RE: OT:Google SketchUP

[Bradley Gabe <withanar(at)stanwinston.com>]

> Teach them XSI. :)
> They'll thank you for it.

I'm not so sure about that.

Seriously, I think a lot of this boils down to passing the buck. At some point, someone has to generate a clean mesh that is useable for production, and it is a question of who gets stuck with that phase. Whomever can get away with the least amount of work "wins".

At the beginning of your process, you want to work as fluidly and quickly as possible. So the less time you spend on details or technicalities like, say, a mesh that can actually be deformed, the better. If your studio is design only, then it actually behooves you to not spend *any* time on that, since it's not important to your specific phase of the process. Plus, should the next phase call you on the phone and ask for better source material, you can throw your hands up and say "Hey, we're just artists."

If your studio also does animation and lighting, there may be internal pressure to get your design phase producing a better starting point. But even so, it all depends on how heavy your design gorillas are, and how much people want to help each other make a more efficient pipeline. The designers who tend to build the most workable stuff from the beginning are the ones who, not surprising, will also have to work later in the pipeline on texturing, animation, and lighting. These folks remain a rare breed, but are obviously hugely valuable to the places lucky enough to have them.

-Brad 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM] On Behalf
> Of Greg Smith
> Sent: May 31, 2007 11:46 AM
> To: XSI_MailingList
> Subject: Re: OT:Google SketchUP
>
> Yeah I have recieved models from art departments that were created in
> Sketchup and is a total nightmare to clean. On top of what Andy said
> regarding the arbitrary normal direction of polys, none of the polygons
> are welded. This wouldn't be such a bad thing if the solution was just
> to select your edges and perform a weld boundary edges operation,
> however another interesting caveat is that you'll find is duplicates of
> polygons stacked on each other. One instance I had about 10 polygons
> sharing the same space. I've also had n-gon polys that had multiple
> verticies stacked in the same space. And even one point and two point
> polygons (at least that what it looked like). Needless to say all of
> this made cleaning models for production use an absolute PITA. 
>
> my two cents,
>
> Greg
>
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-- 
Bradley R. Gabe | Senior Creature TD | Stan Winston Studio