Improves File Size And Rendering

1. Complexity

• Use the minimum polygons required to communicate the essential information.
• Reduce segments on arcs and circles whenever possible, especially if they will be extruded.
• Reducing the circle segments from 24 to 12, and the arc segments from 12 to 6, results in a 70% savings in geometry, while maintaining a smooth appearance. This segment reduction drastically improves rendering, especially when the component is repeated.

2. Complexity in 3D Text

• Complex fonts can produce crazy-high edge counts, thus slowing down your model, so choose plain fonts instead.
• A simple version of this sign model only had about 500 edges (instead of 13,000).

3. Materials

• Examine image file sizes before importing. Pre-crop and resize images before importing them into the model.
• Install and use the Materials Resizer extension from the Extension Warehouse in SketchUp (under Extensions > Extension Warehouse, or the Windows menu).
• For some imported photographs it helps to right-click on model surface and select “Make Unique Texture” to further crop and reduce pixels. Undo this step if it makes it too blurry.
• Use .jpg files wherever possible for imported tiling images, as they often have smaller file sizes than pngs. Some exceptions are site maps, logos, and images with transparencies.
• Don’t choose a tiling image file when a flat formulaic color will do. Example: You can usually use a flat shade of grey instead of “brushed aluminum.”
• Don’t add decorations to a client’s model, such as wall art, unless asked to (or if it’s worth it).
  

4. Imported Components

• Only download a component/model from the 3D Warehouse after you have checked the file size and the edge count. Shop around a little, it’s worth it.
• Use “Filters” to adjust the File Size and Polygon Count for your search. Only the files within your selected parameters will display.
• Use the component with the smallest file and edge count that will do the job.
• You can always trade up to a higher quality component later with a “select/replace” technique.

Pro-Tip: LandFX makes nice lower-poly vegetation models!

5. Terrain

• Limit the terrain selection to essential areas.
• If context terrain is important, create an essential Terrain group and a contextual terrain group, and then hide all but the essential terrain while building the model.
• There are many ways to do this, with varying effects on file size, image quality, and rendering.

6. CleanUp Extension by ThomThom

• One of the top extensions in the 3D Warehouse.
• Essential for many reasons, one of which is line reduction (make sure the setting to erase stray edges is checked on)
• Install ThomThom’s library extension before getting CleanUp³.

Many components in the 3D Warehouse are actually created in another program, and then imported into SketchUp. If you turn on Hidden Geometry, you’ll see all the extra stuff in there. CleanUp can get rid of lines that aren’t serving any purpose. This reduces your polygon count, which makes everything better!

Note: If you run the extension on a full model, do it before you go to lunch, as it can take time to run through a complex model. For some huge models it might be best to run CleanUp on selected high-poly portions first, before running it on the entire model.

*** Also, if you are done with your guidelines, go to Edit > Delete Guides to further speed up your model.

7. Find High-Poly Items

What if you have an oversized or slow model?

Option One: Find the High Edge Count items CG Impact Report

This extension will check for the highest-polygon objects in your model, independent of object file size, so you can replace them with lower-poly objects that will render more easily.

Option Two: Find the High Polygon Count items with the ‘Unbork’ process

These steps will check for the highest-polygon objects in your model, independent of object file size, so you can replace them with lower-poly objects that will render more easily. The process is found in the following document. Try it, it’s fun and fast!

Option Three: Find the High File Size items manually
Sometimes a model seems much larger and slower than it should be. How can you clean it up and make it usable? One technique is to analyze the file sizes of the Materials and the Components. For Macs, it only works for Components, not Materials.

• Open the Materials or Components Window and hit the “In Model” icon (the little house button)
• Click on the Details button.
• Select the option for “Save Collection As”.
• In the file navigation window that pops up, navigate to a place you can find the new folder later (I just use the desktop), create a new folder in which to put the collection, and select the folder (don’t open it, just select it). Create the collection. Wait a minute (or a few).
• Outside of SketchUp, open up the new folder and set the view to Details View.
• In the file folder, sort the Materials/Components by size so you can see the largest ones.
• If any of the sizes look too large, you then would want to find that material/component in the model and either delete, replace & purge it, or else edit the material in an imaging editing program to be a smaller pixel size version of itself.

Many components will be groupings of components, so ignore those and focus on size of the inner single-component items. It helps visually to switch the folder view to Large Thumbnails once the list is sorted by file size.