When you want to make a detailed 3D model of something outdoors in SketchUp, you will often need plants to do the environment. But you cannot hope to model all the plants by hand, do you? Rather, you would have to browse for pre-built models of plants, shrubs and trees in the 3D warehouse. And if you want to make sure all your plants are botanically accurate ? there things can get tricky. How many models could you possibly browse and inspect?
Luckily, we here at Sketchupfamily have stumbled onto a solution. The good folks at One Community have taken up a project of gathering all botanically correct models of plants available in one page.
A very experienced botanist on their team has went through every available flora model available on the 3D Warehouse, inspected them to see if they are botanically correct, and to see which type of plants they can represent, and then catalogue it. This was a truly herculean task since the warehouse hosts over half a thousand of plant models!
You can find the botanically correct plant models catalogue here. It is hosted by the OneCommunity Global group, who are a voluntary non-profit organization, who are creating open source sustainable resources for free use by everyone.
The following is a list of plants for which you can find models in that catalogue.
- Broadleaf deciduous trees
Oak, california bay, osage orange, yellowwood, kentucky coffee tree, soapbark, NCN, birch, maple, empress tree, sassafras, pecan, walnut, apricot, plum, almond, hazel, mulberry, pear, boldo, hackberry.
- Nitrogen fixing trees
Chestnut, apple, birch, hazel, boldo, elm, mesquite, Robinia/black locust, ice cream bean
- Coniferous trees
Monkey puzzle tree, pine, giant sequoia, redwood, yew, fir, california nutmeg, monkey puzzle tree
- Tropical evergreen herbaceous perennial
Abyssinian banana, papaya, giant swamp taro, giant taro, serendipity berry, arrowroot, gunnera, rhubarb
- Tropical broadleaf trees
Aralia, fig, ficus, chuchuhuasi
- Palm trees
Date, palm, coconut
- Cacti and succulents
Cereoid cactus, sanky, agave, weberi, aloe, pachycaul, copal, ciruela
- Tropical food trees
Orange, grapefruit, mandarin, sapote, star apple, mango, kuini, bachang, breadfruit, pedalai, marang
- Vines
Kiwi, chocolate vine, talayote, sea buckthorn
- Water and bog plants
Water plantain, pickerel weed, arrowhead, cattail, calamus root, water lily, spatterdock, water lotus
- Perennial grasses
Panic grass, pampus grass, bunch grass, little bluestem, sage, lemon balm, lavender, skullcap, bee balm
- Flowering herbaceous perennial
Solomon’s seal, butcher’s bloom, mule’s foot fern, king fern, balloon flower, pasque flower, pincushion flower, gentian, onion, daisy, ox-eye daisy, chamomile, rose, peony
- Bamboos
Various types of bamboos
Here is a rendering of some of these plants used in a SketchUp model:
Granted, there could have been a better rendering, but this output was pretty old. Hopefully you will find a model of the exact tree you were looking for here. If not, the page also links to various other related resources like cut-out trees, flowers, and even more tree models!
