Federation DW Eventide-Class...

[Starship]

What's the advantage of using Sketchup over Blender? I ask because I'm learning Blender right now.

I believe that Blender does to have a complicated interface, while Sketchup does to have a simpler one. Looks like Milkshape has a simpler one too.
Is a fact that you´ll need a lot of plugins to do some thingies to work in sketchup, but a lot of them are free.
Blender has an interface that makes me remember Lightwave sometimes.
The best thing that I can point about Sketchup, is the learning curve, no doubt!
For the ones interested in Sketchup, take a look in these EXCELLENT tutorilas:
http://www.render.ru/books/show_book.php?book_id=808
http://translate.google.com/transla...al.com/47293.html&sl=ru&tl=en&history_state0=
http://ixlrlxi.livejournal.com/113673.html

Look what an expert can do with the standard tools of sketchup and with proper rendering skills and tools: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=169091.

 

[sojourner]

Truth to be told, the modelling in that thread is done in sketchup, but he does a lot of post processing in photoshop to get those final images. You'll also notice the almost total lack of textures. Sketchup sucks at texturing on organic shapes.