From SketchUp to Blender

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Sketchup to BlenderA Blender artist called Alejandro Vasquez, AKA Alexv, has published a short, but interesting tutorial, showing how to successfully import a model from SketchUp to Blender.

This tutorial can be useful to artists involved with architectural visualization. If you want to check out the tutorial, there are two versions:

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    • http://brontosaurus.deviantart.com/ bjzaba

      now this is helpful! thanks for the link.

    • Reaction

      Excellent! I was talking to an architect the other day, and he said they use Sketchup to create quick sketches of building designs for customers. To find out there is a simple path from .kmz to Blender is fantastic!

    • http://blendernewbies.blogspot.com Kernon

      Wow, that’s nice and easy. Thanks!

    • myx

      Whenever I try this method, the instanced objects such as windows, shrubs etc do not appear in my scene. Has anyone tried this successfully. Do you treat the component in a special way?

    • Sorbus

      Hey Alexv,

      Great tip. It works great on the Mac too! I used to have an 8 hour trial of Sketchup Pro just to *ahem* try the export features from my Google Sketchup files, but not any more ;)

      Here’s one step you need to add though, to stop Sketchup exporting faces AND an extra set of edges…

      http://sketchup.google.com/3dbuildviewer.html#id=8

      Sorbus :)

    • David

      Using the free Sketchup 6 I import a model and then use the above method to export it into blender and nothing appears in blender, however when I make some graphic (a box) in Sketchup myself I can export that. Any suggestions as to why this is?

    • Sorbus

      Hi Dave,

      Select what you’ve imported, right click and choose ‘explode’. That will convert the grouped polys into a simple mesh. Exporting will then work fine after that.

      The same goes for instanced objects and components.

      Sorbus

    • http://www.avrendering.com Alejandro Vazquez

      Wow… can’t believe we share the same name and we are both in the 3D field. Nice job Alejandro!

    • Adam

      I tried to load a sketchup file, but the collada importer script crashed when I tried- My computer ran out of memory; the memory load went from 294mb to well over 2gb during the import. Is there a memory leak in the script?

    • Capnhud

      I tried to open a 3d model from google 3d warehouse using this method and all I get is what appears to be something but with no materials or shape. The blender console indicates the following:

      FEEDBACK: Illusoft Collada 1.4 Plugin v0.3.159 started
      C:..\Fixup\Application Data\Blender Foundation\Blend
      er\.blender\scripts\bpymodules\colladaImEx\cstartup.py:328: DeprecationWarning:
      integer argument expected, got float
      Blender.BGL.glColor3i(0.255,0.255,0.2)
      The minor version of the file you are using is newer then the plug-in, so errors
      may occur.
      scene.link(ob) deprecated!
      use scene.objects.link(ob) instead
      FEEDBACK: FINISHED – time elapsed: 12.5

      how do I fix this so that I can see the model? I tried to right click and explode but I did not see the option to explode anything.

    • http://grahams.free-online.co.uk Graham

      Yeah, I get that too.

      Get from 3d warehouse->Explode->Export->Import

      ZIP, de nada.

      Just an empty scene.

      Didn’t run blender form command line so I don’t have the console output.

      I actually just want to get the 3d warehouse stuff, so if anybody knows a way to put that into blender without the sketchup step that would be stone cold!

    • http://www.hexboltindia.com windsor exports

      Manufacturer and Supplier of Hex Bolts, auto bolts, agriculture fasteners, screw, u bolt, t bolt, auto spares, banjo bolt, Hex Bolt from India, stainless steel bolts, bolt nut, stainless steel lag bolts, crown bolt, crown and screw bolt, nut and bolt retail, banjo bolts, nuts

    • goh

      i tried installing everything, and when i import from sketchup,

      FEEDBACK: Illusoft Collada 1.4 Plugin v0.3.159 started
      The minor version of the file you are using is newer than the plug-in, so errors
      may occur.
      scene.link(ob) deprecated!
      use scene.objects.link(ob) instead

      anyone can figure out this please?

      thanks for the help given

    • snap

      Hi sorbus,

      i’ve select what i’ve import, and then also the right click but where to choose the ‘explode’ tools?
      really need your advise on this matter. thanx a lot sorbus! ;)

    • stella

      hi,
      i have the same problem as snap. the same step that i did.
      can some one please tell me how to figure out this thing?
      really appreciate that! ;)

    • Sorbus

      @ Snap + Stella,

      Okay, if you import into Sketchup or use one of its ‘components’/3Dwarehouse objects, the objects appears as a grouped ‘component’. You’ll know that, as it shows up with a bounding box around the whole mesh when selected. When you then right click onto it with the selection tool or go to ‘Edit > Component’ from the main menu, you should see ‘Explode’ as an option. That may then break it down into smaller ‘components’, so repeat until the ‘Explode’ option becomes unavailable. Of course, if you can’t see it now, perhaps you’ve already got a simple mesh.

      Also, make sure you’ve only single clicked the object to begin with, as a double click opens the object for editing + the you won’t be able to ‘Explode’ the object until you stop editing inside the component.

      The next step is to hide the edges as described here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH2pqZLbrz8

      Give me a shout if you’re still stuck!

    • Jeff

      When I do the import into Blender 2.49a from a simple model (just a block) as suggested in the article I get the following error:

      FEEDBACK: Illusoft Collada 1.4 Plugin v0.3.161 started
      Traceback (most recent call last):
      File “C:\Program Files\Blender 2.49a\.blender\scripts\bpymodules\colladaImEx\c
      startup.py”, line 681, in ButtonEvent
      onlyMainScene, applyModifiers)
      File “C:\Program Files\Blender 2.49a\.blender\scripts\bpymodules\colladaImEx\t
      ranslator.py”, line 111, in __init__
      self.__Import(fileName)
      File “C:\Program Files\Blender 2.49a\.blender\scripts\bpymodules\colladaImEx\t
      ranslator.py”, line 118, in __Import
      documentTranslator.Import(fileName)
      File “C:\Program Files\Blender 2.49a\.blender\scripts\bpymodules\colladaImEx\t
      ranslator.py”, line 298, in Import
      self.colladaDocument.LoadDocumentFromFile(fileName)
      File “C:\Program Files\Blender 2.49a\.blender\scripts\bpymodules\colladaImEx\c
      ollada.py”, line 75, in LoadDocumentFromFile
      doc = parse( filename )
      File “C:\PYTHON26\LIB\xml\dom\minidom.py”, line 1917, in parse
      from xml.dom import expatbuilder
      File “C:\PYTHON26\LIB\xml\dom\expatbuilder.py”, line 32, in
      from xml.parsers import expat
      File “C:\PYTHON26\LIB\xml\parsers\expat.py”, line 4, in
      from pyexpat import *
      ImportError: DLL load failed: %1 is not a valid Win32 application.

      The last line of the error, specifically the “%1″ looks like some internal argument was not substituted in for that command line argument placeholder. Does anyone else have this problem? I’m using Vista and this happens whether I run as administrator or not.

    • http://edelg.com Edward Elg

      When I go to import the file as COLLADA 1.4, I get a message telling me:

      Error! Could not find the full version of Python …
      To run the collada importer and exporter you need to have Python version 2.6 installed in your system.
      It can be downloaded from:
      http://www.python.org
      Notes:
      The minor version number doesn’t matter, you can have either Python 2.6.1 or 2.6.2 or higher.
      If you do have Python installed and still can’t run the scripts, then make sure blender’s Python interpriter is
      finding the stand alone modules.

      I already installed Python … but am not sure what Blender’s Python interpriter is. Do I need some kind of plug in or something?

    • http://www.scottpetrovic.com/blog Scott Petrovic

      I just spent some time on getting Google Earth models into Blender. It was a little tricky, but here is the article
      http://www.scottpetrovic.com/blog/2010/01/unity3d-importing-google-earth-models-with-blender/

      It has an extra step afterwards on importing it into a game engine, so you can stop about half way through it.

    • drag
    • AfroSnackey

      Thanks! this is one good tutorial

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_G3TUFJTGNF6FL3BISPQWSL3EFI Marshall

      This is the error I’ve been getting when I try to export a cabin building to blender:

      Error Signature:
      AppName: blender.exeAppVer: 2.6.0.0ModName: ntdll.dllModVer: 5.1.2600.5755Offset: 00011689

      It says nothing else but that. I figure that the computer runs out of memory, which would be unfortunate. I don’t expect anyone to know the answer, but I’d rather say I tried.