walkthrough my model. The software would need to be basic so a member of the public could easily use it and navigate around. I created a video from sketchup but this is fixed and i would like the public to freely roam the model?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[David J. Chirico]

Wow, that would be a great achievement. I haven’t heard of anything like that. Please keep us informed if you find any software that allows you to do that.

[nca]

This almost sounds familiar to me as if I’ve seen something like this before, but I can’t place where.

I’m sure someone here will have a suggestion..

[Pablo Cortez]

sounds like a video game level to me, I would think dropping your model into a game developing software and then laoding it into a site through flash where anyone can load your model on their browser, working like a first person shooter with mouse and keyboard controls for movement. there’s a lot of help through game development sites on how to do this, never tried it myself though, check this out http://www.katsbits.com/htm/tutorials/sketchup_converting_import_kmz_blender.htm

[Peter Freer]

Thanks for everyone’s help so far, I am slowly trying to have a go at the suggestions.

[Ryland Fox]

Use Blender. It is a free gaming engine that is pretty easy to use. There are some good tutorials available to show you how to use it. You can make leaves sway and cars move etc….. Well, it is a gaming engine so you can do whatever you are good enough to do.

Blender will give you the most power and the best results. I have imported studio max models into it so sketchup should be fine depending on what version you have, free or pro.

http://www.blender.org/

[Ryland Fox]

I forgot to add – in blender you can then package your game as an .exe file which can be played on any computer.

[Peter Freer]

Thanks for your help – I downloaded blender but have got stuck on importing sketchup file as it said something about installing python which i downloaded but struggled to install. Once my models in blender and packaged as an exe file, what software would i need to play it on any computer?

Thanks for your help.

[Ryland Fox]

Blender will import .dxf, .wrl or .3ds models from sketch up, it will accept a whole lot more types but this is what blender and sketch up have in common export/importwise. I don’t think you need python as that is the scripting language you can use to run your game. But you can just use the actuators in Blender to do that too.

Once you have an .exe you don’t need any software, it is an executable file like any other and just gets installed on any computer you put it on. Like installing any software.

It won’t be instant but it is worth learning, and fun once you are getting into it as I am now. I will try to upload an .exe in the near future for people to check out.

[Ryland Fox]

Let me know once you get your design in. I would think you will have questions and we can try to figure it out.

[Ryland Fox]

I will say that the 3d pdf thing is the best way to do it if you don’t have time to learn blender.

[Ryland Fox]

Sorry for the repeated posting, but here is a sketchup to blender tutorial
http://www.katsbits.com/htm/tutorials.htm

[Peter Freer]

Thanks for all of your help RFox – I have sketchuppro on trial so will have a go as you have suggested. I’ve also got a trial version of Adobe 3d so i can investigate that. Cheers

[Ryan Sand]

hey I think you have a fun opportunity here, especially with a model. If the model doesn’t express the detail you wish, create a flash page (maybe even powerpoint) with a series of buttons to walk from place to place. It seems rather simple, click a button, you film a walk from one place to another, when you reach a certain point *blink* up pops up a perspective or rendering of your place. But thats my cop out of trying to learn how to use a game program, but I think you give people freedom while giving them some type of direction.

[Peter Freer]

I’ve got my model into Blender – however when i click on render it looks like it gets stuck so it may be too much for it to do!!

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