Sketchup for use with SoM

[Madison Lastrega]

I am sure many of you have heard of Googles FREE awesome modeling software Sketchup?, If not please visit google to see how easy it is to make models in skethup........... The beauty of sketchup is , that already has an army of impressive models ,including houses and other great goods as models ...ALL free with unlimted use..... PROBLEM......Sketchup FREE version only handles it own files, and the ones you make canNOT be exported in OBJ format.Very sad....... But Not for me ....And now not for my SoM friends.......... Sketchup Free can howerver export in its' own KMZ format (google Earth4) and if you extract the files in a KMZ file using Almost any software, IE WINRAR, WINZIP......you will see that sketchup actully is a form of Collada....... and in fact MOST skethup models can be downloaded in DAE. format......... So now How does one use this power for SoM ?.................... if the stetchup model you want to convert has the download option of DAE......Download that version, if not follow this guide to extract the DAE file(s) from the KMZ version ‎  https://sites.google.com/site/alexvaqp/sketchupblender ......Now once you have the DAE version of the file you want to use with SoM........... Open blender(free of course) and import the model in Colloada 1.4 it will open and be ready to then EXPORT as an OBJ file to use in meta......... or you can just use it in blender like I do then save as an OBJ, then save as an .X file......the rest is every should know how to do......... ‎  Examples below......................Happy Modeling..............ML