Wednesday, February 06, 2013

SketchUp Pro 3D .obj in Junaio

This is a developer note about using 3D objects created by SketchUp Pro in Junaio GPS channels. Good news, the process is relatively easy. My comments reference these work-n-progress objects. Since they are imperfect they provide some talking points.

Above is a place holder building for another building that you see as a multicolored splinter piercing the right hand frame of the image. The intent here was to build a simple 3D object near my studio of the 18th Century Federal/City Hall, New York City and later place it over the current historic landmark Federal Hall, the splinter 1.2 miles away.
1. With SketchUp I was able to quickly construct a rough building. However, note that I got the roof pitch wrong, see the roof peak over far end of the building. I used a 256x256 .png file as a single image decal on the ends of the model.
2. I painted the rough model using a gaudy pallet and paint bucket so I could quickly see the 3D shape without having to export the walls and roof into Photoshop, a complexity for another post, and then re-import. However, when I put the 256x256 .png decaal on the building ends, the .png images strobes with shifting pixelation patterns when viewed through the Junaio browser on my iPad2. Perhaps this effect would be an design element asset in another model.
3. I had no drawing of the side of the 18th century building so I tiled the building sides with the SketchUp Pro 'white shingle' texture. The result looked okay in SketchUp Pro, but exported poorly as an .obj. Notice there is just a bottom row stripe of the 'white shingle.'
4. The building is floating. I need to reposition the building to the 'ground' in lat/lon attribute code associated with the object in Junaio.


Above is a 3D sketch of a future public phone booth that as a stand-in for the final 3D object I plan to use in the NYC Reinventing Payphones competition due mid-February 2013.
1. Again note my use of bright colors and bucket in SketchUp Pro to quickly define surfaces and edges.
2. The 'ad' on the side of the phone booth strobes with a shifting pixelation pattern. I just got lucky and took this photo when the image was whole--it only took me 15 attempts. But the strobbing might be more appropriate here because it mimics the video ads that now appear on the sides of some public structures.

3 comments:

cleggy said...

Nice work Steve, I did something similar with sketchup a couple of years ago, hopefully most of the limitations I came across have been ironed out now.

http://vitruvius.co/

Unknown said...

Steve I am very interested in this subject. I am a researcher and I am trying to do the same work with the 3D model using a translucid material in Sketchup to see a real model behind it...

Steve said...

Regarding the 2013 NYC Reinventing Payphones solicitation, here is a link the final proposal "Kara-botthie" by Steve Bull and Lynn Hu : http://stevebull.org/reinvent-payphones/ and notice the QR code to download the Junaio AR channel of 40 3D payphones positioned next to existing payphones in New York City.