Experienses with Hypercosm?

Robert G

Hello all,

First of all I would like to say hello; this is my first post here I think.
I used to work in C4D only so far, but after playing with the free SU version a little, it became clear to me that SU would be a great addition. So I purchased SU a few weeks ago and feel happy about it so far.

I played a little with the free “Hypercosm” exporter, going this route seems to me a good way of showing some work to the clients.
I wander what experiences people have using this software;
Does it give you what you need?
Is it easy to use?
Good support?

First thing I noticed using the free version was the necessity for me to have a interface in the player that can be modified, so that means buying the Pro version.
How easy/difficult is to adjust the file to my needs?
Another thing I noticed, is that in the file I saw created with the free version, the line’s appear very smooth (and thick), whereas files created with the pro version appear thinner and jagged. Is this something that can be set up in the Pro version?

Kind regards,

Robert

Abe Megahed

Robert,

I can answer a couple of your questions:

Creating Custom Skins
Creating your own user interface skins is similar to creating or editing a web page. If the changes that you'd like to make are mainly associated with the graphical layout, then you can make these types of changes using a WYSIWYG web page editor such as Dreamweaver without knowing any web scripting. This includes tasks such as adding logos, changing the web page colors and background, moving toolbars around and removing toolbars or buttons. If your user interface modifications require more sophisticated changes, such as creating new user interface elements in Flash or Javascript, then you will need to get into the scripting behind the web page. There are separate Javascript files for each toolbar and button, so it's relatively easy to find your way around the scripts and to make modifications, but you will still need to know some web programming to be effective. If you'd like to try this out you can download the skins from Hypercosm's online "Skin Repository":
http://www.hypercosm.com/download/skins/index.html

You can make any changes that you like on these example skins and then if you decide to go ahead with Hypercosm Teleporter Pro, you can use your new, modified skins with Teleporter just by putting them in the Skins directory used by Teleporter as described here:
http://www.hypercosm.com/download/skins/how_to_use/index.html

Edge Width
The Pro version of Hypercosm Teleporter is using the edge width that you specified in SketchUp so you can vary the edge width just by changing the edge with in SketchUp's "Styles" dialog box (or "Display Settings" in SU5). The smoothness of the edges is determined by how your video card handles line rendering. For example, on my computer (which uses an nVidia GeForce FX Go5200), the edges appear smooth up until I reach a window size of about 1600x900 and then the video card switches to non-antialiased mode because it runs out of onboard memory and switches to using system memory.

I'll let others speak to the ease-of-use and the question about "good support?" (I'm a bit biased)

If you'd like specific help on how to modify the skin to get the appearance and features that you are looking for, then let me know and I can help. We often help people with new skin features and frequently find that the new skin ideas are useful enough to roll into our public collection of skins (for example: http://groups.google.com/group/Sketchup-Pro/browse_thread/thread/2b3e09b42227fc09/3b0a64508ce0dac8?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=hypercosm#3b0a64508ce0dac8)

As another example, the recent additions of the "add hyperlink" and "sticky notes" collaboration features were skin modifications that were requested specifically by Hypercosm Teleporter users.

-abe.

Abe Megahed
CTO, Hypercosm
megaheda@hypercosm.com

Robert G

Hello Abe,

Thanks for the answers, if you don’t mind I have a few more questions.

On the site I saw a trial version for Max but not for SU, are there plans having one; would be nice to be able to play a little and then decide whether I want to purchase?

In the free version of Hypercosm, section planes don’t seem to work while this option seems very necessary to me to have. I saw advertised that section planes are supported in the pro version. Could you say a little more about how this will work? Are section planes being switched on and off by changing scenes or styles or whatever?

I saw mentioned that Hypercosm does not have a mac version, is there a mac player so that people can view the content on a mac or is that also still in the making?

This Hypercosm thing seems very powerful and useful.
I’m just trying to figure out what the best route will be of presenting my work to clients, this software seems to be a excellent choice, however it stands or falls with how popular this format will be; I guess it all depend on how many people are going to use it.

Thank you for you time and answers.
Kind regards,

Robert