Holygon Landshape is an upcoming 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 slated for release in 2023.

If you have a special request, please contact Holygon here.

Digital 3D terrain modeling has always been hard, slow, and awkward. Landscape designers are 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.

Landshape is a dependable tool for all who wish to easily create, edit and review accurate 3D terrain models. 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 3D modelling as such.

To help you decide if Landshape is right for you, Landshape comes with a free trial period.

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.

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.

To use Landshape for commercial purposes, or to use it after the trial period ends, you will need a valid Landshape license.

Please note that Landshape is currently not available for download.

Want to be the first to know about the release date? – 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 once created, the terrain soon perceived that it was naked, and started asking for vegetation.

Holygon is working on a solution that should at least cover the bare essentials.

This sidekick extension, suitable for vegetarians of all stripes, is the perfect companion for dressing up your Landshape creations in nature’s finest garb.

This extension is useful also for more general placing and managing of components in batch, making it valuable for non-terrain scenarios.

The extension will be released together with Landshape.

Yes.

Landshape’s output should be 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.

Currently, Landshape is not available to the public.

Landshape is in the alpha stage, which means that it is not yet ready for launch, but it is being prepared.

When Landshape 1.0 is released, you will be able to obtain a download via landshape.com, via holygon.com, via Sketchup Extension Warehouse, and likely via other places.

We are working to offer Landshape through a wider range of channels.

To be the first to know about the upcoming release – simply join the newsletter.

Landshape is a toolsuite aimed at professional users, and will be priced accordingly.

The price will be announced at launch.

Holygon aims to launch Landshape by early 2024.

To be the first to know – join the newsletter.

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.