United3dArtists Archive

As I recall Truespace had some support for Virtual Earth? Was this different from Google Earth? Anyways, Sketchup has the cool ability to export directly to Google earth. Any feedback on Virtual Earth would be cool thanks, and greetings to all from Leroy.

Virtual Earth was Microsoft's effort to do a thing like Google Earth. MS's buying Caligari/trueSpace may have been related to VE's ability to place 3D models on the map. As far as I know VE is gone now.

Sketchup is the best and easiest architektural modeler..
its not just good for Google Earth....but its also good for Google Earth..

Awesome, it does look quite excellent and somewhat reminds me of Truespaces simple interface. I was hoping to use it for a video game that I make game models for but the XSI format that it uses is far too new for BZII Combat Commander which unfortunately uses an old version 1.5 of Softimage.

Virtual Earth is now just Bing Maps with Bird's Eye view enabled.
Some cities have some 3D buildings mapped, but I think MS is now handling that internally.
tS used to/ was supposed to have the ability to export/upload models directly to the map. (from what I remember).

BNG wrote:Awesome, it does look quite excellent and somewhat reminds me of Truespaces simple interface. I was hoping to use it for a video game that I make game models for but the XSI format that it uses is far too new for BZII Combat Commander which unfortunately uses an old version 1.5 of Softimage.

it doesnt use xsi format it uses Collada . simple and plai Collada..... you just have to renamer it to.zip and unzip it Bingo...
New Versions even Export directly to Collada!
The pro Version exports to everything else too ! obj etc

RAYMAN wrote:

BNG wrote:Awesome, it does look quite excellent and somewhat reminds me of Truespaces simple interface. I was hoping to use it for a video game that I make game models for but the XSI format that it uses is far too new for BZII Combat Commander which unfortunately uses an old version 1.5 of Softimage.

it doesnt use xsi format it uses Collada . simple and plai Collada..... you just have to renamer it to.zip and unzip it Bingo...
New Versions even Export directly to Collada!
The pro Version exports to everything else too ! obj etc

Oddly, it has an XSI option to export, but as I said the format is way too current for older XSI formats. I also noticed that the 3ds importer is kind of buggy too. I exported a test model out of Truespace in 3ds, but when I imported it into Sketchup some of the model parts were missing? Still it's a very simple modeling tool compared to like Blender.

Hmm, apparently there is a modeling tool called 3dvia shape for creating models for Bing maps. It looks and feels very much like Sketchup. It seems to be well documented as well. I had to install Bing maps to get it to work though. 3dvia looks pretty simple to learn too.

BNG wrote:Hmm, apparently there is a modeling tool called 3dvia shape for creating models for Bing maps. It looks and feels very much like Sketchup. It seems to be well documented as well. I had to install Bing maps to get it to work though. 3dvia looks pretty simple to learn too.

I know it ..it was made to make very simple models but its nowhere near Sketchup...
Sketchup was written with architekts in mind and was bought by Google much later...
You must learn Sketchup to understand how powerfull it is...it has very very advanced snapping properties no other program in the world has !;)
Importing into Sketchup isnt what its made for! So the import of 3ds isnt very good....
Just take your time to learn the program its worth it!

There is a free Autodesk software that imports skp/whatever files too. Think it exports FBX/OBJ. Can't remember as it was on my old machine.

https://sites.google.com/site/alexvaqp/sketchupblender"


found the link!