i messed around with this pumalogo.png and quad face tools.. originally did it with the yellow bricks but then deleted the brick layer in my image editor (i use pixelmator fwiw).. deleting that layer essentially does what i was talking about earlier regarding saving a png as a jpg in order to give a white background.. the neat thing about using this method is that once you get the uv mapped image into your photo editor, you can keep making changes and they update in your sketchup file.. so you only have to flatten it once then reapply and after that, it's really simple to make color adjustments. [image: HuMd_logo1.png] [image: PnHP_logo2.png] (rendered with indigo)

::sprinkles V-Ray on everything::

SketchUp model -> exported obj -> render Fluidray RT 0.9.7 [image: mnIc_10Living03Dn1600.jpg]

@masterpaul said: By bake you mean, that the lightning and colour information is saved inside the model itself? No need for lightup to be turned on? SketchUp doesn't 'know' anything about light sources, so it requires LightUp to draw the results. However, LightUp is integrated into SketchUp - its not exporting to a separate App + Window, it replaces the rendering SU normally performs. See this video about 1 min in showing switching from SU to LU rendering: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiZOoxcz1lo

@unknownuser said: We've got over 75,000 registered users now - including companies like Pixar. Well if that is not an endorsement nothing is, congratulations. I will probably get another interior animation project soon and will give Lightup a try, looks like it may indeed be the tool I need.

WOW!!! but at £2499....meh! ($4112!) Although I guess you get what you pay for!

Here are some hints about installing plugins: http://www.thomthom.net/thoughts/2012/01/installing-plugins-for-google-sketchup/ Does this help?

There as a bug in SU8 with SKM files crashing SU with VR1.6-2.0 installed. Are you on SU2013?

@unknownuser said: Nice work guys! I love this software. So fast with amazing results. I do all my rendering with it now. One quick suggestion- add some lights under water in the sidewall of the pool. LumenRT works some magic with water. Thanks! I have been trying every thing I can think of to get my pool to light up. I have lights in the pool in my render that I posted in this thread earlier but the water looks black. If you look, you will see that the lounge chair sitting in the water is illuminated from under the water. I have placed point lights in multiple locations inside the pool, I have also place directional lights with not much luck. I have sent this backyard model to the guys at LumenRT and with no real response. I have tried creating the water with a flat surface and as a solid block. I have used the LumenRT "pool water" and the standard SU "pool water." I'm sure I am missing something simple along the way. Do you have any ideas?

A better example of how powerful is the new volumetric lighting system, two SU-27 flying at low altitude: (rendered in real-time!) [image: bo5z.png] [image: j3bc.png]

Here are some screenshots that I have made with free version of Unity3D for landscape modeling (golf course). Basically I have created the terrain model and splatmaps for texturing terrain in Sketchup. The rest is pretty much created in Unity. The next phase would be to bring some of the buildings that I have modeled with Sketchup into the model. I think that Unity has improved quite a lot recently. In Unity 4.0 the free version also includes real time shadows for one light source (sun). [image: Z7KK1Y3.jpg] [image: Cg9yV62.jpg] [image: mmlrxj0.jpg]

You should have a look at theese too: Shape bender Components onto faces Fredoscale (Radial bending) Throw to

With upcoming release v.1.3 Presto engine will use both GPU and CPU... @unknownuser said: Dear friends, a lot of you have already guessed what our next tech announcement will be and indeed it is about Presto running on both GPU and CPU. This announcement is probably among the most important ones in Thea Render tech achievements. Unifying GPU and CPU under the same (render) framework is not an easy job. With Thea Presto being written from scratch, we had the ambition, right from the beginning, to harvest all the computer power that is available. For coding Presto on the CPU, we didn't want just a "port" of the code from Nvidia CUDA architecture to x86/CPU architecture. We wanted to squeeze the CPUs to the max and see a real performance comparison between GPUs and CPUs. For this, we decided to adapt Intel's Embree library. What does this mean? with every GPU and CPU core running Presto, it means fast, very fast, rendering. And this fast rendering is coupled with Thea's material/light system. All in all, pure quality in the shortest render times! What is also quite interesting is the performance comparison between GPUs and CPUs. We have modeled four scenes specifically for this purpose and ran the benchmarks on various machines (our own plus beta tester machines). It is very nice to see that CPUs stay up to their task and bring a significant speed boost. The actual relative performance between GPUs and CPUs depends heavily on the system and scene type. [image: IBJr_CausticsBenchmarkLiveScreenshot.jpg] Actually, to our knowledge, Thea Presto is a unique engine that makes it possible to compare GPUs and CPUs under the same render framework with performance maxed out for both architectures, in a systematic way*. You are welcome to download the detailed benchmark pdf document attached with this post. Best wishes Disclaimer: the comparison between the GPUs and CPUs is only made within Thea Presto framework and does not imply any kind of general performance superiority of a specific processor/architecture. More benchmarks and discussion at related topic http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17%26amp;t=13779

Hey there PB and Carloh! I've attached an initial render. The ceiling is still ever so slightly noisy but I'm really happy with it. I used the Focal Distance tool to make the main body of the chandelier in focus and everything in the background slightly blurred (actually the nearest 'candle' holder is slightly blurred too). I did do a little post processing in Photoshop to bring out the highlights of the crystals and distressed gold of the chandelier a little more. Although, I should point out that I didn't model this chandelier!! I downloaded it from the 3D Warehouse! I've kinda worked out that natural light (and plenty of it) is pivotal to getting the desired effect in addition to fiddling with the settings in the material editor!! Jason, if you're reading this, thank you so much for creating the distressed gold MXM material!! You're a star Neets [image: IcAU_GeorgianSpaceChandelier.jpg]

@elibjr said: the grass doesn't even work anymore. ?!? Why?

ok, then... NO

@las2vc said: No, I haven't, but that looks like a good potential resource. Thank you! It's the best forum for Podium lol! I learnt sooooo much from the Podium forum. Everyone is very helpful and critical which is great if you want to improve your work. I guarantee you'll have it figured out quickly. May be a good idea to start off your post with what preset you are using and we can go from there. Do you have a problem just rendering an omni within a box? Could just be you haven't created the omnis properly because it looks like they aren't turned on.

That's great

Try to export to Blender (A, A, Remove Double see this anthology post) or Wings3D all free for easily cleaning your OBJ polygon mesh before exporting in OBJ format for Rhino! And also try for the fun Moment of Inspiration who is some ergonomic than Rhino you can make Copy Past : ctrl + c, Ctrl + v between the 2 applications (Moi Rhino, Rhino Moi) And Moi has an export SKP ! And the best export Nurbs to Polygons if wanted! And an new exceptional export PDF! By Grendel Jellybean model from CreatureBox Moi Export PDF [image: get_attachment.php?webtag=MOI&hash=0f52a9af01f8da8bbb2b107ea85f67a2&filename=JellyBean-MOI.jpg]

Thanks wind-borne, I'll check in to the cost for Pro.