a NV FreeDigitalMason Bloglodge first!
A report on how I made my recent Spiral Staircase with Hanging Flowers for MiniLife, which I’m pretty proud of. (This is also my first blog report ever, so I hope it’s ok and would love to hear from you)
First, I used these programs in Mac OS 10:
1. Google Image Search
2. Google SketchUp v.6 (Google SketchUp is free and a great resource for un-copyrighted 3D models!)
3. Adobe Photoshop CS2 (Tools: Magic Wand, Image Size, Layer Editing, Layer Style: Stroke and Save For Web)
Ok, so I want a spiral staircase in my home. I start by searching the existing ML marketplace cause I don’t really want to spend a half hour of my life making an object… but none of the staircases fit my space (1×1 please!), style or standards (is it too much to ask that objects to fit to scale and rotate correctly?).
With nothing pre-made in the MiniLife Object Marketplace, I start by doing a Google Image Search for ’spiral staircase’ because I don’t have a model Spiral Staircase to photograph…. read the entire article here
May 13, 2008 at 10:10 pm
A note about this process:
I discovered you can Save images in Google Sketchup with a transparent background and in a png format. This cuts out the entire need for Photoshop!
I have not perfected the art of Saving Transparent PNG with a crop, so I still PREVIEWed the images and then Cropped them before uploading to MML. Saving SketchUp rotations as Transparent PNGs really allows you to perfect the angle and scale because it’s so much faster to create your image files!
In Google SketchUp, go to: File -> Export -> 2D Graphic. Select ‘Format’ png. Select ‘options’ -> check ‘transparent background’.
Ta da! Anyone with insight about Angle, Scale, Rotation or Save to Crop in Google SketchUp please post tips!