Discover how to effectively utilize "Face Me" components in SketchUp to create objects that always face the camera. This technique simplifies the design process, reduces file size, and gives the illusion of three-dimensional objects from any viewpoint.
Key Insights
- "Face Me" components in SketchUp are a great tool to create objects that always face the camera. This feature gives the illusion of a 3D object despite being a flat face, which is especially useful when working with images and 2D models.
- Creating "Face Me" components can help reduce file sizes significantly. By using flat, 2D objects that always face the camera, designers can mimic three dimensions without the need for complex modeling and large file sizes.
- The ability to alter the axis of the components provides greater control over the placement and orientation of the objects. This feature can be particularly beneficial when creating and placing multiple instances of the same component, such as palm trees in a landscape design.
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All right, in this video, we are going to talk about more about components, specifically face me components. If I go down to my drop down menu in my components dialog box, navigation arrow down, and go into landscape.
Here I have three options, DC landscape, plants high poly, which means high polygons, and plants low poly, low polygons. I will click plants low poly, and that'll open up the SketchUp warehouse. If I click trees 2D low poly, and scroll down until I can see the palm trees.
I want to open up 2D schematic palm 2, click this download button. And yes, to load directly into my SketchUp model. I'm going to place this palm tree right in the corner right here.
As soon as I click, you can see that the palm tree instantly rotated towards my field of view. And as I rotate around the model, the palm tree continues to face me. But as I slowly orbit up to the top and then pan to a plane view, you can see that this palm tree is really just a flat face.
But because I have face me selected, the palm tree always will point towards where the camera is pointing. This is a great way to reduce your file size to create lots of different objects that will always face the camera. If we go back to the home screen in our components dialog box and find our man that we deleted in the beginning, Neeraj, and place him on our model, you can see that Neeraj is also a face me component that will always face the camera.
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As I kind of orbit around, you can see that he is always facing me, even though he is a 2D flat object. If I click Edit Neeraj, you can see that there is this checkbox called Always Face Camera. If I deselect this face box, and then as I rotate around, you can see that Neeraj no longer faces me.
If I click it again, he'll snap back into facing me. Face me components are extremely useful because they keep our file size small. But they also allow us to orbit our camera to see what a three dimensional person may look like from any angle.
I will undo placing Neeraj and the palm tree, because I would like to build our own palm tree from an image. So I will go back to the true north axes tab to get our axes right on this corner again. And let's go to File, Import, and let's find palm tree PNG, which is in our SKP 101 file downloads folder.
I will select Import. As soon as I bring in this image, you can see that it wants to lay flat along the red and green axes. I can orbit down till I see the horizon line, and then snapping at this end point, I can click and drag up along the blue axes to type in a distance for my height, or I can go along the red axes and type a distance for my width.
I will go along my blue axes for height, and I will type in 25 feet, Enter, for 25 foot high palm tree. OK, next, I would like to make this image a component. But as you can see, if I right click, there's no option to make it as the component.
So I'm going to move this object outside of our park so we have some more control. And I want to draw an individual line right in the middle. And now I can just go to my Select key, holding down Control, also click this line.
Now I have two objects selected. I can right click Make Component. I can change the definition of this component as palm tree.
And I can glue to none because I want this always to be vertical. And I want this to always face camera and shadows face sun. I will select Create.
And now I have a palm tree from image that is a component that will always face me. I can double click this component and I can erase this line. And now I only have this single image, a part of my component.
If I was to delete this and then go into my home screen, I now see I have palm tree as my component that I created. You can see that when I bring it in, that it wants to snap at this point that's to the left of my actual center. We can change that by changing the axes inside of my component.
If I double click this, you can see that my axes are in this corner right here. If I go to my axes tool and then click this center point of my midpoint in image and then along the red axis and then click again, now I can click outside of that and then I can click Yes to change the axes for all other instances of this component in your model. Now if I was to click this palm tree again, you can see that I'm snapped right here in the center point of this palm tree.
So let's go ahead and place a few of these palm trees throughout our site. You can place as many as you would like. You can see now they're all facing the camera.
I will go to my select key and delete this last one that I created and click on my palm tree again. Be careful when building components from images because as you will notice as you zoom in, this image is pixelated and that is because this is an actual JPEG raster based image rather than line work from SketchUp or from AutoCAD. I can continue adding more palm trees throughout my site.
Feel free to add as many as you would like by clicking each one of these to create a really nice lush park. You can put some in the front of your clubhouse and along the street. Put one more right here.
I think that looks really good. Let's save our file. I will see you in the next video.
