I hope this question wasn’t asked thousand of times already - which one of those two 3D packages would you recommend?
I did some work with Sketchup when doing house extension and found it extremely easy to learn.
I found few threads where people talk about being able to export to Unity from free Sketchup with a LightUp plugin? Does it really work? Is there any limitations compared say to Cheetah 3D?
Speaking of which how does it compare to Sketchup? It’s very cheap ($99) so price is not an issue here, just wondering functionality wise.
If one is able to create 3D objects in Sketchup like cars, buildings, some human characters etc. and export to Unity I would probably choose Sketchup unless there is some serious limitations?
I can give you sooooome feedback on this. SketchUp is something I use daily in my pro work as a concepting tool (and Google really should hire me as a product evangelist since I’ve converted many a developer ), but also use it in my Unity experiments as a quick way to get geometry into the engine.
In the project I’m working on my Map is assessed at runtime to see what’s available and what’s not. There’s layers of geometry associated with this so there’s a lot of things going on and through developing the map setup code I’ve had to change how the environment has to be built and structured a number of times.
Using SketchUp gave me really fast iteration. Once I’m happy that the structure is right, I’ll pass it onto my wife to ‘make it good’ in Maya But I know that if the structure stays the same then it should just work with the new model and she won’t kill me for making her rebuild it 15 times.
I picked up Cheetah a couple of weeks ago to play with the baking texture stuff. You can do that in Maya but it’s definitely not as simple as in Cheetah. SketchUp stuff imports really well into Cheetah, so I did lightmap tests using the SketchUp model and again, it allowed me to quickly test what was going to work and what was not.
I’ve not really used Cheetah for modeling, and at first I was put off by the interface. However, I’ve found that after using it for a while, Cheetah just makes a lot of sense. I recently used it in the office for Checking the normals on a model and even though I’d never touched this in Cheetah I found that all the options and functions were exactly where I expected them to be.
So I would say BOTH! I definitely one of those guys that will use a bunch of different apps and play on the strengths of each. SketchUp has it’s place, as does Cheetah, as does Maya.
I’ve not used the LightUp plugin for SketchUp. I saw the results and they looked great. Depends on how dependent you are on SketchUp for your final models.
At $99, Cheetah is a steal and for me a no brainer to have as part of my arsenal of development tools.
Good to see yet another Australian on the Unity forums. I’ve started using SketchUp + LightUp and putting it into unity (it does work and work well), I’ve also got Cheetah3D and use it for some things. My main focus is iPhone development so hopefully I can help with some advice.
First off moondog90210 is spot on with his comments. Use both! I do.
SketchUp + LightUp is great for environments and quick easy lighting. Effort vs. results is fantastic. You can get pretty good looking stuff (especially for iPhone) with a minimal effort.
I use Cheetah3D for character stuff, like animation and overall Cheetah3D has a lot more power, but does require more effort (though much less than some other high end programs).
So again use both! Use each one for what it is good for.
If I had to choose one and only one I would go for Cheetah3D. It is cheaper than the SketchUp+LightUp combo and can do a lot more, particularly if you want to get into more compicated things like human models, UV, texture baking and animations. Also for iPhone development you may need the extra control over things that Cheetah3D allows.
But for just $99 (Cheetah3D) and $149 (LightUp) I got both and am happy with both. Also try out the demo of each software just to make sure you’re completely happy with it.
Let me know if you have any other specific questions.
Get Cheetah 3d because you’ll need what it does.
And why not have Sketchup, anyway. But does the free version let you export the models to a useable format?
If you get the LightUp plugin for Sketchup, you get the lighting baked in Sketchup after which you can export (with baked textures) directly into Unity.
The paid version of LightUp exports using either free or pro version of Sketchup (LightUp has to do its own exporting because the FBX files are multi layer, multi UV coords which obviously SU doesn’t support).
There’s a short (and older) vid showing the export process here
), but also use it in my Unity experiments as a quick way to get geometry into the engine.