I'd tend to agree with Aidus about the user manual. There's a Maxwell manual that's a couple hundred pages w/ an index and a SU plugin manual that's probably 20ish pages. Other than that I don't know of any really great tutorials to take you through all of the basics of the program (the Think website that Stinkie gave has some good individual tutorials though). The good thing, though, in my opinion is Maxwell has done a good job of avoiding the typical rendering language that can get a bit complicated. Most of the settings tie back to real life science and physics so if you need to know what something is it's usually pretty easy to find out. Instead of relying on one sentence to tell you what a particular camera function is and does, you get endless sites which can explain what a diaphram is, differences between apertures, focal distances, etc. I find it pretty intuative in that sense. When it comes to material creation, there's some technical stuff but the manual is quite good at explaining those aspects. Often times you can get by w/o having to know too much about the more complex settings by using the default materials and changing the maps or downloading materials from the maxwell website. -Brodie

sheesh, well done, cant imagine how long it took u to develope such a technique thanx again

thanks. I cant help but wonder why software developers would choose to use such strange units, though. I mean 1 unit = 8ft, whered they come up with that idea.

@whaat said: It won't be too hard to pick the winner. There was only one entry! Oh well... Oh so I got two round-trip plane tickets to Finland? That's a good news... @whaat said: Can anyone explain the lack of entries? Making tutorials for software is not everybody's favorite passtime I guess. I kinda enjoy doing it, hence the steady updating of "Visual Index of Ruby scripts". http://www.pushpullbar.com/forums/ruby-scripts/9467-visual-index-ruby-scripts.html I always wanted to write about this script in the Visual Index, but the complexity of the script and three-picture-per-script limit of the forum (half self-imposed) didn't allow me to take on the task. I also happened to have the idea for the tutorial and the material at hand, which I initially thought about a SU book-deal (now dead). So it was like a perfect opportunity for me... I hope my tutorial lived up to your standard, Dale. (BTW Camtasia Studio didn't live up to mine!)

@ modelhead, Well, it basically means you could have three people working on the same file at the same time, the interface would allow for many users to interact live on the same model! you could be applying materials and someone else could simultaneously be modeling the same file.

just look at the povray hall of fame to see what can be done http://hof.povray.org/ su2pov creates a povray file which can then be easily edited without going back to SU. for example the material qualities are all declared/described in the file (and can be changed but not usually necessary) [image: fXIX_mwsnap012.jpg] then the matrial quality assigned to each material can also be edited: [image: pXJ9_mwsnap013.jpg] so if you wanted your glass to be more reflective, just change the setting from shiny to mirror for example.

Yes this is the case I have also tried using this for export to .x: http://sketchuptips.blogspot.com/2009/01/wavefront-obj-exporter-with-materials.html

A new announcement today, Canada's funniest Architect, Dwight Atkinson wrote 'The Artlantis Attitude' and released it this week. In this book he reveals many tricks on how to use Atlantis V2. This book is not just a manual. Your renders will reach a new level after reading this book. The book is available on Artlantisobjects.com. Exclusively for Artlantisobjects.com Dwight Atkinson added a gift. One of the scenes he uses to test, and never shared with others, will be added as a gift for users who purchase the book via artlantisobjects.com. Visit this link to learn more about the book and the author: http://www.artlantisobjects.com/html/the_artlantis_attitude.html Sjaak

integration with the materials DB is very cool, as is real flow integration. If only i used maxwell

thank you for fast reply. i'm really a little bit confused because i have less experience in use of Vue. But your advise seems the only way. I will follow that way as you have suggested. If my tests should be successful I will present them in the forum. Again thanks Karlheinz

Hmm, perhaps. I made a plugin that converts all faces to components. I think you're looking for something more than that though. Have you looked at Dynamic Components (its built into SU7, its not a plugin)? It sounds like that is what you are asking for. Chris

VirtualDub is also good at image to animation. It's free too. http://www.virtualdub.com

It looks like a program for homemakers by the level of graphics... Yes still nearly 70 pounds [image: c789ba6ba1bf.jpg]

Is this happening to all of your models or is it only to a specific one?

Hi everybody, The Help of Inglobetechnologies sent to me a "fix" for my problem, as follow: Try to Disable "User Account Control: Only elevate executables that are signed and validated" option; and Try to Disable "User Account Control: Only elevate UIAccess applications that are in secure locations" option And it works, so if anyone have this problem, this can be resolve. Vinicius Deschamps

@unknownuser said: I have both Modo and 3Dpaint. 3Dpaint is a nice program for the money but a bit quirky and prone to crashes if the resolution of the images is to high (typical in many of the programs I have tried). Modo crashes a bit too often to my liking as well. Still, I pre-ordered 401. I'm totally looking forward to using it. I have a sneaking suspicion that it'll almost completely replace SU for me. (I am still hoping our friends over at Google HQ will get of their asses, though. Hope is a peculiar thing.) Modo 401's preview renderer and presets will be enormous time savers for me. @arail1 said: I made the mistake of spending most of my trial time trying to import a SketchUp model to work on. Sounds familiar. It's probably better to just bite the bullet and start modelling in Modo. It's tools can run circles around SU's - for the most part, that is.

Here's an in-game screenshot of the previous example (added some lights and set some texture maps to illustrate it better, this is not supposed to look cool): [image: 16htgmw.jpg]

I want this: http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=8547&p=51051&hilit=pixero#p51051

You can get info about your Graphics card by using the menu item Tools->LightUp->OpenGL info. This will open the Ruby console and print lots of info which can help indicate whether firstly you are actually using your graphics card at all, and secondly if its high enough spec. Generally, ensuring you have updated drivers is a GoodThing(tm) not just for LightUp but Sketchup generally. Also there was a time way back with SU3 when the difference in performance between "Use hardware acceleration" and not was pretty minimal. Nowadays thats not the case, and you'll find a much slicker workflow (irrespective of LightUp) by ensuring you're using your graphics card. To put it in perspective, a modern graphics card is at least as much computing power as your main PC. Not using it is turning your back on half your resources. Adam

Conversion from VW to dwg is done within VW. It should not be a problem at all. Than you import dwg to Sketchup. All my modelling starts in VW as a plan. If the plan is not drawn dirty than SU surfaces will close automatically after import.