Import camera information from Sketchup

Question

Is there a way to import Sketchup scenes into Blender as cameras?

I can get the geometry into Blender without any problems; my issue is that I'd also like to bring along the scene viewpoint as a camera.

The data obtained from SketchUP API is like this:

mod = Sketchup.active_model
vue = mod.active_view
cam = vue.camera

cam.eye
> Point3d(240.719, -236.069, 102.276)

cam.target
> Point3d(-285.372, 553.004, -82.0446)

cam.fov
> 35.0

What is a convenient way to convert this into a new camera?

seems like more of a question about how to get the camera/viewport data out of SketchUp in the first place, the ruby API is quite nice. — zeffii, Sep 09 '13 at 12:54
@zeffii I actually know how to do that (see here; What I'd like to know is if there is a way to do this without manually getting the coordinates and entering them somehow in Blender. — jkjenner, Sep 09 '13 at 16:57
You would want the Up vector or Roll from sketchup too, otherwise you can't create the exact same camera. — ideasman42, Sep 11 '13 at 00:25

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Sep 09 '13 at 20:31

If that's all sketchup gives, then it's a little awkward -- but I think still doable. Maybe something like this. You will have to 'tame' the dimensions yourself.

import bpy

# Data from Sketchup.
cam = {
    "eye": (240.719, -236.069, 102.276),
    "target": (-285.372, 553.004, -82.0446),
    "fov": 35.0,
}

# Create empty to target.
bpy.ops.object.empty_add(location=cam["target"])
target = bpy.context.object

# Create camera.
bpy.ops.object.camera_add(location=cam["eye"])
bpy.context.object.data.lens = cam["fov"]

# Configure camera to track the empty.
constraint = bpy.context.object.constraints.new("TRACK_TO")
constraint.target = target
constraint.track_axis = "TRACK_NEGATIVE_Z"
constraint.up_axis = "UP_Y"

Then you can apply the constraint (Apply Visual Transforms) and delete both it and the empty to avoid clutter. — wchargin, Oct 22 '13 at 03:18

Import camera information from Sketchup

1 Answers1