Viability of Google Sketchup as a mapping tool

[jasonf]

I've been playing with Google Sketchup and I have to say, it's very easy to use. But I'm wondering whether I'm just wasting my time building well.. buildings, which can't easily or efficiently be used in a game engine.

Has anyone else had experience of building shapes in Sketchup and then importing them into their games?

I know the pro version does support export to obj which GLScene supports but how realistic is it as a concept?

I'll need to create a TON of buildings really and I like the idea that I can knock up fairly complicated structures in Sketchup, texture them easily etc.. but I can't set up trigger zones, materials, lights, place entities, compile BSP's, path nodes or anything like that.

Wisdom welcomed.

[noeska]

yes it is useable.

http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/viewtopic.php?t=5140&highlight=sketchup My attempt at using google sketchup (the free version also) with delphi. Maybe even custom stuff can be added. (http://code.google.com/p/sketchupattributemanager/)

http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/viewtopic.php?t=5074&highlight=sketchup An obj export script for the free version. It works on single objects.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGvwLQQxuZs&eurl=http://code.google.com/intl/en/apis/sketchup/

[noeska]

Even better google seems to have released an binary sdk for sketchup files: http://code.google.com/intl/en/apis/sketchup/docs/downloadsdksubmit.html

Don't know what their license conditions mean.