A Pool House in Tagaytay

by JB Larano

Two years ago, a son of a prominent family in Manila  asked me to design an extension to their vacation home located in Tagaytay, a city about 90 kilometers south of Manila. The extension is a renovation and replacement of the old pool house which is being used as an area for sitting area, changing room, restroom and a lounge for entertaining guests and visitors. Additional work to the renovation calls for the modification of the pool, the addition of the exterior hot tub and the landscaping of the surrounding area around the pool house and the pool itself. The site is overlooking the picturesque Taal Lake where the Taal volcano is located in the middle of the lake. I have posted the view of the pool house showing the pool in my previous blogs which I used in demonstrating the modeling and rendering capacity of several softwares I  am currently using.

I am posting anew the images of this project in a video to illustrate various areas of the project and at the same time to demonstrate the modeling and rendering system of SketchUp and Kerkythea. Please click below to play the video.

A view of the pool showing the lake and the mountain range in the background.

Google SketchUp 2010 3D Basecamp…adieu!

by Joe Larano in Boulder, Colorado

Today is the last day of the bi-annual Google SketchUp 2010 3D Basecamp. Many topics were discussed and many great things were learned in the first two days of the event. In this last day, friends of SketchUp have presented or introduced their promotional  products. Friends of SketchUp include those companies, agencies and developers of related modeling and rendering softwares or products that used Sketchup as the mainstream modeling tool. Among the products presented and demonstrated were “Render-[in]“, BWalker, IES Energy Analysis. I-Clone and many others.

An opportunity to have a chat with SketchUp evangelist, Aidan Chopra. He told me that he was a resident of Vancouver for a year in 2000 before he moved to the United States.

For posterity, a pose with Dan from Cambridge, England.

You can click link below of Google SketchUp blog to see the activities of that three day event at Boulder, Colorado.

http://sketchupdate.blogspot.com/

2010 Google SketchUp 3D Basecamp: Day Two

by Joe Larano in Boulder, Colorado

Day Two of 3D Basecamp was another day of fully packed activities inside the Dairy Centre here in Boulder, Colorado. From 11:30 AM till 3:30PM was devoted to ‘unconference’ sessions covering many topics on SketchUp modeling. Every hour was covered by 8 topics facilitated by among ourselves held at various ‘basecamps’ such as Himalayas, K2, Machu Pichu and Rockies among others.

4:00 to 5:00PM- The participants gathered at the auditorium and a discussion was made over the next release SketchUp 9. It was a wonderful to think that the new SketchUp 8 was just released yesterday and here we are, the Google SketchUp team and the 3D modeling community discussing the next release. John Bacus, the Google SketchUp Product Manager led the discussion and we were given a sheet of paper to list down the things or features that we would like to be included in SketchUp 9. The list are long and  includes features such  as real time lighting to reflection property on SketchUp materials. I was able to submit the idea that Xref (like in AutoCAD) be included in the next release to facilitate project collaboration. Overall, the list were trim down to according to current needs and priority. The  list will be shown in Google SketchUp website and blog to be voted upon by worldwide community of SketchUp users.

Posing for a photo with other "Kerkythea" renderers.

Standing with Diego Matho, Director of Design Computing at Boston Architectural College

Between two nice ladies. On my right is Nancy from Ontario and an instructor at Entourage Arts and on my left is a Landscape Architect from Michigan.

2010 Google SketchUp 3D Basecamp: Day One

by Joe Larano in Boulder, Colorado

Today is an exciting day around the SketchUp World Headquarters out here in Boulder, Colorado. We’ve just kicked off our third bi-annual “3D Basecamp” to a crowd of SketchUp-savvy folks converging on The Dairy Center from all around the world. I’m looking forward to some great conversations about SketchUp and 3D modeling in general over the next few days.

With more than 250 people with various levels of  mastery and expertise on SketchUp and other 3D modeling and rendering softwares, this bi-annual event will be a  treasure field for those who want to enhance their knowledge of SketchUp modeling. Among those who came were authors and writers of several SketchUp books and tutorials, SketchUcation sages, forum moderators, Ruby scripters and plug-in developers, Beta testers and 3d Modeling instructors from several foremost universities and colleges in the United States.

I was fortunate to talk and confer with the man who developed the SketchUp rendering plug-in called “Podium”. We talked lengthily and discussed the rendering system of Podium. He also discussed he is about to announce the walkthrough animation temporary called “BWalker”. He showed the capabilities and features of the program. I was amazed by what the program can do. I also met and talked with Pete Stoeppel from Texas who is an expert renderer promoting “Kerkythea’, the rendering system which I am  currently using. I had also a good time chatting with Tomohiko Yamanashi, an architect who is a Deputy Principal at Nikken Sekkei Ltd.,  the largest architectural office in Japan. We discussed  not only SketchUp but various subjects about the profession and matters relating to collaboration. I met a lot of other people who, in various levels have made SketchUp a byword in the 3D modeling industry.

The big event of the  day is the official announcement of the release of SketchUp 8. The announcement was made by John Bacus, the Product Manager of Google Sketchup. A demonstration of the features of SketchUp 8 was presented during the plenary session.

Please find below some of the photos during the first day of 2010 Google SketchUp Basecamp.

In the photo with Tomohiko Yamanashi and "Podium" developer, Mr. Wayne David

Part of the participants in the auditorium during the plenary session.