Generating 3D Thumbnail Sketches

I came across the website of Matt Kohr and he made some great videos on generating thumbnail sketches in Sketchup. I therefore downloaded Sketchup to play around with it briefly and it really is user friendly, however Maya is a far more powerful and advanced software so I will stick to Maya for this project as my later projects will also involve texturing and hopefully some exploration into different lighting methods.

Digital Painting: Sketchup for Thumbnailing from matt kohr on Vimeo.

Sketchup Basics

Advantages
- User friendly
- Styles
     -> "Thumbnail template style" with line work look
- Easy crisp lighting adjustments
     -> Shadows and direction
- Field of View
     -> Moving the perspective points to adjust distortion (zoom lens, wide angle lens)
- Perspective

Most of the tips Matt Kohr mentions in the video are just as useful for Maya and some of my future projects.

3D Advantages over 2D Methods

- Particularly useful for architecture and "man-made" structures (buildings, cityscapes... )
- Flexibility for iterating on designs
- Unlimited perspective possibilities
- Easy scaling
- Great for repetitive objects in scenes
- Adjustable lighting