Since I can't have Gray Edges unless all edges are By Material, maybe there's a way to force the white edges of white materials to receive shadows. Bright white profile lines on a shadowed surface just don't look right. Shadow Settings has an option for From Edges, but not for On Edges. Does anyone know how to set white material edges to receive shadows? [image: White%20profiles%20in%20shadow.jpg]

Could it be that you have snaps on to something like 1/16" or maybe higher, like 1/4"? You should check, Window, Model Info and Units to see what your snaps is set to, me I always have the snaps to off. Ken Edited : Oops! Didn't finish reading your answer Jean.

Thanks for the reply... Too bad about the UV stuff though.

@escapeartist said: Something I've had happen a couple of times where the select tool quits working is that there are actually 2 faces on the surface. There's no Z-fighting visible, so you can't tell there are coplanar surfaces there at all. Usually happens on complex surfaces that have been edited a lot when it happens to me. Anyway, turn on "view hidden geometry", get rid of a few edges on the surface you are working on (it will obviously disappear), and then rebuild it. See if that doesn't take care of it. Coplanar surfaces may have something to do with the disabled Select tool. But my current problem, at this moment, is that I have a component selected, and I can't deselect it. I used it to Intersect With Context, then moved it away so I could select the outline left behind. But the component remains selected and highlighted no matter what else I do. I used Close Component in the right click menu, and it was deselected. But I still can't select anything else. Maybe I'm not holding my mouth right when I click???? After shut-down and restart, everything is back to normal. But I'd like to know what the hang-up is.

Salvador Sounds interesting. PM me details of what you have in mind and I will help you get a Poll going. Mike

Thomas, This is only a shot in the dark as you have not supplied too much info. Have you considered splitting up the file to be exported. Maybe life would be easier this way? You can PM me details if you want to keep things under wraps. Mike

PM sent to you

OK, nevermind - after sleeping on it I realized that I had read in the forum somewhere that a grandparent cannot take on the attributes of a grandchild, that the parent has to make a bridge between the two. When I created my "swatch" component, it because a grandchild of my dynamic component. Today I built the bridge, put the material info on the swatch (grandchild) level, referencing the swatch material in my parent level and referencing my parent material at the grandparent level - it works like a charm!!!

Thanks for that Jeff. Joebamber, I was thinking that unfolding the surface would be a way of achieveing this. Is there a plugin that will allow the surface to be unfolded, even on curved and organic shaped objects? Thanks for your help Kyle

Well, imnporting your terrain from Google Earth will automaticaly geo-locate your model. Then do you want to continue working in GSP type coordinates after that? Or what are you trying to get at? I'm a little confused by all the different options you posted. What do you need? A tool that lets you enter coordinates instead of lengths and distances? Chris

You can select the church building, and open the material browser. The shortcut key is 'b' by default. Press that and it should open the material browser. Then select a color and apply it to the building. Is that at all what you are asking?

Great, thanks for posting it. Martin is a regular member here on the forum. I'm sure he'll be thrilled to see his tutorials and hard work being put to good use! Chris

Thanks Stoneman, only checked my posts now, but this is exactly what I needed. Strange that this request hasn't come up yet. Thanks again.

Thanks for the info mate, I've joined it now.

Hi Bryan and welcome to SCF! I am not a too big fan of spaceships (although I enjoy sci-fi movies interestingly) but I will definitely be interested in those castles! (And yes, those plugin authors are just amazing...)

SU is a 3d program that can view its 3d models in various perspective, or parallel projection. The images below however, are unscaled bit mapped, not scaled vector images. [image: IBTN_Temp11.jpg] [image: GgKz_Temp10.jpg]

@frederik said: Before answering this question, we need to know about what rendering application you want to use... Depending on what render app. you want to use, solution can differ... It can be high poly 3D trees and scrub you add in the render app... It can be entourages to insert in post pro subsequently... It can be a mixture of the above and other solutions as well... So please provide some more information and I'm sure lots of users in this great community will be willing to help you with guidance and tutorials... Thanks for the reply. Im using sketchup and vray as my render... im kinda new to this so was wondering what best way to insert shrubs and trees... see a sample of what Ive done and recomendations would be appreciated.... [image: qDH0_15ex_eltra.png]

@anssi said: One thing that might be worth a try would be to import the old file as a component in a new, clean file. Anssi Even after I found an earlier backup that was stable enough to work with, it also began locking up after a couple of hours. So I tried your suggestion, and made a component of the model, then imported it into a clean file. So far, knock on wood, it seems to be back to normal. Thanks for the tip.

Hi guys, I work on a MAC and use Final Cut Express for all of my movie editing. Sorry I can't help more with the window side of things. I always export out image sequences, too, instead of a pre-compressed movie. Other than giving me more editing options, image sequences are nice when SU crashes during export and you can start exporting from the last rendered scene transition instead of having to start over. I use PNG as it is uncompressed and the files are small in size. I also try to avoid materials with lots of contrast as high contrast textures also flicker and flash during playback. I will sometimes go so far as to edit a desired material in photoshop to minimize contrast. Groundcover textures are particularly troublesome, in my experience.

Select all the relevant Geometry, Scale it up = type 10, it's now x10 bigger... then do your changes... then afterwards you can Scale down 0.1 .........