Google Sketchup used to mesh??

[deano_ue]

anyone put any thought into this, i know it wouldn't be easy but could it be used to create basic models for hexxing/skoping etc

[detourne_me]

Well, I just dl'ed the free version and played around with it.  simple enough actually. Although in the free version you can only export in KMZ or COLLADA formats.
with the pro copy ($495) you can export in .obj, .3ds and a variety of others.
I think blender+nifskope is probably our best option for free object creation.

[GogglesPizanno]

I had a friend who bought the early version (like 4 or 5 I think) and he exported some sample stuff for me a while ago.
The problem is that when exporting, the mesh complexity was all over the map and not terribly clean, and the texture mapping often didn't export very clean, so i gave up.

Now I'm not really a 3D guy, so I may have just been doing things wacky or wrong, but it seemed like the time spent on the ease of modeling, was negated by the complexity of the exporting and importing in any kind of useable way. This of course may have changed with new versions of the software, I haven't tried it in a while.