— Create Beautiful Landscapes
what is Landshape?
Holygon Landshape is a brand new Sketchup extension that introduces an effortless paradigm for easy, accurate and fast 3D terrain modelling, aimed at landscape professionals and creatives. — Think like a designer, not a technician!
To download a free trial or order a subscription, click the buttons below:
For an overview of some key Landshape concepts, watch the video below:
For images of example Landshape models, see gallery below.
Landshape is a unified toolsuite that helps create, edit and review terrain of any size – from tightly controlled individual sites to huge freeform landscapes.
Landshape suits landscape architects, architects, civil engineers, surveyors, geospatial professionals, exhibit designers, artists, and anyone interested in creative landshaping.
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Why Landshape?
Landshape aims to significantly lower the barrier of entry for professional digital landscape design.
This is achieved by way of three user experience goals:
1. Easy — As intuitive as Sketchup itself, letting you focus on expressing your design intent, not on micromanaging the software interface.
2. Accurate — Offering precision just where you need it, with full localised control of feature sharpness, smoothness, and transitions.
3. Fast — Inviting you to explore rapid realtime workflows on terrains with millions of faces.
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What does Landshape do?
Landshape is a tool that creates terrain and turns it into a plastic canvas for expressing your landscaping ideas.
Landshape helps accomplish three terrain workflow tasks:
1. Create — You can turn any Sketchup geometry – faces, surfaces, isocurves, pointclouds, add-location output, or any preexisting terrain you have – into fresh new terrain. Or, you may create new terrain from scratch.
2. Edit — You may then hand-sculpt a quick, expressive concept. Or, you may draw and select reusable control groups that contain edges and faces, and make these accurately shape terrain topology and elevation. Better yet, mix the techniques for the best of both worlds.
3. Review — You can make Landshape show and markup terrain properties per spot, area or volume. Landshape helps analyse and report elevation, slope, groundtype distribution, cut-and-fill, and more.
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f.a.q.
Frequently Asked Questions – Answered
Holygon Landshape is a terrain modelling extension for the world’s most user-friendly 3D modelling software, Sketchup.
Landshape is guided by a single vision. It brings a novel approach to digital terrain modelling, regardless of platform.
A unified toolsuite, Landshape aims to cover all fundamental tools needed for professionals and novices alike to create, edit and review beautiful terrain.
Landshape’s new geometry engine empowers users to work on terrains of virtually any size – from small individual sites to huge freeform landscapes with millions of faces.
Landshape is under development by Swedish Sketchup studio Holygon and is was released in public beta on October 24th, 2024.
If you have a special request, please contact Holygon here.
Digital 3D terrain modeling has always been hard, slow, and awkward. Landscape designers are since long stuck between the inaccurate and the cumbersome.
Holygon wants to change this.
The point of Landshape is to make creating, editing and reviewing 3D terrain models:
👶 Easy
⚡ Fast
🎯 Accurate
🎨 Expressive
Landshape brings value to professional terrain modellers by:
🕙 Saving time. Time again. And time again
✨ Raising quality and coherence of output
🤝 Increasing workflow reliability
😃 Making the creative process more fun
Every building needs a place on earth.
Landshape makes it yours.
Landshape aims to serve industry professionals who regularly work with digital landscaping, creating, editing or reviewing. This includes:
• Landscape architects
• Landscape designers
• Landscape planners
• Civil engineers
• Site planners
• Site developers
• Urban planners
• Urban developers
• Architects
• Garden designers
• Specialised outdoor builders
• Landscape artists
• 3D modellers
• 3D artists
• 3D print artists
Landshape is designed to be picked up easily, also by users new to terrain modelling or even to 3D modelling as such.
Good software should be as easy as child’s play. Landshape may be used be anyone interested in creative landshaping.
Landshape is also intentionally designed to be multi-purpose and open-ended. Landshape embraces explorative design. You decide what to use it for.
To help you decide if Landshape is right for you, Landshape comes with a free trial period.
— Embrace playfulness!
Yes.
Sketchup looks like a toy, but it cuts like a ninja.
Landshape takes its cue from the genius user experience that is Sketchup, and attentively applies it to landscaping.
This means that Landshape should be easy to learn, even for users without any previous terrain or even 3D modelling experience. It should be approachable, non-technical and fun to play with, yet powerful where it counts.
Landshape should be Sketchuppy in the best sense – the sense of 3D – that millions of Sketchuppers around the world have come to know and love.
For industry professionals, Landshape provides an unmatched level of control and workflow speed.
In short – Landshape aims for effortless landscaping expressivity for all.
Accuracy means that you are in charge of the terrain, not the other way around. Good terrain follows your design intent.
Landshape features:
• terrain as an extendable canvas for expressing your ideas
• full control to add or remove edges or faces within the terrain, exactly where you want
• feature sharpness control, from razor-sharp to soft
• ability to exclude, solo, or lock any part of the terrain
Older terrain modelling solutions typically force users to end up in one of two camps: being either expressive-but-inaccurate, or accurate-but-unwieldy-and-awkward.
Landshape’s novel approach to terrain modelling enables you to be accurate and expressive at the same time.
User kindness is the best way to design beautiful terrain.
Holygon staff have been 3D modelling and developing custom extensions for Sketchup for over 10 000 hours each. Over the years, they have come to grow more familiar with leveraging the hidden power of Sketchup.
To this end, Holygon has developed a dedicated terrain geometry computation engine. It ingests, processes and outputs up to millions of terrain data points, in realtime. Its algorithms are optimised for robustness and speed. This C++ backend engine powers Landshape’s core operations.
Equally important, 10 years of hands-on Sketchup modelling experience, along with daily discussions, help Holygon to abstract away needless tool micromanagment from users, and instead focus user control into a consciously small, but carefully selected, set of interactions. These are the interactions that create most value in end users’ hands.
Effortless expressivity relies not on maximising control, but on providing the right kind of control.
By laughing in the face of adversity, challenges turn into opportunities.
We recognize that certain operations, including the brushes, are good candidates for further performance optimization.
Accurate 3D terrain modelling has always been hard, slow, and awkward. Landscape designers are stuck between the precise-but-cumbersome — think unwieldy engineering software — or the expressive-but-imprecise — think iffy game world editors.
Holygon wants to change this.
Landshape is a unified toolsuite guided by a single vision. We adopt the genius user experience that is Sketchup and attentively apply it to terrain.
In sum, Landshape combines expressivity with accuracy.
Holygon’s short-term Landshape goal is to empower current Sketchup users across the growing community to create excellent landscape models.
Holygon’s longer-term Landshape goal is to make the worldwide landscaping community outside of Sketchup discover and adopt Sketchup as a leading platform for professional digital landscaping.
Yes.
You may use any Sketchup geometry to create new terrain or to edit existing terrain.
Landshape is liberal with input. As long as you have it as geometry in Sketchup, you can use it to drive terrain expression.
As input, you are free to use any Sketchup geometry, including:
• points
• edges
• faces
• surfaces
• groups
• components
In other words, you may use:
• contourlines
• isocurves
• point clouds
• existing terrains
• a one-face rectangle
• a monster with millions of faces
Select your input geometry, pick your command, and Landshape will do the work for you.
Holygon plans to make Landshape import terrain data directly from file. Supported import file formats might include: .las, .laz .asc, .xyz, .obj, .ply, .fbx, .e57, or others.
Yes.
Landshape is designed to pick up any kind of terrain, and continue from there.
Conversion is quick. Simply select any existing terrain geometry as input, and let Landshape create fresh new terrain right on top. It is easy to make your new terrain fit closely to the input. You may then discard or backup your old terrain.
The new terrain surface that Landshape creates is optimised for editing with Landshape tools.
You may also use the same method midway into a project. The best workflow is the one that fits you.
With your input selected, creating or refitting terrain is one click away.
The process also allows for multiresolution, softness control, area filtering inputs, falloffs, and more.
Yes, as long as it is Sketchup geometry.
Landshape’s tools are intended for use on Landshape terrain geometry. Per default, landshape tools will affect Landshape terrain only. This allows you to only edit terrain while keeping non-terrain geometry visible.
For instance, you can modify the terrain right through buildings, walls and stairs, while keeping such built artifacts’ geometry intact.
However, it will still be possible to manually unlock Landshape tools for use on any Sketchup geometry, including non-terrain. This mode opens new creative possibilities for power users and daring designers.
Landshape comes as a paid extension – also known as a plugin or add-on or powerup – for the world’s best 3D modeling program, Sketchup Pro.
Sketchup Pro is available for both Windows and Mac operating systems.
To run Landshape, you need:
• A Windows or Mac computer with Sketchup installed
• The Landshape extension
Landshape should work equally well on both Sketchup for Windows and Sketchup for Mac.
Landshape should work with also with older Sketchup versions. Holygon recommends using the latest version of Sketchup.
For professional or continued use, you need a Landshape license.
Yes.
If you are using Landshape for the first time, it will start in trial mode.
This means you can try Landshape for non-commercial purposes, for a limited time.
For commercial or continued use, you need a valid Landshape license.
To learn about new features as they are released – join the Landshape Newsletter.
Thank you — yes!
Ever since Holygon’s stylized trees grew up in 2017, people have kept asking us about those little ent-ities and how best to handle them.
Landshape makes it easy to create large swaths of terrain. But real landscapes have vegetation, and look naked without it.
So, together with Landshape, Holygon is working on another new extension that should cover at least the bare essentials — Holygon Placify.
Placify is suitable for vegetarians of all stripes, and the perfect companion for dressing up your landscape creations in nature’s finest garb.
Placify is useful also for more general placing and transforming of Sketchup containers, and is especially powerful when batch editing — everything works in batch. This makes Placify valuable also in scenarios beyond landscaping.
Placify is designed to play particularly well with Landshape terrain, and will be released alongside Landshape. Learn more about Placify.
Yes.
Landshape’s output is 3D-printable.
Landshape keeps different parts of the terrain in different groups. Their combination should always produce one single solid.
So implicitly, Landshape terrain should always be one single 3D printable solid.
Landshape tries to ensure that its terrain surface is continuous, without gaps, without overlaps, without stray edges, without stray faces and without face intersections. The same is true for the togglable vertical skirt along the terrain rim.
This means that if you export the entire terrain to any standard 3D printing priming application, it is typically a one-button operation to turn the terrain geometry into a monosolid.
Or, you may always produce a monosolid manually, simply by exploding all Landshape containers and grouping the raw geometry.
Landshape exists for its users.
Your ideas help make Landshape create value for all.
As developers, we are always interested in understanding which specific terrain-related problems you most wish that Landshape should help you solve. We would also like to know how a solution would create end value for you.
You are welcome to share your ideas for possible Landshape features, tweaks, and fixes.
Please try to include any visual concepts, explanatory images, example input, example output, and full 3D models. This helps Holygon understand and accommodate your request.
We respond to every enquiry.
Simply email, call or message us here.
Landshape is developed by Holygon and special project contributors. Individuals who are or have been contributing to ideation, tool design and programming include Anders Lyhagen, Felix Heuman, Christina Eneroth, and Daniel Tal.
Holygon is a Sketchup-based software development and design company based in the 1000-year old tech-hub city of Lund, in southernmost Sweden, close to Copenhagen.
Holygon is Scandinavia’s leading Sketchup studio.
Since 2013, Holygon has been inventing and developing around 100 custom Sketchup extensions for clients all over the world, often in the design and construction business.
Holygon’s clients are based in the U.S.A., Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and other countries.
Holygon’s extensions have all been business-to-business. Until now. Landshape will be Holygon’ first public Sketchup extension.
Holygon also designs 3D models, produces 3D printed site models, creates renders and visualisations, and teaches the craft of Sketchup and V-Ray.
Learn more about Holygon here.
You can order a subscription license here.
You can download the Landshape installer here.
We are working to offer Landshape through a wider range of channels, including a Sketchup Extension Warehouse, and authorized partner resellers.
Landshape is a toolsuite aimed at professional users, and is priced accordingly.
Landshape is available in several editions, each with a different price point.
For an overview of prices, visit the shop.
Holygon released Landshape as a public Beta on October 24th, 2024.
Yes, sure!
We are looking forward to hearing your ideas, questions and suggestions regarding Landshape, Holygon, and related.
We are especially interested in understanding which specific problems or general challenges you most wish Landshape should help you solve, and why.
If you wish to share ideas or concepts for possible Landshape features, tweaks or fixes, we are also very interested.
We read all emails. Even if it takes a while, we respond to every enquiry.
Simply email, call or message us here.
