Make Your Google Sketchup Drawings Pretty With Sunflow

by kyle brinkerhoff

3.7K243

Intro: Make Your Google Sketchup Drawings Pretty With Sunflow

this is a simple instructable to show you how to make sketchup drawings look much better for presentation uses.
this will require some software in addition to sketchup to make this possible, however all of wich is freely available through the internet and is very easy to use, to begin we will need a drawing to render, for this instructable ive drawn some gears for us to use as a sample

STEP 1: Getting the Software

in order to render this model, you need to install a script into sketchup, this is very easy, all it requires is that you copy and paste files into a directory, the script we need is the sunflow exporting tool which is available here in the files with this instructable here: BTW you will need 7-zip to use this file . once you get the file open, open up the TAR inside of it and take the sketchup folder and merge its contents to the sketchup folder under program files/google.

next, you will need to get a copy of the sunflow rendering program, here:

STEP 2: Rendering!

now we can begin with the cool part.open up your sketchup model then position your viewport to what you want the end image rendered to look like then go to plugins>sunflow exporter >export model then export your model, and remember where you put it!

now, open up sunflow and load your model and click render! 

STEP 3: Saving Your Rendered Image

now that its done rendering, click on Image>save image. and then enter in your new file name followed by .png and their you have it! images produced that look like they were made by a professional!

3 Comments

Haylermoon 10 years ago

whenever i try to open/load the sketchup file into sunflow, it keeps saying that the file format is unrecognized and I can't go any further. sunflow seems to be wanting something called a scene file (isntead of the .skp file that sketchup normally uses). is there a file format converter or setting or something that you are using?

kyle brinkerhoff 10 years ago

you have to use the export script inside of sketchup. re-read the instructable, it says clearly in their to install the script and how to use it.