<body><script type="text/javascript"> function setAttributeOnload(object, attribute, val) { if(window.addEventListener) { window.addEventListener('load', function(){ object[attribute] = val; }, false); } else { window.attachEvent('onload', function(){ object[attribute] = val; }); } } </script> <div id="navbar-iframe-container"></div> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/platform.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> gapi.load("gapi.iframes:gapi.iframes.style.bubble", function() { if (gapi.iframes && gapi.iframes.getContext) { gapi.iframes.getContext().openChild({ url: 'https://www.blogger.com/navbar.g?targetBlogID\x3d13405220\x26blogName\x3dPavan+Podila\x27s+Blog\x26publishMode\x3dPUBLISH_MODE_BLOGSPOT\x26navbarType\x3dBLUE\x26layoutType\x3dCLASSIC\x26searchRoot\x3dhttps://pavanpodila.blogspot.com/search\x26blogLocale\x3den_US\x26v\x3d2\x26homepageUrl\x3dhttp://pavanpodila.blogspot.com/\x26vt\x3d-3240902251102105728', where: document.getElementById("navbar-iframe-container"), id: "navbar-iframe", messageHandlersFilter: gapi.iframes.CROSS_ORIGIN_IFRAMES_FILTER, messageHandlers: { 'blogger-ping': function() {} } }); } }); </script>

Friday, April 28, 2006

SketchUp your world

Google Sketchup, released recently, is a great and fun 3D Modeling software. It has amazing interactivity and also very easy to use. Looks like Google really got the intereaction part right. I have been a user (although at an amateur level) of a couple of 3D modeling softwares but I am very impressed with SketchUp.

As soon as I got over the initial learning curve (thanks to some great video tutorials) my mind started wandering. I have been exploring the XAML markup for sometime and tried my hand at Zam3D for creating markups for 3D models. Although Zam3D is a great tool, it has a very crowded interface which can overwhelm the user. SketchUp is just the opposite of that -- easy and intuitive (love the Push-Pull tool). So I started thinking if there is a way I could export the SketchUp 3D model to a XAML file. After a little digging, I found that SketchUp exposes a set of APIs for doing just that. The greatest surprise came when I read that the API bindings are for the Ruby language -- absolutely amazing. I personally love Ruby and it looks like there is no better way to play around more than with the SketchUp API. [Activity detected, appended to TODO list]

Just for fun I made this 3D model spelling the letters of my name. Took under 5 minutes.

posted by Pavan Podila @ 9:14 AM