Sweet Onion Creations

We were incredibly fortunate enough to be invited down to Mountain View to present on using SketchUp and 3D Warehouse with a 3-D printer. The 3 days spent at the Googleplex were an absolute blast. Tons of great people with interesting tips and tricks… The campus itself is quite impressive as well. The Google culture is quite enviable: cruiser bikes, pool tables in the lobby, on-site workout facilities, etc.

The SketchUp team did an amazing job of making this a great event. They thought of everything (even a tent for bag check!) and were incredibly gracious hosts. By far and away the best user-group conference we’ve ever attended.

Our presentation was taped for YouTube and we’ll be sure to upload that as well when it becomes available. Also, we have a couple additional videos on making famous architecture off 3D Warehouse that are coming shortly.

In the meantime, here’s a few photos to check out.

By now, everyone is wringing their hands over the sub-prime nuclear disaster. NPR radio reported this morning that cities like Detroit and Stockton, California are seeing record foreclosures.

So, what if you’re a developer that has had a project in the works for the past three years? You’ve finally made it to the big dance, cut through hassles, and everybody is afraid to show up and participate.

I think what this forces is a paradigm shift for marketing real estate. The past five or six years were too easy for everybody involved. Now, the game has changed. Agents, marketing managers and developers themselves are going to have to get creative. Providing a unique experience for a potential buyer will have to be a central focus. (Assuming you have a quality product to begin with)

Why?

First of all, potential buyers have dried up (duh). But more importantly, marketing a real estate development has to be an online and offline experience. A showroom is great but without a way to share that experience online it’s a waste. Tools for experiencing the future whether through 3d animations or renderings helps a potential buyer share what living in that new neighborhood will be like with their friends and family.

And these are the people you are inadvertently marketing to. They ultimately can influence a decision. Do it right and you might be able to kick off a word of mouth buzz around town and online. Do it wrong and sub-prime does in fact look pretty scary.

Imagine this: People can download free tools to view any spot on the earth. They can also build skyscrapers of cities in 3D and post them to let others view and download. Famous landmarks, waterways, even buildings that have sustainable design can be called out. If you’re really good, your work might even be recognized with a blue ribbon.

So what?

Well, when you have a ton of people doing this for large metropolitan areas you start to reach critical mass. Using Google’s suite of digital 3d tools (Earth, Sketchup, and 3D Warehouse), our planet and its cities are coming into view. First it’s the football stadium. Then comes the skyscrapers and the peculiar smaller buildings. Before long, an entire downtown of a major city is available online to view. If you really like a particular building you can download it for free.

N ow, it’s available to print in 3D. Yep. Pick a city, download the model, and Sweet Onion Creations can build it to any scale. Something that is bits and bytes on a server in a dark room can now be in your hands in a matter of a few hours. Digital to physical with a mouse click.

Hardcore architecture junkie? Love a particular spot in downtown Madrid? How about the place where you got engaged? Your college campus? Search the 3D Warehouse or model it yourself and have it made into a physical form. Now that’s a one-of-a-kind gift to give that you can’t find on late night television.

Imagine being able to construct a physical scale replica of an entire city…and you don’t have to stay up for weeks designing all the 3D digital models yourself. You can take advantage of the idea of crowdsourcing, i.e. partnering with our fellow 3d geeks across the internet and around the world to build and create digitally the beehives we call home.

For example, let’s say you love the Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida. Well, the nice folks at 3D Warehouse have modeled it already….

That handy “Download Model” button makes it pretty easy to get this design off the web and onto your computer.

Now, here at Sweet Onion Creations we take this file and shoot it to a 3D architectural printer. It takes a few hours but before long we have an actual physical 3d architecture model. Here’s what it looks like in a physical form as a massing model:

The options for using these kinds of tools are endless and just downright fun. Being able to pull stuff online and push it to a form where it can be touched is straight out of science fiction. Couple that with the horsepower of everybody having these free tools at their disposal and it’s makes for a society that can see their world online and off.

Stay tuned for more on this…we’re working on producing a video that outlines the entire process.