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Author : Felipe Gallego

My Story with Sketchup

Hello, my name is Felipe Gallego; I'm from Medellin, Colombia. I got my bachelor degree in Architecture in 2003 and since then I've worked as a staff architect in the companies I've worked in, and as a freelance CGviz when it comes any opportunity.

Before architecture, I studied arts since I was 13yo, then you can realize how my world moves around visualizing. I love to put the whole world in my imagination, play with it and reproduce my ideas to show them to the world; drawing, painting, sculpting. I love photography too, the way to see the things we usually don't see, a different look of life.

So this is my story with Sketchup…

I was some of the first in my generation to work 3d generated graphics. My beginning into the 3d world was with autocad3d; later I used Architectural desktop; then 3ds max (before autodesk) to improve everything from modeling, to materials and lights, but by that time, results were pretty basic. Someday, in 2006, I was looking for some 3d models on the internet, and Sketchup came up to me. The first thing I realized was that modeling was very fast, so I could achieve fast results using it as a design tool. It is essential to me in my work to have a 3d sight of what I'm doing, even for making decisions about things I usually can´t see in CAD drawings, and Sketchup gives that to me.

When I found vray for sketchup, the package was complete, now I was able to use it for designing and presentation. Vray has been always difficult to configure to get the results you want, but I've tried some other rendering engines, and the results were never so good.

I always design everything on paper, then I use AutoCAD for drawing, then Sketchup to 3d and get everything under control, and when the design is complete, lights, materials and render.

Not always I have the opportunity to make a very realistic rendering, but I give myself a time occasionally for practicing.

I have become into the one for doing every 3d representation in my office, and it is good to me because I got something else but design to love and work with and get paid for it.

I usually follow tutorials from the internet to improve my knowledge, and then is how I met some of my friends in this 3d world, from the sketchando.net forum in 2009 and other forums and from Facebook Groups now.

I teach private lessons of sketchup, and I always say to my students to keep in mind that making 3d is to bring the world itself to our hands.

Regards!
gallegovelez@gmail.com

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