As with anyone’s story of any “particular” subject of passion, there is a beginning.

The journey to SketchUp is one that we all share from our first download, install and mouse-click to build a square that becomes our first victory… a box!

My road to SketchUp took a long path of life’s diversions before arrival, but began in my youth prior to computer-equipped homes. It launched unavoidably, when on May 30, 1977, I witnessed the first computer graphics in a motion picture named “Star Wars”.

The Death Star trench battle sequence before the pilots left on their mission was absolutely awe-inspiring. I know… today it’s a couple of square pixels and lines that move, but back then it was the birth of Atari PONG and Commodore graphics games in color. It subsequently opened the temples of computer consoles we worshipped (in the local game rooms called “Arcades”) via the sacrifice of small fortunes in quarters. I was then 12 years old.

When Steven Spielberg produced “Young Sherlock Holmes,” we saw the first “real” out-of-box CG motion character interact with an actor on screen. Inspired by the works of John Dykstra, Brian Johnson and Industrial, Light & Magic, I was convinced that I’d be making special effects, models for Sci-Fi films or something “cool” within the industry.

As Star Wars impacted me with “delusions of grandeur” for all things in space or special effects, the music of John Williams’ expansive score for the same movie inspired me equally to love the orchestra. If one day I couldn’t make movies, I was certainly going to make music for them.

I received a music scholarship, went to University to learn orchestral composition and arrangement, and chose the path of a struggling professional musician.

My business was slowly growing. I was performing and composing for the Miss America Miss Idaho Pageants, Miss Teen USA, and playing in various styled bands in cowboy bars, R & B venues and funk groups. I became a professional actor performing leads in plays and musicals. Honored to have received it, I was offered a sponsorship to perform on Broadway. However, I knew that I wanted to compose and conduct orchestra film music, so, I humbly declined. Salt Lake City was only five hours away and Seattle was an eight-hour drive within one’s potential circle of influence. Yet, life’s unexpected diversions changed the location of even that circle.

In 1994, upon the accepted marriage proposal given to my wonderful Swiss wife, I prepared a move to Europe. With a pencil and compass on a map, I drew a 360° circle of an eight hour drive anywhere from Switzerland. When I saw that the major European film industries were imbedded within that penciled radius, I was excited that opportunity would open its doors to an American composer who knocked.

How unfortunate an assumption that was. Relative distance does not, by American standards of travel and business, have a translator where western civilization has been securely embedded for numerous centuries. Worse, professionally speaking, this became a long walk off a short pier when discovering that Switzerland does not have a film industry to speak of and could not serve as a launching point for any film endeavor. Soon, it became evident that I would need to compensate for a business that had unmistakably been left behind in the United States.

I continued pursuing music composition contracts and through the years caught a few chances for low/no budget productions where I was music director/composer and could participate in the graphic effects. However, musical compositions were so few and far between that again my life returned to the bar scenes and festivals doing concerts for a living like in the days back when I was paying my dues.

Yet, there would be a moment when my path would bring me closer to 3D dreams of yesteryear. The year I arrived in Switzerland, a small black & white screened, used Macintosh computer was given to us as a gift. I knew nothing more of computers than the games I used to play. In my out of work status, that contraption occupied/babysat me while my wife was at work. So, I determined how to pixel draw with a mouse.

As with all dreams of passion, for me, Science-Fiction, Special-effects and animation always remained as whispers in my thoughts. While driving, I’d calculate the trajectory of a spaceship model turning while in front of a green-screen, so to evade a larger vessels’ roll to portside on a second green-screen pass. Explosions, model parts flying, sound effects and music all played simultaneously in harmony, as my hands would keep the car on the road. It always bothered me, though, not having the tools to be able to manifest the workings of my imagination in the real world.

In the past, music and video production necessitated the purchase of Macs for use in the studio. The fact that my wife is a graphic/web designer, our two professions kept us up-to-date in everything Apple. Yes, I still wanted to compose music, but to do so I would have to create my own films.

So, in 2007 when there came a time for my wife and me to collaborate on an airline company’s website supporting flash animation for their presentation, I became responsible for the music composition, recording button click sounds and providing  other sound effects.

Without experience yet having a driving, encouraging enthusiasm, I confidently persuaded the company to pay me for my first chance behind the camera. This opportunity facilitated the dream of doing special effects with a green-screen. It also re-ignited my music composition skills for the audio recording of this small introductory website video.

The gimble I engineered to manipulate the Dassault Falcon 7X model

Here is final version of this small production. Video Presentation:
Dasnair website intro film

Unfortunately, the shiny material of the Falcon 7X model reflected the green screen on the edges of the aircraft that I could not remove, edit or change in Final Cut Pro or post editing.

“If only I knew computer graphics and could film this model in the computer, it would be sharp. For that matter, if I could produce the whole thing in the computer, it would be much more realistic,” I thought.

This one project turned my head for the first time towards the 3D tools that would permit such a task. The need to learn 3D was becoming more than just glorified fancies, but a real lack in my toolset of my future works.  The first step towards SketchUp began.

The second step tuned out to be a giant leap and my life has since been changed.

Not being content with the Internet effectiveness of online company networking, I had been musing for a solution that would promote each member of the network on the web without the dependent use of a graphic click banner. I found that banner ads for networking partners did not work effectively. Because the public learned quickly that a click would detour from where they wanted to go to some place they didn’t want to be, the potential market audience was lost. My solution was a 3D virtual mall where each company network partner had a store which became their website. The public would arrive before the company store entry doors and click the doors before entering to navigate a 3D space (made in flash of course), discovering the products of an online shop.

The key to the networking idea was this: just prior to clicking on the doors, each online visitor could choose from a right or left direction arrow that would turn the screen view in the mall. This would in turn expose the doors of online shops of network internet partners’ storefronts that the user could navigate to. Upon clicking on a storefront, the animated sequence would bring the user to the same scenario as before allowing him to enter the new store or navigate away.

To find sponsors for the idea, I tried to communicate to my wife the vision of the network mall. Unfortunately, the French/English (Franglish) inhibited a visual understanding.

November 13, 2007, before my wife left for work the following morning, I asked her to show me in the 5 minutes she had, what the tools were of Photoshop. She left for work and I began the frightful task of using Photoshop for the first time.

When she came back, these were the images she saw to communicate the Network Mall ideas.

She could not believe that I had made these images in a day never having used a graphic program. She was convinced that they were good enough to present the concept professionally as they were. So, we visited our first potential client, WSA office furniture store in Zurich, Switzerland.

We presented the whole of the concept and the images to convey the idea of the exclusive company network website. The response was an absolute positive and the sales pitch worked but for one missing detail. For their company to invest in the development of said project, they placed a condition. They needed a presentation of one last “small” working detail at their request: a video showing the movement inside the mall from door to door and possible navigation within the online shop space.

Of course, we said, “Yes! No problem.” We had hoped to have their financial backing in order to develop what was requested, but in order to have their resources, Kemp Productions needed to develop it ourselves… with no idea how.

This was the second time in a year that professionally, I had a kick in the “derriere” to find a program that would help demonstrate my ideas more concretely. Without a sponsor or company who would endorse the project, I needed to build an actual working, navigable, online virtual shop. The decision was to build our own to sell objects from my Sci-Fi movie collection. Obviously, Flash animation had not advanced as yet to construct this project and I was faced with the evident conclusion that NOW was the time to get into 3D!

On March 12, 2008 I downloaded SketchUp Pro 6. I followed the recommended tutorial and within the hour, I had my very first 3D structure built with SketchUP.

I found a model in the 3D Warehouse of the Crystal Palace and it seemed, then, perfect for a starting point. I adapted the model and began the build.

The difficulty of this build was that when we showed it to potential investors, the frequent question asked was, “What about expansion?” We tried to explain that physical limitations in the virtual don’t exist and expansion can be adapted as needed. The usual blank expressions communicated that I needed to return to adapt the model addressing this issue.

Olivier David, my good friend who plays bass guitar in my band, had pursued 3D on his own. When it was discovered that we two were the only ones we knew doing this, it was a wonderful revelation that we were no longer alone in this new passion.

For this model, Olivier built some scaffolding, concrete pillars and I beam frames for floors equipped with stairs. I took his model, adapted, modified it and replicated it throughout the site expanding the terrain for the new presentation. His contribution also Included a wonderful crane model that would tower over a newly developed construction site.

However, returning to my passion for film, I believed a helicopter tour would do more to reveal the growing scope of the project and its virtual expansion. This process included SketchUp animations using png transparent layers to have a view from within the helicopter through its flight. These were exported as image files before importing them into Quicktime Pro as image sequence movies to combine in Final Cut Pro.

The three animated elements were: the helicopter cockpit, the simulation of the rotor blades, and finally the model itself.

The result of 3 years of talk, 8 months of production, 2 weeks of exports, 2 days of editing was this video to communicate the idea of the virtual mall.

It’s a long, drawn out film that if I had to do again, I would cut it down to about a 4 minute presentation. This rather slow and rudimentary presentation is old, but it gives you an idea of what we were trying to communicate and how.

Video Presentation: Google Sketchup - My first model _ KP Mall Site & Flight by Duane Kemp / KEMPPRO.COM

It would be good to remember that these basic principles of animation are the same methods used in other videos found in this article.

Because it was so long ago, I opened up the model as I was writing this. I made a “Work in Progress” render to include here.

It might also be important to mention that the model could not continue to grow due to the limitations of 2 cpu Macs. The fact that SketchUp is a 32bit program also meant that 9 Gb of ram was not sufficient for SketchUp to work anymore. Basically, with the computers I had then, the model itself terminated its continuation.

The eight months of building and animating with this large-oversized model was my training ground, though I have learned so much more since. With the experience gained in the last 5 years, I know I would have built the whole thing differently. Yet, it was in dedicating myself to do the very best I could that opened the door for something even more complex.

There is an old Swiss Mill found beside the small Forestay River in the town of Puidoux, Switzerland. The mill is called the "Moulin de Rivendell" or Rivendell Mill in English. The mill's historical significance is recorded in this illustration circa 1770-80 made about 240 years ago by the famous Swiss Painter Joseph-Emanuel Curty (1750-1813). The historical artwork is hanging on permanent display within the walls of the Gruérien Museum, Bulle, Switerland.

The prospective buyers saw possibilities that were far-reaching and restorative. The project would not be the restoration of a historical working mill and nor would it be transformed into a modern architectural signature of contrast. The old mill would be transformed into a charming habitation, restoring the original epoch it came from with the combined theme of "wood, rock and metal." With a heart for the old mill and its historical place in the community, a charming revision of the property gripped the buyers who finally purchased the mill with this in mind.

Phase 1:  Architectural Calamity: How Kemp Productions became responsible for the renovation

Initial architectural designs began in January 2008 with an architectural firm in the region. These initial plans did not correspond with the vision of the owners to respect the original age of the mill.

However, after 9 months of this "process", the plans were submitted for the construction permits. Unfortunately, after charging 4’700.- for laser measures, the architectural firm provided plans so inaccurate that they couldn't be used for renovations.

The plans showed the south river wall of the mill 45 centimeters longer than the actual distance and 50 centimeters in height was added between the ground floor and first floor height. This increased the volume of the square meter calculation of the building costs, consequently raising the architect’s percentage of commission while rendering the plans useless for renovations.
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The buyers had decided to not continue with the same architect who had provided these incongruous plans. After having already paid 36'000.-  Swiss franks, a search for a new architect began during the demolition phase.

A second architect was mandated to adapt the plans of the originals to the client's vision and to correct measurements while upholding the buyers’ desire to renovate the look of a home that reflected the original age of the mill.

He attacked the budget with a vengeance to qualify if the house part of the project could be built with the predetermined and existing budget. He confirmed that indeed it could be with the teams of volunteers offering the labor, and he found within the budget, 12’000.- Swiss franks for his contribution.

With the payment of the 12’000.-, as retainer for his service, the project pressed forward.

In May, 2008, the first groups of volunteer teams arrived from Greece and the U.S. for work on the Mill’s foundations.

Video Presentation: The use of SketchUp for the Rivendell animated Logo.