Photoshop CS3 Extended Plug-In for Google 3D Warehouse
From Adobe Labs
| Table of contents |
Overview
Photoshop® CS3 Extended Plug-in for Google 3D Warehouse is a free plug-in that enables you to search and download 3D models from Google 3D Warehouse™ directly from Adobe® Photoshop CS3 Extended.
Once you have downloaded the plug-in, you can search Google 3D Warehouse from Photoshop CS3 Extended by going to File>Automate>Search Google for 3D Model. For more information on using the plug-in or the 3D capabilities in Photoshop CS3 Extended, see the Getting Started section below.
Downloads and Installation Instructions
The Plug-In for Google 3D Warehouse is pre-release software. It has only been tested using an English operating system with an English version of Photoshop CS3 Extended. There may be bugs or other unknown issues. There is no installer for this plug-in —you must manually place the plug-in into the Photoshop plug-ins folder.
Please follow the instructions for your platform below.
Macintosh Download & Installation Instructions
Note: This plug-in is not compatible with Leopard 10.5
Please follow the instructions below.
- Ensure that you have Photoshop CS3 Extended installed.
- Close all applications, including Photoshop CS3 Extended.
- Download the Photoshop CS3 Extended Plug-In for Google 3D Warehouse
- Double click on the DMG file. There are two plugin files, a Read Me file, and a short-cut link to the Photoshop File Formats Plug-Ins folder on your hard drive inside the DMG.
- Select BOTH the Google3D.plugin and KMZ.plugin files. Drag them both to the shortcut folder titled "File Formats" (Note, this method only works for English versions of Photoshop CS3 Extended). Or, navigate to the File Formats plug-in folder manually and drag both plugin files into this folder: Applications>Adobe Photoshop CS3>Plug-Ins> File Formats.
- You will be asked whether you want to replace an existing KMZ.plugin file -- click "Replace".
- Close the Photoshop Plug-Ins folder.
- Launch Photoshop CS3 Extended.
- Go to File>Automate>Search Google for 3D Model.
Windows Download & Installation Instructions
Please follow the instructions below.
- If you are using Vista operating system, you should run Photoshop and this plug-in as an administrator. If you do not have administrator control, then you will need to turn User Account Control OFF and restart your computer before installing this plug-in. To access UAC settings, go to Control Panel > User Account and Family Safety > User Accounts > Turn User Account Control on or off. See Known Issues section below for more information on using this plug-in on Vista.
- Ensure that you have Photoshop CS3 Extended installed.
- Close all applications, including Photoshop CS3 Extended.
- Download the Photoshop CS3 Extended Plug-In for Google 3D Warehouse. There are two files: a plug-in file named Google3D.8BI and a read me file.
- Navigate to the File Formats plug-in folder on your computer C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS3\Plug-Ins\File Formats.
- Manually drag the Google3D.8BI file into this folder and close the folder.
- Launch Photoshop CS3 Extended.
- Go to File>Automate>Search Google for 3D Model.
- For Vista users, if you do not have administrator control, you will need to keep UAC turned off in order to use the plug-in. For Vista users with administrator control, the plug-in will function properly with UAC turned on or off.
Getting Started
Using the Plug-In
Once you have the Plug-In installed, you can search Google 3D Warehouse for 3D models by going to File>Automate>Search Google for 3D Model in Photoshop CS3 Extended.
- Enter your search term and press the search button.
- Navigate through the search results and select a model you'd like to download to Photoshop.
- Click on the link to go to the larger view of the model. Click the "Get Model" button. Then, in the save dialog box, choose where you want to save the model to your computer.
- After saving the file, the plug-in will convert the 3D model into a format that Photoshop reads (in this case KMZ, Photoshop also supports .3ds, .obj, .dae and .u3d) and then the model will open in Photoshop CS3 Extended as a 3D layer.
NOTE: If you try to open a large 3D model (over 5MB for the zipped file shown on 3D Warehouse), the conversion & opening process will be very slow. We recommend downloading models under 5 MB on Google 3D Warehouse.
Using 3D Layers in Photoshop CS3 Extended
Translation & Rotation
In order to access the translation & rotation capabilities in Photoshop CS3 Extended, double-click on the cube icon in the 3D Layer Thumbnail, or go to Layers>3D Layers> Transform 3D Model. In the options bar, you will see both an object mode as well as a camera mode - as well as translation & rotation tools. Pressing Shift while dragging your mouse in one direction will limit any of these tools to a single axis. There are also lighting modes, render modes and a cross section tool that is accessible from the options bar within the 3D Transform tool. In order to exit the 3D Transform Tool, press enter, or click the check mark in the upper right hand corner of the options bar.
Texture Editing
You can edit the textures of 3D models using any of Photoshop image editing or painting capabilities. To access the textures, you want to exit out of the 3D transform tool. In the Layers palette, you will see sublayers under the 3D layer. Each of these sublayers is a texture. In order to open a texture, simply double-click on it. This will open a child-document that is pixels. You can edit this document using any tools in Photoshop. In order to update your changes onto the 3D model, simply close or save the texture file. Your edits will update on the 3D model. If you want to update your texture changes to your original texture files where you have saved them on your hard drive, go to Layers >3D Layers>Replace Textures. Photoshop will save over your original textures with the modified texture files from Photoshop. If you open your original 3D file in a program such as Sketch-up, you will see your texture edits.
Known Issues
Known Issues for Macintosh
- Not compatible with Leopard 10.5
- Cannot load some models with Cyrillic or double-byte characters. In some cases, Photoshop cannot load models with Cyrillic or double-byte characters that can be downloaded via Google Earth.
- Mismatched models on PowerPC. In some cases on Power PC machines, a model downloaded directly from Google 3D Warehouse does not match the same model downloaded via the Photoshop Plug-in for Google 3D Warehouse.
- Blank or corrupted textures. You may see blank or corrupted textures when a model opens in Photoshop CS3 Extended.
Known Issues for Windows
- For Vista, User AccountControl (UAC) should be turned off for users who do not have administrator control. If you do not have administrator level control, the plug-in will not install or run properly with Vista UAC controls on. You will need to turn UAC off. To access UAC settings, go to Control Panel > User Account and Family Safety > User Accounts > Turn User Account Control on or off. For users running Photoshop as administrator, the plug-in will install and run properly with UAC on.
- Cannot load some models with Cyrillik or double-byte characters. In some cases, Photoshop cannot load models with Cyrillik or double-byte characters that can be downloaded via Google Earth.
- Blank or corrupted textures. You may see blank or corrupted textures when a model opens in Photoshop CS3 Extended.
- Browser back button does not work for second session. If you download a model from Google 3D Warehouse and then relaunch the plug-in, the previous arrow is disabled. On the Macintosh, you can return to the previously opened page.
