Sketchup To Blender

This entry will show the steps of getting a Google Sketchup file (with textures) into Blender.  Note that many Sketchup files can be obtained from the 3D Warehouse.  Results may vary.

First acquire your desired Sketchup file.  In this tutorial, I'll get one from the 3D warehouse.  What's important to note here, is that although Collada's can be imported, from tutorials I've read suggest that the KMZ has to be used.  If no KMZ is available, but a Collada is, you can try, but the results aren't guaranteed.  Also, if you have Sketchup, you can download the skp file, and try to save it as a KMZ or Collada and try importing from there.

In this case the KMZ was available, so I downloaded it.  The secret trick here is that a KMZ is really just a ZIP file.  So by changing the extension to ZIP, the files can be extracted with standard zip software.

 Inside the zipped folder will contain the images (textures), and the model (.dae).

 Inside Blender, select Import > COLLADA to choose the file just downloaded.

If the model was created right (no bad instancing in sketchup), the model should be available in the 3D viewport.  In many cases, the scale will be off (usually on the very large side), so it will take some scaling [s] to get it into a reasonable view of the camera.  Or the camera clipping planes will need to be adjusted.

If the DAE was loaded in its native folder (from the zip file), the textures should be mapped correctly. The complete textured model is now available in Blender.