Thanks. We are all fine. I am however sore as hell from doing volunteer work. Just bought a chainsaw too so I plan on getting a great workout the next few months. As far as my avatar goes I did not do that one with SDS. It was done with spheres, shapes, intersecting and the Round Corner plugin. I did have to do some manual stitching of the mesh after using Round Corner as some of the intersections were not "happy". Here is the original thread I started with the smiley before I made it my Avatar. Hope this helps. If I get some time I might try to recreate it in a tut.

Actually you should try the button "Update subsurface" or see if u have checked the "Auto-update" button.

Maybe Artisan? Not exactly the same, but you might get an idea: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=34872

@xrok1 said: thats great can't wait. but maybe we could call it sub-d tools so we don't step on thomthom's toes? ... and confuse people in the process. When I first bought Artisan, I thought Dale had included something redundant to what I already had with Thom's plugin. However after using both for a while, I don't think this is the case. Artisan has vertex tools, but in a way that just seem to fit with organic modeling and that ties in well with the other tools in the set. Thom's vertex toolset is something I use for more polygonal modeling and manipulation of hard surface verticies. I will on occasion use Thom's with Artisan, just to take advantage of the stellar polygonal select tool. The other big advantage to Thom's plugin is that it is wrapped inside of a toolset action, so that you can assign contextual keyboard shortcuts for select and move, which are the same as your normal shortcuts. This is a big time saver as you don't have to keep going back to the toolbar, or learn a new set of shortcuts. I think both however could use an addition of a Target Weld option. Just my thoughts on the difference in the two toolsets in case someone reading was curious. (not to xrok1 specifically)

WhiteOwl77 Unless there is a significant model difference ,I did test my suggestion with cases of sphere and cylinder intersections and it worked very nicely. Can you post your model or maybe a section thereof. I think you are making things more difficult for yourself

Edit Group then paint your texture. Earthmover has a tutorial he posted lately showing a good technique in UV mapping using Artisan and UV Projection.

Hi KiraNL, Mirror... or Make the HALF-Item you want to Mirror as a Component, and then make a copy of it. Scale the COPY of the Component by -1 in the opposite direction, hide centerplane (lines & face) then, put the 2 pieces together. I almost always use a reference (center) point, or draw a reference line to match up the items if they are other than square. -Andrew Telker http://twitter.com/AndrewTelker

Hi all! Thanks again for the great help on the bear! This along with Chipp Walter's video tuts definitely set me on the track for Artisan and I can't thank you enough for that! I'm not done yet with the bear but I didn't have time to finish it yet. I'm quite impatient to finish because I'd be glad to share it. Meanwhile, I had to model this bench for a projet I'm working on and though it's really simple, I've used so many ready to use components myself I thought maybe this one can help someone. So there it is : [image: 2VbX_190_1_sidus-scatto2_.jpg] [image: OfyB_Sidusbench.jpg] [image: TZim_rendertest.png] Alright, you all have a nice day! Nicolas Sidus bench.skp

@laucity0513 said: THANKS!!! You really help me a lot! Can I give you a thumb up or thank or reputation or anything in this forum? Your appreciation is thanks enough. I am sure there are other ways of achieving this shape too.

Good find, for general modeling knowledge. After about 10 mentions and close inspection of the user interface in the movie, I finally figured out that "toosnoo" is Turbosmooth.

Turn on Hidden Geometry in the View menu, then Right click -> Unhide

Its 50111 now

@gaieus said: Well, it can be a funny feeling sitting on an electric chair. (But of course, the model is definitely superb) thank you Gaieus. luckily the trend with illuminated furniture has kind of passed, although in showbiz they make good tool sometimes. oh, bzzzzt...

Updated original post with a Youtube Video.

Yes, that´s one possible solution.

Thats fantastic Eric. I like the finished image also. It seems one of the most difficult parts of creating these organic shapes is knowing what proxy to model in the first place to achieve the shape you have in your head!

really nice work also, looks like i have to check out VUE.. nice render results.

The 'part' of the 'box' you have pointed to as 'not being able to delete' looks like it is not Intersected with the face it passes through. If the face and the 'box' are in the same 'context' then simply select the penetrated face and Intersect [with model/context] it should form cut-lines around the penetrating 'box', you then delete the unwanted parts. If the penetrating 'box' is a group or component then double-click it to edit it, select-all and Intersect with model to form the cut lines inside the edit context, now delete the unwanted parts, finally exit the edit; you also need to select the pierced face and use Intersect with context/model to give it cut-lines of its own - then you erase the 'hole' where it joins to the 'box' element... If the face AND box are groups/components then running Intersect outside of an edit session will put the cut-lines within the current context and not the two objects themselves. Sometimes you might want this but usually you will want to be in an edit context so that the cut-lines form within the same set of connected geometry......... PS: If you are editing a component any changes you make to it will also affect other instances of it - if you want to avoid this use 'Make Unique' on it before the edit so other versions are not changed...

Using SDS, which I do not have, you would want to save/copy your geometry at each step before doing a major transformation. I think it is: form a cuboidal proxy/primitive, save make a copy or group or component and move it out of the way, so that you can move to the next level of complexity. Perform the subdivision and or smoothing to some level, save this as a group or component, then proceed with another level of subdivision and or smoothing if necessary. I am not sure if the form shrinks smaller each time. Whatever you do, you need to start with a fairly "large" form so that tiny triangles do not disappear. I started with a 2d amorphous closed curve on the xy plane and pushpulled it up to a thickness of about 10% of its "diameter". If you make a component of the form you can copy this and scale the copy independently say up 10%-15% maybe use TIG's Centroid plugin to locate the geometric center and move the two examples to this centroid to form the double walled figure. Otherwise, set up some reference lines for defining the centroids. The channels connecting the chambers are another matter to contend with. I know this-- if you are fairly new to the program, you have not yet developed expectations or predictions of the results of your modeling actions. In other words, it does take time to learn the idiosyncracies of Sketchup, let alone SDS.

It may be 3DCoat it the answer you seek -- you can sculpt freely (voxels) and retopologize easily so the the sculpted form will need the minimum amount of poly's to retain the desired form, which will help in getting it back into a Sketchup file at a reasonable size. I've used ZBrush in the past to do this but topology can be a more painful issue in ZBrush. Best, Jason.