Making of The Meadow with SketchUp & Skatter

由专筑网韩平，刘庆新编译

自然散射插件V1（Skatter for SketchUp v1）本周发布啦！作为资深的SketchUp 用户，我非常荣幸将这个工具带到SketchUp 用户群中。Skatter是来自建筑师兼3D艺术家Thomas Hauchecorne的创意，之后他又进一步进行了开发。今天我很高兴分享这篇由早期公测版的用户——AART Architects建筑事务所的建筑师 Mads Bjerre写的文章。他最早是在Skatter后援论坛中分享了制作“草地”这篇文章，这颠覆了大家对于Skatter插件的呈现效果的想象。如果你喜欢这篇文章，你可以去ArchVIZ商店免费下载制作“草地”的所有场景文件资源！

Skatter for SketchUp v1 was released this week! As a SketchUp user for many years now, it is a great joy for me to help bring this tool to the SketchUp user community. Skatter is the brainchild of Architect and 3D Artist Thomas Hauchecorne, and he did a superb job developing it. Today I’m very happy to share this article by one of our early beta group users, Mads Bjerre from AART Architects. He first shared “The Meadow” in the Skatter Support forums sparking everyone’s imagination as to what can be done with Skatter.Enjoy this article and know that “The Meadow” Scene file along with the assets is available for free on The ArchVIZ Shop!


简介/Introduction

欢迎大家阅读这篇文章，本文旨在指导大家如何制作“草地”。

“草地”项目是为了Skatter（SU软件的一个新的延伸分支）的发布特意制作的。Skatter是一个强大的新工具，它可以分散各种复合对象，包括组件以及主体对象和平面的表皮。这在处理像草地、树木及灌木等3D植物时都是非常有利的。

我相信大多数SU的用户跟我一样在渲染这部分的时候都是一个巨大的挑战。之前我就尝试过制作分散插件，但这些插件很粗糙，虽说也能起到一些作用，还是有些局限。因此，大多数时候还需要依赖一些其他软件，比如后期的PS。

但是，我想大家还是都很喜欢SU的。作为建筑师，每次时间不够用都是个问题。就我而言，它取决于我怎样在非常短的时间完成设计。这就是我选择SU的原因。它快速、直观、灵活、便捷。感谢大量SU的开发人员不断扩展功能，给用户开放了越来越多的机会，也逐渐缩短与其他成熟、先进的3D软件之间的差距。

简短的介绍之后，我将为大家介绍一些“草地”场景以及我怎样使用SU自然分散插件（Skatter for SketchUp）作为其中一个主要工具的。

Welcome to this article, whose purpose is to guide you through the making of ״The Meadow״。
The Meadow is a project made especially for the release of Skatter, which is a brand new extension for SketchUp. Skatter is a powerful new tool, which makes it possible to scatter compound objects either as an array, or over the surface of a host object/plane. This is particularly advantageous when working with 3D vegetation like grass, trees, bushes etc.
I think that many SketchUp users will agree with me that this has always been a major challenge especially in the rendering part. There have been previous attempts to make scatter plugins, and these plugins roughly did the job, but with some limitations. Consequently, many have to rely on other programs like Photoshop in post processing.
Nevertheless, I think many of us love SketchUp. When working as an architect as I am, time matters almost every time. In my case, it always depends on what I am able to accomplish in a very short time. That is why I chose SketchUp. It is fast, intuitive, flexible, and easy to use. Thanks to the many serious developers of SketchUp extensions out there, more and more opportunities are opening up, and every time the gap between SketchUp and other more “sophisticated” and advanced 3D programs narrows.
With this small introduction, I will continue to tell a bit more about the scene “The Meadow” and how I’ve used Skatter for SketchUp as one of the main tools.




创建这个场景是为了测试SU自然分散插件的性能。因此，我选择了一个景观场景，而没有选择建筑！这是我之前从没做过的。我喜欢按照我的工作流程控制每一件事情，所以我决定从头开始做每一件事，比如恰当地放置每一株小草。

我通过网络搜集了一些参考图片，来展示杂草是什么样子的。我也找了一些启发灵感的景观图片，帮助我构思这个项目。

The scene was created to test the capabilities of Skatter for SketchUp. Therefore, I chose to work with a landscape scene, without buildings! Something I never do. I like the idea that I control everything in my workflow, so I decided to make everything from scratch, right down to each single straw of grass.
I searched the net for some reference images, to see how the distribution of natural grass looked like. I also found some landscape images for inspiration, and to help me mentally visualize the project.
     











3D草地的制作/3D Grass Making

在我继续工作之前，我需要说明下如果没有其它很好的SU插件，工作不会这么容易地展开。在制作草地的时候，我使用自由缩放（Fredo Scale）和贴图扩展（Fredo ThruPaint）工具。在创建地形的时候，我使用了SU的细分（Artisan）工具。利用自由缩放工具可以扭转和弯曲几何体块，贴图扩展工具是一个很好的工具，当你在一些异形的几何上贴覆材质时，保证效果不会失真。

首先，我利用自由缩放工具按照不同的角度弯曲小草组件。接着使用贴图扩展工具给小草贴上纹理。我按照不同的绿色调，分别制作了草地纹理，并将它们贴覆在每一株小草上。然后，我通过纹理的位置形成不同的绿色色调。这样我在Vray中只要调节一个材质就可以了，我觉得这在一些复杂场景中，这样的操作是很占优势的。

Before I continue, I need to say that the work would have been less easy without some other great SketchUp plugins. To make the grass, I used Fredo Scale and Fredo ThruPaint. For the terrain, I used Artisan for SketchUp. Fredo Scale allows you to twist and bend your geometry, and Fredo ThruPaint is a great tool for UV mapping your textures on challenging geometry without any distortions.
I started out by using Fredo Scale to bend the grass components in different angles. I then used Fredo’s ThruPaint to map the grass texture. I made a single grass texture in different shades of green, and mapped it on every single straw. Then I moved the position of the texture to catch the different green shades. In this way, I had only one material to control in V-Ray, which I think is an advantage when you are working with complicated scenes.






基础的草地材质/Basic Grass Material




我利用相同的方法创建花朵。我制作了一个一体化的花朵贴图，然后使用贴图扩展工具移动其位置以适应几何体。

I made the flowers in exactly the same way. I made an all-in-one flower texture, and used ThruPaint to move the position to fit the geometry




一体化花朵材质/All in One Flower Materials


  



现在我需要制作草捆了。

这个部分是我的整个制作过程中第一次使用SU自然分散插件。我制作了一个简单的六角形作为我的主体对象，并选择了四个我之前制作的小草组件进行分散。对于不同的草丛我进行了不同的设置，但是大多数情况，我采用统一的分散方式，保证随机变化的特性。Skatter为控制布局提供了无限可能性，仅这小小的改变就带来了意象不到的收获。

Now I had to make the grass bundles.
This is the part where I used Skatter for SketchUp for the first time in the process. I made a simple hexagon shape as my host object, and selected four of my previously made grass components to be scattered. I used different settings for the different grass tufts, but for the most part, I used Uniform as my distribution method and enabled the Random Transform feature. Skatter offers endless possibilities to control your distribution, but these simple changes gave a pretty good result.




最后，我制作了一些不同的草丛，这些模型从低矮的草地开始，以高高的芦苇结束。

Eventually, I ended up with some different grass tufts, starting from low grass, and ending up with reed.




使用V-RAY /Using V-RAY

这一步操作相当简单。我使用了一个反射图层和一个双向的材质获得了半透明的效果。对于花朵的叶子，我也制作了一个透明贴图和凹凸贴图。但是，凹凸贴图有点过了。

This is pretty straightforward. I used a reflection layer and a 2-sided material for a translucency effect. For the flower leaves, I also made a transparency map and a bump map. The bump map was overkill, though.
  





下面是我将在最后的场景中使用的一些植物包。

Below is the bundles I decided to use in my final scene.




地形建模/Modeling the Terrain

正如我之前提到的，地形的模型建造主要使用了SU中的细分工具——另一个优秀的插件。如果我们希望地形更加光滑一些，沙盘插件将是不二选择，但是细分工具可以给我们提供一些不错的附加特征，当你希望事情简单些，而且你可以控制分散布局方式的时候，你要是不用它的话，一切都变的很难。稍后我再与大家细细讨论。首先，我利用了一个简单的沙盘平面，接着我使用细分雕刻工具创建地形。

As I mentioned earlier, the terrain modeling was mainly made with Artisan for SketchUp – another great plugin. If we are to be fair, Sandbox could probably do the job, but Artisan provides some great additional features, which are hard to do without when you want things to go easy, and especially if you want to control your scatter distribution. More on that later.
I started out with a simple sandbox plane. I then used Artisan Sculpt Tool to form the terrain.




当我对最终的设计很满意的时候，我使用Fredo的扩展贴图工具来为我的地面覆上材质并保证地形不失真。这使我回到细分工具，使用画笔工具，通过点击和拖动就可以为现有覆上纹理的地面的顶部涂上新的纹理。我使用相同的方法为道路区域和湖面底部涂上了纹理。细分工具也可以做到没有一点纹理失真。

When I was pleased with the final design, I used Fredo’s ThruPaint tool to project my ground cover textures to the terrain without any distortions. I went back to Artisan and used the Paint Brush Tool, which allows you to paint a new texture on top of the existing ground cover texture by clicking and dragging. I painted the road area and the bottom of the lake using this method. Artisan also do this without any texture distortion.




现在我可以通过细分工具中的“选择笔刷”，为自然分散准备地形模型。通过点击和拖动笔刷，我可以选择特定的区域，尤其是在道路区域，在这里我需要利用分散布局进行更多的控制。我将这个区域转为组，也在场景中放置了镜头。现在，我已经准备好去使用自然分散工具（Skatter）。

Now I could prepare the terrain for Skatter, using Artisan’s Select Brush. By clicking and dragging the brush, I could select specific areas, especially in my road area, where I needed more control with my scatter distribution. I grouped the areas, and placed my camera in the scene.
Now, I was ready to use Skatter.




下面是最终的镜头位置

Below is the final Camera position.




在地形的3D模型中使用Skatter /Using Skatter with the Terrain 3d Model

现在就可以使用Skatter插件了!

现在最有趣的部分开始了，换句话说，就是大面积的使用Skatter插件。

我将我的草丛组件导入场景，并将它们合并为简单V-Ray代理。我首先分散的是道路，中心是草地，两侧是模糊的崎岖不平的痕迹。因为我之前将道路区域转为组了，因此很容易控制分散参数以获得较好的外观。在这种情况下，我们有必要使用一些其他分散特征。

由于我制作了倾斜的地形，所以我需要按照地面来分散我的组件。因此我利用了向上的滑条，这样可以设置为正常形式。我在区域的部分还用了缩放衰减工具使得滑条能过渡到痕迹。因为我使用了代理，而不是可见组件，这就保证了“唯一渲染”的特性，所以我可以通过编辑渲染列表来控制效果。

对于道路区域，我使用了六个图层：一个是草丛层、一个是花朵层还有一个石头层。我也手动分散了一些石头，石头以及地表覆盖纹理的简单凹凸贴图都起到了装饰的作用。

It’s Skatter Time!
Now the fun part begins, namely, to use Skatter on some larger areas.
I imported my grass tufts into the scene, and made them into simple V-Ray proxies. I first scattered the road. It was my intention to get the road to look old and rarely used, with grass in the center and on the sides with some vague bumpy tracks.Because I grouped the road areas earlier it was much easier to control the scatter parameters to get this look. In this situation it was necessary to use some other Skatter features.
Because I worked with sloped terrain, I needed to get my scattered objects to follow the surface. I did this with the Pointing up slide bar, which was set to normal. I also used Scale falloff in the Area section, to make a sliding transition toward the tracks. Because I worked with proxies, and not visible components, I enabled the “Render Only” feature, so I could control future editing in the Render List.
For the road area I used six layers : one for each of the grass bundles, one for each of the flowers and one for the stones. I also scattered some stones manually, which together with a simple bump map on the ground cover texture did the trick.






下面是道路区域分散后的第一张渲染测试图。

Below is the first render test of the scattered road area.




剩下的分散都采用了相同的方法，但是由于余下的大多数植物都离镜头很远，因此我使用了特写镜头，保证了排除每个镜头外不可见的分散对象，以及距离裁剪，因为这些人眼看不到的地方没有必要使用如此高细节的背景。

The rest of the scattering was made in the same way, but because much of the remaining vegetation was far away from the camera position, I used the Camera feature and enabled Exclude non visible to remove every scattered objects outside the viewport, and Distance clipping, since it was not necessary with such high level of details in the background, where your eyes cannot see it anyway




最后，我放置了一些树木并为湖泊制作了一个水的材质。我没有花很多时间去做灯光调整，因为我没有时间来做。所以场景照明就使用了惯用的V-Ray阳光和天空。但是对于水面我使用了HDRI反射贴图。最终我的V-Ray设置只是一个中等质量的外观设置。

以下的图片是最终渲染的效果图。

Finally, I placed some trees, and made a water material for the lake. I chose not to spend a lot of time doing too many lightning adjustments, as I did not have time for it. So the scene lightning is just a good old V-Ray Sun and Sky. I used an HDRI in the water reflection though. My final V-Ray settings was just an exterior preset in a medium quality.
The image below is the final raw render.




这是使用白色覆盖材质的图片。

This is the image with a white override material.




后期制作/Post Production

我只花了不到一小时进行后期制作。我之前已经找好了背景图片和背景树木，所以我只是花时间调整光照、对比和色彩平衡。

I used less than an hour on the post processing. I had already found the background images, and my background trees, so I used the time adjusting light, contrast and color balance.




我希望你们在这个教程中能够有所收获。但记住，这只是SU插件Skatter众多伟大可能性的一小部分。

为了这个教程，我已经将地形模型和使用的组件（小草、花朵等）放入到Ronen的ArchVIZ 免费商店中，所以大家可以自由地在3D模型中操作它们或者用在你们自己的项目中。现在就打包下载“草地”的资源吧！

在下面你可以看到我早前作的其他渲染测试图。

I hope you got something out of following this tutorial. Keep in mind, that this was just a small part of the many great possibilities Skatter for Sketchup offers.
For this tutorial I have added the model of the terrain, and the used components (grass, flowers, etc) to Ronen’s ArchVIZ Shop for free so feel free to experiment with them in the 3D model, or in your own projects.
Grab “The Meadow” Pack Now!
Below you can see some other render tests I made earlier.
  




那么以上就是所有的内容了。

我希望你们能够喜欢这篇教程。如果大家对于任何项目有任何问题，请尽管提出来，我都非常乐意解答。

So, that`s it.
I hope you enjoyed it. If there is any question regarding any subject I would be pleased to answer it.


Mads Bjerre是一名丹麦建筑师，他在2010年从奥尔胡斯建筑学院硕士毕业。他现在是Aart Architects建筑事务所的一名建筑师。这是一家丹麦建筑公司，它在奥尔胡斯、哥本哈根和奥斯陆都设有办事处，专门从事现代化的北欧设计和建构解决措施。Mads的工作涵盖了3D设计研究、建模和效果图制作。SU和V-Ray是他在Aart建筑事务所使用的主要工具。

Mads Bjerre is a Danish architect who graduated with a Master in Architecture from Aarhus school of architecture in 2010. He works as an architect for Aart Architects.A Danish architectural firm, with offices in Aarhus, Copenhagen, and Oslo, who specializes in modern Scandinavian design and architectural solutions. Mads work consists of 3D design studies, modeling and visualizations. SketchUp and V-Ray are used as main tools for this at Aart.


出处：本文译自www.ronenbekerman.com/，转载请注明出处。