I am new to Sketch up and a landscape architect in NJ. The images you posted look amazing and I would love to achieve that level. Can you walk me through your process. I am using Auto Cad. Thanks for your help and great work. Marc marc_nissim@yahoo.com

Very interesting Thingymajig, The first thing I thought of when I saw it was a tree with a forest fire coming towards it. Cool!

@schreiberbike said: I'm really taken with the first chair, the one with the back slats coming separately off of the rear support. Is that an existing chair, or is that your own design? If not you, do you know who designed/made that? I really don't know who designed that,I just made a reference of this image. [image: 2q011255a4.jpg] And another angle of my model. [image: desk3-0001.jpg]

It is very impressive work, but I always come back to the question: What's the purpose for the graphic. (Insert almost anything to replace graphic.) Artistically, I like the sepia tones and the softer images, but if it were a concept for a house I might have built, I'd need to be able to see the lines more clearly and to see how the lines of the house fit into the lines of the landscape. Natural colors will change and the architectural colors can be chosen further down the road. I also doubt I'll ever park a pink car in my drive. But like my comments above, that's just my personal preference.

Pete, I'm using DE 5.04 and tried your method of converting a .skp to .3ds. When I import into Vue, I get an error stating that the .3ds format is obsolete and that the materials may not be correctly converted. When I choose to import anyway, I indeed get some weird UV screw up that jumbles up my textures. Any clue why this is? Would an upgrade to 5.5 solve this issue? Also, is the .3ds convert/import preferable in your opinion to the .obj export from sketchup that Chipp Walters recommends? I'm excited for your Sketchup to Vue tutorial, as I think Vue fits my line of work (landscape designer) better than any other renderer out there.

Further progress with the design of the wings and traffic surveillance pods in place [image: hp13.jpg] [image: hp14.jpg]

Very nice image Dave!

i saw that this has already been done by the major drum companies, some time in the 80's. the drums were of fiber glass and had one normal, tunable, drum had and a large curved bell similar to yours. cool concept anyhow. by the way, great model! i cant wait to see it rendered! 296

Clean render. Nice. Maybe you could bump-map the small joystick? I think it is a bit too smooth.

Marc, that is exactly what an IES files does. You use one of these files and it automatically gives an accurate representation of the output. They actually do 2 things, they define the light strength in real world units, and the shape of the light distribution. Because these things are defined as data, you don't need to have a realistic model of the actual geometry. If you do have a reasonable model of the geometry and can specify light strength in watts, you don't need IES files. The benefits are accurate calculation without needing the geometry of the fitting. The drawback is that not every fitting you want to use has an IES file. If you want to use specific fittings that don't have the data available, you have a problem. LightUp's proposed features should allow you to use IES files when you want, and when they don't exist, you can model the fitting and still get a good representation of the output. I don't think it will give you the calculation in lux levels though - unless Adam is planning to add that. Adam - sorry, I didn't mean to imply that IES would be part of LightUp. These sort of things aren't for me to announce I just thought this was potentially an excellent use for your application. You don't have an example of this sort of thing in your gallery which is a shame because it's a great idea. It doesn't seem logical to me to export a sketchup model to a lighting program to get an inferior visualisation if you don't want a numerical analysis of the light spread. You should be able to get a much nicer realtime drive-through within SketchUp using LightUp.

Thanks man... I totally understand where you're coming from! They want me to render these scenes but what they don't understand is that I've got to re-render each scene every time they change something... but hey, who's complaining...

I agree with Daniel, Tom maybe it is an architect point of view.

very nice i like it

Thanks!! the "bubble" is an elliptical line extruded along the curved section of cockpit!!

@huggkruka said: The condo looks nice, but does it really only have two windows? Good eye. That was an old "work in progress" image. There should be 2 windows in the other bedroom as well. @tinanne said: Key Keith, this post slipped right past me Nice work! Thanks for the kind words!

@unknownuser said: Nice find....just beautiful. When you are starting to feel accomplished you see something like this and it makes you feel pretty weak. @unknownuser said: When I see works like this I realize I'm still just a lite-wieght in comparison,thanks for the post, I feel inspired and intimidated. Just My thoughts but needed someone to say it.

Well, my last try. I have tried with bump in grass, but hypershot doesn't manage it very well, so i think that's the better i can do: [image: bosqueso5.th.jpg] [image: thpix.gif]

solo that last rendering is simply amazing. its like a movie still. the modelling is great. urgen,,, good one.

Cool one and music rocks!

congrats tina! its a mind blowing work! keep it up! http://www.bouncerland.com