Chapter 2. Collecting a Toolset

	"As an artist, all I need is my paints and brushes - and someone to drag me away when the canvas is done."
	-- Pablo Picasso

SketchUp is a great tool for editing 3D content. It has a simple interface, is easy to understand, and very powerful for architectural modeling. No wonder it became one of the standard tools that you can find in every design studio.

Part of its success is the focus on simple modeling tasks and the fact that it was available for free, while it was owned by Google. However, this means that we have to look for other programs and utilities to assist us in the creation of rich and realistic architectural visuals and use a number of tools to manipulate and postprocess the generated images.

In this chapter, you will learn to perform the following tasks:

• Select the right SketchUp 2014 edition for you

• Discover plugins to improve the SketchUp workflow

• Set up a postprocessing studio for our renderings

• Install Thea Render and integrate it into SketchUp...