oh, TBD, that sounds very interesting! I think anticipation is already rising... do you have already some results to tell/show us? that would be awesome

I think the easiest way to fix that at the moment is to buy a new computer honestly, I think we can hope for improvement of the algorythms. but such graphic intensive features will always slow down SketchUp...

can't wait!!!!

you have my vote for that. great idea! (I never understood what these problems are and if they are caused by sloppy modelling)

Lewis -- I'll have to look at XNormal more closely...interesting. Although their website is a train wreck. PP -- It looks like LightUp will do what I want...I've been in touch with Adam...it needs to calculate the lighting first, but it's real-time after that. But my question was about doing it with SketchUp's own shadows, to speed up animations. The pre-calculation should be faster. It seems like such an obvious feature. However, if LightUp can deliver the goods with animation...

I dont think a glossiness/roughness scale would add too much to the interface, its pretty self explanatory really.

The whole point of pre-emptive multitasking is you can do what the hell you like and the system will ensure everything gets a fair crack of the whip - including the window system. Thats how every system apart from MS Windows works where you have to jump through hoops to allow users to continue to be able to use the UI and not freeze up. Its a bit sad. Adam

When your choosing the save location for the animation you should be able choose what you want to export to in a little drop down menu underneath the save loaction. On a slight side note, i didnt have .mpg as an option, only jpg, png, tif, bmp and avi. Is it broken?

Dear Ken, I came across this freeware when looking for screen capture programs. http://www.etrusoft.com/ Perhaps it could be used with your notes script to create illustrated documents. I haven't tried it myself and so I cannot make a recommendation. It does allow one to annotate the image after capture, which is likely to prove useful. Kind regards, Bob

There are discussions of SU on Linux here http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=11412 and SU and Rubies on Linux here: http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=9687 The latter includes a discussion on dos2unix, which is used to convert Rubies (RB format; RBS format seem to generally work without conversion) so that they are correctly interpreted in a *nix text environment. I should add that Rubies that depend on unusual Windows dlls or other applications might not work. For instance, commercial rendering plugins like VRay will probably not work at all. However, to simply run SketchUp on WINE most of the Registry tweaks no longer seem to be needed, assuming you have up-to-date versions of WINE (from WINEhq) and your distro...and a decent modern NVidia card. I spoke to some of the SketchUp team at 3DBC about a native version of SU on Linux, and their reply was that they were really just a very small portion of Google and that they simply did not have the manpower/budget to produce and maintain a port (or multiple ports, given that they might have to create versions for different distros). By the way, @unknownuser said: There is a Mac OS version and as far as i know OSX and Linux are both unix based... is not quite correct. Max Os X utilizes the Darwinkernel, a derivative of FreeBSD, which itself is a descendant of BSD (a version of UNIX modified to avoid copyrighted AT&T-created code). Linux (full name: GNU/Linux) is a Unix-like system made from Richard Stallman's GNU Project's utilities with a kernel written by Linus Torvalds. The two operating systems are only outwardly similar by intention...if BSD hadn't been caught up in a delaying lawsuit by AT&T, Linus wouldn't have needed to develop the Linux kernel. Wikipedia has long, esoteric discussions on all these topics. The upshot is that you would be more likely to get something written for a Mac to run on FreeBSD (or vice versa) than on Linux.

@fletch said: I'm trying to figure out who's 'tougher' the guy in Jakob's avatar... or the guy in mine. obviously the one in yours - has a much more determined look. will change mine soon though (after frieday, where I am going to watch "The Dark Knight" )

The way we work should be good, positive and in the favor of every body so that we can do it in a right manner. antra Wide Circles

this could be part of a huge animation plugin for SketchUp - with dynamic blending of colour/texture during playback... ps: I can't view your pictures (get only to the imageshack.us site when clicking them)

that would be awesome, kwistenbiebel. alongside with some simple enhancements, like the ability to select several materials simultanously and simply pressing delete to get rid of them... or dragging one material onto another to replace the latter...

Pending the update... ^^ Tell me what kind of options you would like to have, I will see what i can do... EDIT : You can lock just Components and Groups. the right-click menu for locking layer content is activated only if it contains these kind of entities. layer_scr.rb

Can they add this feature to Sketchup 7 as a wishlist? @thomthom said: @mpowell1234567890 said: @thomthom said: Interesting. I've found that you don't even have to rename it. Since GIF and PNG file formats got different structures I got an idea; When you have the file dialogue window open, type in * in the filename textbox and hit the Enter key. Then all files will be listed and you can select and open your gif files. So it appears that GIF support already exists, it's just the file dialogue that lacks the listing for the file format. How do I do it? I tried but see no animation.. Am I doing it right? * filename.gif It only support static GIF images. No Animation. So it's actually a partial support of the GIF format.

I would love to see this as well.

Try making a petal with mapped texture, do not group or make into component. Now export as .3ds with full hierachy, export texture maps and preserving texture coordinates checked. Now open a new instance of SU and import the .3ds model and make it a component (should already be one) and try manipulating shape and see if this helps.

As far as im aware development has stopped on the skp viewer, dont really know anything more about it than that though. SU7 date: the eternaly asked question, its just a pity there is no answer.

Gaieus once mentioned a free programme called Camstudio. seems to work quite well...