Design Digs:Josh and Rachel make House: Google Sketchup

It has been far too long since I've posted anything. To get out of the daily grind style work, I decided to compete in the Sketchup 3D Challenge #147 - Tree House. The Sketchup 3D challenge is a series of model building competitions which are about a week long, giving everyone a theme to model how they wish. The rules are pretty simple, and require everyone to make their own components from scratch rather than download from the 3D Warehouse.

Link to 3D Challenge: http://sketchup3dchallenge.blogspot.com/2012/07/sketchup-3d-challenge-147-tree-house.html

Link to my model (if you have sketchup - the basic program is free!): http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=53e9d3b806db35e7843d9c61afebe13c

I learned about this challenge on 7/13, the day it was due, and started work on it around 2pm and finished up about midnight. I was supposed to take a half day off, so I camped out in a coffee shop until my Wife and carpool buddy was ready to go home. Besides driving 30 - 45 minutes home, I worked on this nonstop and forgot to eat dinner.

This challenge, as you have guessed by now, is to draw a 3D model of a Tree House. Mine features a 20' x 9' main structure, with a 1/2 wrap around porch. The main structure is about the size of a shipping container (though a little taller).

I did a google search for the worlds biggest tree (go big or go home), and I found General Sherman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Sherman_(tree) which is Giant Sequoia about 25' diameter.

There are a lot of small houses around the internet, from this one on Arch Daily: http://www.archdaily.com/152505/keret-house-centrala/ to the Wee Houses: http://weehouse.com/. I didn't have much time for precedence studies, and basically just banged it out as quickly as possible.

I was able to fit: A small kitchen with lunch counter, combined living room / bedroom (folding futon), a bathroom with sink, toilet, shower pan.

The columns are primarily paired beams with spacers between. I drew them as having glass inserts between the spacers. Why not?

I did some draft renders showing sunlight using ArielVision's plugin on a 30 day trial. Also, just some regular "export 2D image" shots from sketchup.

Materials chosen were primarily readily available. Simple planks for cladding, framing lumber, glass, some small ceramic tile. The roof is copper (a little harder to get and pricey). For textures not from sketchup, I downloaded images from: CG Textures

Here are some more renderings (click to enlarge):