Hi McGuyver (hm... I seem to have been beaten but anyways...) This is not a stupid question at all and you guessed right; it's especially relevant if you want to export your model to other applications (I know it causes problems in 3ds format for sure). First of all, you need to understand that since in "real world", everything has some kind of thickness, therefore virtual, 3D models should also have thickness. Then there is a difference between "solid modelers" (where this "thicknes" is symbolised by some kind of a solid object) and "surface modelers" (like SU) where we only "pretend" this thickness by creating hollow boxes. Now the faces in these latter modlers obviously have two sides; a "front" (that should always be oriented to the "outsie world") and the back (which should be orinted towards the "inside thickness"). Normally only front faces are supposed to be displayed to the viewer (as you never go inside the thickness of anything unless you are a ghost going through walls). In SU, the "default" front face (depending on the template you use) is whitish or light brown (beige) while the back face is some kind of greyish-bluish. You can however change this at SketchUp (Window on PC) > Styles > In model (the small, house icon) > Face settings (the second icon on the top). See attached image (I'm on a PC so the dialog might be a bit different but you can get the idea) where I deleted one of the faces so as to reveal the back faces symbolising thickness oriented inside. [image: FrontFace-BackFace.png] The best is to get used to correct orientation at the very beginning of both your learning curve as well as the beginning of any (later to be complex) model. You can always right click on a back face (or a whole selection of back faces) and select "Reverse face" from the context menu. Also, you can right click on a properly oriented front face and select "Orient faces" although with more complex models (especially when there are excess faces inside a "solid") this may not work properly. There are also plugins that automate correct face orientation with more or less success.

Try Wood Workshop. It's free and You can create texture You need.

Well, Remus went into the "practical" part of it. In "theory", a PR (and use this for "photo realisctic" rendering since a straight SU oputput is "rendering" as well - just not PR) so a PR renderer "shoots" photons that bounce from the surfaces and according to the capabilities of the rendering engine, different "further" features (such as reflection, refraction, bumpiness etc.) can be assigned to the materials so they look more realistic. Also, there are more light sources than rthe sole Sun (hm... could even be a good pun) and these lights all contribute to the final render by "shooting" those photons. Without going into more details (like bounced photons bounce further or not and such), this is the basis of a PR renderer. On the contrary, SU doesn't do all this. There is the sun (or no sun) and there is the sunshine vs. shadow. On top of all, an annoying "shadow bug" contributes to this limited choice (i.e. if you have sun/shadows on, there are problems sometimes). Still don't underestimate a native SU output because it can be really cool and combining it with some post-process work, really stunning results can be achieved. It's juswt a matter of "fashion" which taste; PR or NPR (i.e. "non" PR) is more popular at a time.

Hello Raindodger, You can find lots of tutorials at: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=SketchUpVideo&view=videos and http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=aidanchopra&view=playlists. Hope this helps. Regards, Bob

As xrok said, you just let it go until your happy with it. Depending on your computer and the scene this can take anything from 30 mins to a few days. If youre using indigo/skindigo 1.0.9 you will lose any progress once you have stopped the render. If your using indigo/skindigo 1.1.16 then you can resume the render from the .igs file (the indigo scene file.) If you head over to the indigo forum whaat has posted a very good tutorial for skindigo 1.0.9, it should be enough to get you started

newbuilder, maybe you can make us a squirrel skin'n tutorial in sketchup.LOL but seriously podium seems very good and alot faster than indigo, but indigo's free and if you want to do interiors specially just lighted from windows there's really no substitute for indigo. so i say get podium if you want, but add indigo to your collection of tools as well, it won't cost you and you won't ever regret it. also take my advise and try the lightup demo this might be what you're looking for as well, its very unique.

@moghamdi said: ...please can you explain how you made the last step?? Mohammed, Draw new diagonal line entities from the bottom corner of each step, to the next bottom corner. When done, you can select the new lines, and copy them downward by your desired amount. This will provide the bottom curved line, from the first floor to the second. Note that I used groups. If you employ the above description while 'inside' the edit of the group, you have to use the copy feature of the move tool, then delete the original curve. If, however, you keep the group closed, and draw your new diagonals on the 'outside' of the group, the lines won't 'stick' to the group geometry (but inferencing still works.) You can then move the new curved line downwards, without distorting (dragging) the geometry within the group. Once you have the diagonal curve in the new position, select the complete curve and use <ctrl-x> to delete it. This will delete and copy the entities onto the clipboard. Immediately open the group for editing, and use "Paste-in-place" (Edit menu) to insert the 'deleted' curve into the group's geometry. The rest is cleanup and hand-stitching the underside. (You can use the 'Skin' plugin instead of hand-stitching.) EDIT: See several posts down, for clarification regarding the rounded steps having two lines defining the outer edge. To draw the diagonals, this middle point has to be included, as well. xrok1 describes one method. [Sun Feb 15, 2009 5:20 pm] Taff

@gaieus said: @broomstick said: @gaieus said: Note that "by profession" I use SU for archaeological/historic reconstructions. Apart from that, I mostly hang around these forums and model whatever people with problems need. That's enormously interesting! Do you find yourself well with SU in such a way of work? Which one?Archaeology or help forum work? Well, joking aside; SU IS the perfect tool for this. You can never make sure that what you imagine to be a reconstruction of a building you only dig up the foundations of will be good. With SU, you can always go back and quickly adjust your theory to the facts as more and more evidence come to light and the idea is getting a final shape. Right! I should have quoted you better. Apart from that, your take is really interesting

hheehhe, well I'm glad you got it to a point that you feel like its working good for you now. I'm glad the tips and tricks session video helped too! We all put a lot of time and planning into our presentations, Chris

Any more details on the problem? As long as the file wasnt made in SU7 you shouldnt have any problems.

Chris, The attached is a example of a "just in time" render for a client meeting. The house was designed and modeled by my production cad system, ported into SU for materials, then IDX for a preview render. The time spent in SU, and IDX was under 30 minuets. The render is not great, but good enough for that meeting. The status of the project that the render represents is the second schematic design meeting. [image: Render Makai 02.jpg]

Hi Cassie, Who could help if not the KT Team members? (Actually since many of them are members here, we always ask them here, too). Have you shared your kzx file with them to have a look? That's the best and easiest way to do I'm afraid.

@wo3dan said: Hans, Remus, @remus said: ....As for a solution, im not really sure. Ive never notice this problem before. Perhaps a bug report is in order. It's not a bug and the result is completely predictable. The 'Follow Me' tool PROJECTS the face to be used on a plane perpendicular to the beginning of the path. From there on it starts using the projected face which isn't even half a circle anymore!!! %(#FF0000)[To avoid (if you need 1/4 of the sphere) you either create the sphere first and then delete 3/4 OR as a path you use [1/4 of a circle +1segment] in a way that first segment and end segment start perpendicular to resp. run parallel to the face to be used.] (of course for this you need to start with a 'path'-circle that has 4n segments i.e. 4, 8, 12, 16 segmemts etc. using 2,3,4,5 segments as the actual path). I noticed another little bug just now that I think wasn't there in SU6 but that has nothing to do with getting a correct 1/4 sphere. I hope I can pinpoint it to report. Hans, look at your result(s) in plan view (Top+Parallel) to better understand what SU does. And check the radius which is not constant anymore for different endpoints, top to bottom. Wo3Dan Thanks Wo3Dan, If I start and end the path at a midpoint of a segment it works "comme il faut" Of course the face had to be perpendicular. Thanks for the class. Hans

It works and looks pretty fine! Thanks a lot! (unfortunatly I need to redraw window and door, because entity info wont change, if there are attached elements, but now I Know, where is the secret (smile))

Search for a sky dome in the warehouse, there are lots of them. You will need to fiddle with the transparency to let the sun in. Have fun, they work great

thnaks for the pointers ill do the searches myself, but if anybody knows off the top of their head is there a script to export every object seperatly, this is all i need to go ahead and buy the pro-version for my projects. thnaks again chuck

Hi Dan and welcome to SCF. You can make your animation in SketchUp by using scenes (as you probably know) but it has two cons: it's not easy to set up a nice, smooth fly-/walkthrough animation although there are plugins that make it easier and you can become quite proficient after a while. Also, there is the "dreaded shadow bug" in SU (again,mainly walkthroughs) which will cause your scenes flicker while the camera is moving through the borders of shadows when shadows (not "use sun for shhading"!) are on. But you probably know this. The shadow bug could be overcome by using a 3rd party renderer which can interpret SU scene animations To show the stages, animated section cuts and the witty use of layers hidden/unhidden with certain geometry on them would sound perfect for a native SU output however section cuts cannot be exported into external renderers (at least not that I'd know of). So first of all you will have to deide if you really want to use another application or straight SU animation and it will probably depend on the way your animation builds up.

Thank you nemosuke! That's likely the problem. Cheers, Jeff Olson

@kwistenbiebel said: I never used the 'projection tools', but can I use it for that? @wo3dan said: On the other hand there are some ruby scripts that you can apply for this job. One is called: projection_v6.zip with its own toolbar. Or an older one that works with projecting faces (not 'stand alone' edges): project_faces_plane.rb (Both from Didier Bur) Yup, these should do the job perfectly.

If you get the text tool then click on nothing (i.e. dont click on any geometry, clikc to the side a bit), type in your message and press enter twice, that should do it.