Surperimposing a sketchup design onto a photo

Raylectron (https://Raylectron.com) is a 3D rendering engine for Trimble Sketchup (https://sketchup.com)
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dion
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Surperimposing a sketchup design onto a photo

Post by dion »

Hi,

I have a building site I would like to include in a sketchup presentation. Is it possible to place a sketchup drawing on a real landscape and then use your plugin to mash the lot together to create a realistic walk through in 3D?

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Dion
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Re: Surperimposing a sketchup design onto a photo

Post by Support »

Hi,

If your Sketchup drawing is 3D and your real landscape is also 3D, than yes. But if either one or both are a 2D photograph, than no as there is insufficient 3D data to process.
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dion
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Re: Surperimposing a sketchup design onto a photo

Post by dion »

Thanks for the reply. I have never created a 3D photo image. Do you have software which can do this, or do I need to google for an app?

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Re: Surperimposing a sketchup design onto a photo

Post by Support »

Perhaps I'm not understanding exactly what you are trying to do. Can you post a screen shot of what you have so I can visualize it? I can then give you an accurate answer.
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dion
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Re: Surperimposing a sketchup design onto a photo

Post by dion »

I have a prospective site I want to develop, but want to create a 3D presentation to be able to present to prospective investors. I know that I can create a 3D building using sketchup, but how do I place this drawing onto the actual site, and then present this to the investors for a realistic feel?
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Re: Surperimposing a sketchup design onto a photo

Post by Support »

So you mean for example, you draw a house (only the house) in Sketchup, then you have photos of the surrounding site and you want to merge the 3D house into the 2D photos and create a walkthrough video so everything looks 3D, photos too?
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dion
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Re: Surperimposing a sketchup design onto a photo

Post by dion »

Thats correct.
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Re: Surperimposing a sketchup design onto a photo

Post by Support »

Than in this case, you need to take 6 photos (at the center of where the 3D drawing should sit) with an 8mm lens at 60 degree rotation between each one shot, then stitch them together with a stitching software to create a 360 degree environment map, then you can load this map into Raylectron and integrate your 3D drawing within it.
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dion
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Re: Surperimposing a sketchup design onto a photo

Post by dion »

Can your software create a 3D view from outside the building? Would I follow a similar process you described, but from the perimeter of where the drawing is to be placed in the eventual completed image?
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Re: Surperimposing a sketchup design onto a photo

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No, it will not work with simple flat normal images.
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Re: Surperimposing a sketchup design onto a photo

Post by dion »

So your software allows you to walk through the interior of a structure. Does Sketchup allow you to panoramically view the structure from a distance as a standard feature?
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Re: Surperimposing a sketchup design onto a photo

Post by Support »

Raylectron will let you walkthrough your entire model, inside and outside, but it sure can't walkthrough a 2D image! Maybe I'm still not understanding what you are trying to do.
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Re: Surperimposing a sketchup design onto a photo

Post by dion »

Essentially what I want is a 3D model of a building superimposed on a piece of land(the image of the land will have to be converted to 3D), and be able to view the whole image(site and building) in 3D from a distance, move in closer and eventually do a walkhrough the inside as well.
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Re: Surperimposing a sketchup design onto a photo

Post by Support »

Yes, you can have your landscape as an image, but it will remain flat and not 3D looking. It's like creating a rectangle on the ground and apply a picture to it, it's 2D and there is no way to convert that to 3D. Sure, you can put your 3D building on it, render it and all, but the ground will still look 2D, as it does in Sketchup. Basically, the way you make it look in Sketchup is the way it will render it, except of course it'll look much better. The trees/houses/cars on the landscape picture will not magically rise up from 2D to be 3D, it's just not possible.
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Re: Surperimposing a sketchup design onto a photo

Post by dion »

..."Than in this case, you need to take 6 photos (at the center of where the 3D drawing should sit) with an 8mm lens at 60 degree rotation between each one shot, then stitch them together with a stitching software to create a 360 degree environment map, then you can load this map into Raylectron and integrate your 3D drawing within it."

Can't I do this from the outside?
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Re: Surperimposing a sketchup design onto a photo

Post by Support »

No, because you need the pivot point to be in the center to create the half hemisphere map which will wrap your 3D model, here is an example of such map once stitched...
container_free.jpg
container_free.jpg (167.56 KiB) Viewed 31842 times
and here it is rendered with the 3D shed model...
Shed.png
Shed.png (829.03 KiB) Viewed 31842 times
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Re: Surperimposing a sketchup design onto a photo

Post by dion »

So I need to get a 3D drawing or video of the environment I want the 3D building to feature in?
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Re: Surperimposing a sketchup design onto a photo

Post by Support »

Not really and a video will not work. You need to take the 360 panorama shots from the center to get the effect you are looking for. You could take 4 shots, one for each side, from a distance, and in Sketchup, you could draw a ring around your model, split the ring in 4 sections, and paint each section with the shots. This will not give you the ground nor the sky, so it won't look good, and the images will look stretched on the ring. The only way is with the environment map to make it look like the 3D building is sitting in the picture as shown in my previous reply.
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dion
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Re: Surperimposing a sketchup design onto a photo

Post by dion »

...The only way is with the environment map to make it look like the 3D building is sitting in the picture as shown in my previous reply.

Would this allow me to pan from left to right and then move closer to the building?

Thanks for your patience.
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Re: Surperimposing a sketchup design onto a photo

Post by Support »

No, because such map is only a half hemisphere surrounding your model at the infinite distance from it, so when you pan & rotate the map will rotate as well, but if you zoom, the map will not, if it did, it would get distorted.
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