SketchUp Skydome
Keeping with the theme of clouds and textured globes, I though it would be interesting to create an accurately textured skydome model for SketchUp. This uses a ’sky’ panorama painted onto the inside of a large hemisphere - a quick way to fake a 360 degree backdrop for 3D models.
SketchUp Skydome (400kB)
This is a short video produced in SketchUp , demonstrating how the Skydome looks in combination with my Turning Torso Model. Notice the subtle use of 3D Text at the end. 
Same difficulty applies to texturing skydomes in SketchUp as spheres, so I did the simple thing again and imported a pre-textured model in, using a similar method to the anim8or imported globe.
The cloud image comes from this panoramic photography website: Philo’s Sky Collection. Kudos to Philo for making these great images available for download.
The model’s current texture can by replaced with any of the other sky panoramas from Philo’s website. To do this:
- Download one of the ’equirectangular corrected images’.
- Open the SketchUp Skydome model and click on the paint bucket tool.
- Double click on the current cloud ’material’ to open the Edit tab.
- Replace the texture by clicking on the ’load material’ icon and opening the new image.
- Break open the proportions lock and re-enter 0.0254m and 0.0508m as the horizontal and vertical measurements.
- Close the Materials Window.
If you use sky panoramas from other websites, such as the 2 sites listed below, you’ll probably need to use different values for the texture’s measurements. 0.00254m for both vertical and horizontal works with most images.
Posted By James On June 23rd, 2007.
Comments: 13
Comments
Comment from Frank Taylor
Time: June 24, 2007, 8:00 pm
Hi James,
I’d like to try a night view. The only tricky part would be to make the ground look dark. I suppose we could overlay a dark partially transparent overlay on the ground. Not sure what to do about 3D buildings though, except turn them off. I suppose you could make 3D buildings with materials set up to make them look like night-time versions…
Frank
Pingback from Como añadir “un cielo” a Google Earth :
Time: June 25, 2007, 7:09 am
[...] Stafford de la comunidad Barnabu, ha lanzado un módelo de “cielo” para añadirlo dentro de Google Earh llamado skydome mode, en [...]
Comment from Andy
Time: June 25, 2007, 11:02 am
Genius! - nice idea
Comment from James
Time: June 25, 2007, 11:25 am
Great idea Frank.
Is there a night sky image you have in mind ? Incorporating night-time 3D buildings sounds tricky - i.e. getting a realistic match between the light levels in the various components.
James
Comment from Frank Taylor
Time: June 25, 2007, 12:31 pm
I’m trying to give you something to aspire to now that you are reaching perfection with a daytime sky.
Not sure where you can get the night-time view. You could use Celestia and maybe use Digital Urban’s technique of taking a panorama so you can convert it over to a equirectangular projection. Maybe someone already has a nighttime equirectangular shot. Although I didn’t find one using Google Images, I did find a couple of sunset shots.
Comment from James
Time: June 25, 2007, 12:57 pm
Frank - Might be easier just to plaster the entire celestial sphere onto a global image overlay and stick it at altitude.
Pingback from Digital Earth Blog » Google Earth Sky
Time: June 25, 2007, 6:56 pm
[...] has created a cool way to show a realistic sky in Google Earth. He’s written about it in his blog, and Frank Taylor at the Google Earth Blog has two posts about it as [...]
Pingback from Internet marketing » Blog Archive » Il cielo in Google Earth!
Time: June 26, 2007, 6:28 pm
[...] potete trovare la calotta già pronta (Skydome) fatta con [...]
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Time: June 27, 2007, 1:41 am
[...] adds shading to all SketchUp models to make them look more realistic. For something like my sky-dome model this is problematical because it means the texture is unevenly lit and too [...]
Pingback from More Turning Torso Sky Dome Videos
Time: June 30, 2007, 1:28 am
[...] this week I posted a SketchUp video using a sky-dome with my Turning Torso 3D model. This is a video of the same sequence, with all the hidden geometry [...]
Comment from papablo
Time: October 1, 2007, 9:08 am
You can assign a semi-transparent material to the external surface to easyest know what you are seeing win you zoom-out or move outside the eskydome. Thankyou for your job.
Comment from dscm
Time: January 8, 2008, 1:02 pm
You can add a night-time view even if it is not an equirectangular projection. I’ve found one on continuum3d.com. here’s the link: http://continuum3d.com/grafix/3dSkyInMot/SIM-10.html#
just cut off the black part at the bottom and set the proportions to both 0.0254m
Comment from ellen the model builder
Time: May 7, 2008, 3:23 am
What a beautiful sky dome!
How did you make a hemisphere in anim8or?
How did you texture the inside of it?
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