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Comment by mrcharles | Hacker News Reader

Use of Sketchup is actually really common in games nowadays. It's an asset for a level designer to know how to use it, and a lot of tools pipelines have importers which will pull Sketchup data directly in to the game.

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Really? Do you know of any companies that have admitted using Sketchup? Hadn't really heard anything at GDC the past few years (besides Google giving copies away at their booth).

I don't know any that have talked about it in public but in general, companies are getting better at using off the shelf tools rather than building everything in house, if they can. Baby steps, but it's still progress.

Well, the technical leaps have tapered in the past few years, so it's finally starting to make more sense.

I work at a major developer-publisher and we use Sketchup for mockups of levels. It's not part of the official level design pipeline but in the conception phase it's better than 2D sketches or plans. Also used: Lego and papercraft.

It isn't for lack of trying. Here are the slides from a proposed, but not accepted, talk for GDC 2009. http://www.playuptools.com/csroby/media/GDC_Sketchup_09.pdf

I used to work in video games and yes we used it for level design and initial import in to 3DSMax. The artists then built an optimised geometry to match.

Designers love it as they can get exactly what they want and artists love it because they do level iteration with high poly difficult to manipulate levels.

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