Video made using Google SketchUp for $12

April says:

Given your previous coverage of Google SketchUp, I thought you would love this music video made by one-man band Roche Limit. Why? Because he made it almost entirely using the free Google SketchUp software.

We also interviewed the man behind Roche Limit, Dave Righton, and he talks about the making of the music video.

Music video, My Friend Ship by Roche Limit

• [nosehat]

  @#14 Anonymous: I’ve stayed away from SketchUp because I was under the impression you needed the pro version to export anything other than a 2D snapshot. Officially, this is the case. Only the Pro version of SketchUp exports 3DS, OBJ, XSI, FBX, VRML and DAE files.

  However, a little digging uncovered this clever workaround. So you are correct, the free version of SketchUp can produce DAE files. At least until Google patches this. :)

• [InsertFingerHere]

  Not included in that price is the vast amount of time the artist spent doing this and removing himself from any earning stream.

  I made a 2hr doc a few years ago, cost me less than $100, because I bartered a 2nd video for the group paying for my trip, I borrowed a bit of gear from friends, spent two weeks shooting overseas with the group, then another 3 months editing the bejesus out of it, turning down paying gigs the whole while.

  The money I got for the broadcast rights was next to nothing, I donated it to the subject of my doc.

  So ya, I’m out $100 cash money, but damn near lost my shirt as well.

  You just have to cross your fingers that the payoff for all that work comes in time.

  I’m sure some new-art ad houses in NY are starting a bidding war for this guy. Great video, fresh animation technique… just hope it doesn’t get abused.

  I start freaking the hell out when I see that insurance commercial done in ‘A Scanner Darkly’ manner.

• [sumitsumit]

  I love this genre of video; here’s one I made for one of my own songs, an animated story done completely in Powerpoint…

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxENPw8MZ6Y&feature=channel_page

• [invictus]

  Insertfingerhere@5: It’s all about opportunity cost. If the artist in question didn’t have a high-paying job to be absent from, did the video cost less? If you can produce the video yourself (at whatever time investment it may be) or not produce it at all because you don’t have the thousands to pay for a professional, which do you choose?

• [DefMech]

  So many people criticizing Sketchup for not being as sophisticated as Blender. That’s like complaining that your screwdriver set isn’t a CNC mill. Well, DUH. What Sketchup does, it does better than anything else. It allows you to quickly model architectural forms without having to concern yourself with the underlying geometry and sophisticated rules of typical poly modeling. It also has one of the simplest, easy to grasp interfaces of any 3D application in existence.

• [Anonymous]

  Did anyone else catch the Utah Teapot at 50 seconds in?

• [phlavor]

  Love both the song and the video. Great work.

• [Anonymous]

  Not bad.

  However, I’d certainly recommend checking out the free and open source software Blender, and all the amazing music videos that have been made with that. Also no cost, but much, much more powerful, and… well, it is free and open source software.

• [moth]

  Thanks so much for covering the video — I was blown away.

  One note, the link to the interview with Dave is broken — it should link here:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIwf7Wzrn4k

• [nosehat]

  That was amazing! What a lot of work must have gone into making that!

  The “making of” video seems to be here:

  http://www.99dollarmusicvideos.com/makingof/episode/99MV_20090714

• [Anonymous]

  @nosehat: AFAIK, you don’t need to the “Pro” version of SketchUp to switch to Blender. Blender imports Collada just fine.

• [Anonymous]

  What cost $12?

• [Amplifier]

  Anon at #11
  You beat me, exactly what I was going to post.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_teapot

• [Anonymous]

  SKETCHUP ROCKS !!!!!!!

• [WA]

  @NoseHat: I agree that the use of SketchUp gave the video a certain intentionally unrealistic and generated feel that looked interesting and novel, and went quite far to distract from all of the limitations and problems of using SketchUp by turning those limitations into advantages. Blender is far more powerful, and has a much better workflow, but making something that would look decent would require far more skill and effort: something made poorly in Blender will look worse than something made poorly in SketchUp, in my opinion: SketchUp seems almost designed to make relatively amateur workmanship look passable, while Blender certainly is not.

  Two things that stood out to me as unfortunate were the faces and the floating text. The floating text seemed to have an unfortunate and distinct lack of antialiasing, which made it seem both out of place and distractingly unattractive. The faces didn’t fit well with the theme: while everything else was block and clearly computer generated, the faces were far too detailed and flat, as they were obviously photographs that had been used as textures on flat surfaces. The result was that the faces were of a completely different style, and were noticeably jarring.

  Otherwise, the style was interesting and novel.

• [Quiet Noises]

  This is total DIY, which in its own sake is decent, but you can’t compare it to other software or music videos. Most music videos hire professionals to shoot and produce them, hence the higher total cost. I’m sure if you were to hire out the same Google Sketchup video to a graphics studio, they would produce the exact same work but ask several hundred or thousands of dollars.

• [Anonymous]

  Wow. Given how clumsy SketchUp’s workflow is, making that video must have been *a lot* of work. I’m duly impressed by such diligence and perseverance.

  Oh, yea, and it happens to be pretty creative as well.

  Well done Dave.

• [nosehat]

  @ # 8–

  I’ll second your Blender recommendation. Blender is a fantastic piece of open-source software capable of truly professional work, and the more people in the community, the better it will get.

  For this video though, the artist says he was using SketchUp to storyboard the video when it occurred to him half way through that he could just do the whole thing in SketchUp. IIRC, you can’t export your models from the free version of SketchUp in any format. He’d have to buy the “pro” version of SketchUp if he wanted to switch to Blender mid-project.

  Also, I think some of the limitations of SketchUp ended up giving this video a really nice, distinctive look and feel. You’ll notice there’s no real animated motion in the entire video. It’s a series of static sets which the camera moves through. To my eye, this is really beautiful, and really effective at holding the whole video together. Sometimes the best art emerges as a compromise between the artist’s vision and his tools. If he’d started the same project in Blender, he might have been tempted to animate the scenes.

  @3: He says the 12 bucks was how much the tape cost him for the live video segments. I guess he already had the camera, the computer, the video editing software, etc.

  Very, very good work! Truly inspirational.