While writing the second part of the tutorial on Oblivion a reader known as Uwe posted a comment with regards the a plugin for the free version of Google SketchUp which allows model export to the .stl format.
The main drawback of the free version is its inability to export models until now – if you install the LTS Plugin it suddenly frees up the ability to export models direct from SketchUp.
As such we thought we would give it a try importing a model from the Google 3D Warehouse into Oblivion, the movie below details the steps:
As you can see we are able to take geometry direct from the 3D Warehouse and import it into Oblivion via 3D Max and The Elder Scrolls Construction Set although at the moment the textures get lost along the way.
Our main tutorial will be online later tomorrow (all things going well) with an update on this new method as soon as a full export path is determined.
Thanks again to Uwe – as we run through the notes on the second tutorial for the write up tomorrow its interesting to note how this opens up a completely free path from various software packages to Oblivion.