Are you ready for SketchUp 7 news?

swedishnitro

I've studied the drawings of LTL and I came to the conclusion that they don't use sketchup. Even their recent stuff doesn't sniff of any styles. If anything, they may trace over a SU model, but from what I've seen (before they made their drawings the size of postage stamps on the website), my guess is a pencil perspective scanned in with tone added in Photoshop. My 2 cents!

PS I was laughed at in a London school of architecture for using SU. As far as I am aware, I believe it beats the pants off things like Rhino with some of the scripts I've seen.

Stu

Gaieus, there are certainly some people doing great NPR works, me ol' mate Tom for one and of course the unbelievable stuff done by Ernest Burden 111.
But these days there isn't the interest in NPR that was generated by Dennis and Grant Marshall and it would seem that most of the energy devoted to outputting something distinct from native SU is in the PR area. And this is made so much easier today with SU exporters to apps like Kerkythea, Indigo etc and of course Podium.
Im basing these ideas on what I see here, in this forum....and I dont think it's too presumptive to think that what gets posted and discussed here is at the forefront of SU use

kwistenbiebel

@swedishnitro said:

PS I was laughed at in a London school of architecture for using SU. As far as I am aware, I believe it beats the pants off things like Rhino with some of the scripts I've seen.

Funny, almost everyone in CG laughs at Sketchup.
But it is a hypocrit thing as a lot of those Pros DO use Sketchup very often in one or another phase of their work. (an SU model gets imported in their dinosaur apps for composition, refined modeling, texturing and finally rendering)
They just don't say it, being afraid of being laughed at.
It's a snobbish world.

sorgesu

It is too easy to imagine that the market that we are exposed to in our everyday work is the norm. Just because one's personal experience would tend to indicate that PR is the only viable market direction and that NPR is dying out, may not really reflect what is happening in the market at large.

In fact I can report that the interest in Piranesi at the AIA convention has significantly increased over previous years. If it were not true that there is a marked market interest in NPR then all the various applications out there that are attempting to add NPR rendering to their tool kit are mistaken. I hardly think that they are.

We had a representative of a giant PR rendering firm come to the Piranesi booth and he talked of his expectation that the interest in PR will dry up and there will be an increased interest in NPR. Not only is PR very expensive to generate, for conceptual work, of which there is a preponderance, NPR is much more compelling and involving for the client. He personally wished he could tackle NPR but indicated he was intimidated.

I wouldn't write off NPR just because your personal interest and experience is in the direction of PR. Different strokes......

Gaieus

As I am not "on THE (architectural) market", I cannot contribute in that way but what I can tell is that when we made that Gothic Pécs project (which was/is actually quite a success at the exhibition) in Max, there arose a kind of "demand" for a book(let) edition of it and the final decision was something NPR (i.e. some sketchy edges style however not really wtercolour technique). So although they could have gone in the PR direction as well, they wanted to stick to a different appearance (maybe because I could produce some images that were - in their atmosphere at least - a bit similar to those medieval drawings and later cuts).

So I would not "bury" NPR either. The fact that lately there have been a couple of (more or less easily) usable renderer apps (and some of them are free or at least affordable) will not turn the "market" totally into this direction. It's the top of a wave now as many more people can discover them (like 3D modeling in general with the free SU and similar apps).

Yes, I like PR renderings, especially when they are really good and I'm amazed what can be achieved but I like NPR as well and enjoy the artistic implementations of it. It's like when I enjoy a photo exhibition as well as a painting gallery.

lewiswadsworth

@swedishnitro said:

I've studied the drawings of LTL and I came to the conclusion that they don't use sketchup. Even their recent stuff doesn't sniff of any styles. If anything, they may trace over a SU model, but from what I've seen (before they made their drawings the size of postage stamps on the website), my guess is a pencil perspective scanned in with tone added in Photoshop. My 2 cents!

PS I was laughed at in a London school of architecture for using SU. As far as I am aware, I believe it beats the pants off things like Rhino with some of the scripts I've seen.

That's possible, of course. Form-Z, handled correctly, could produce LTL's renderings.

I also teach graduate architecture courses in Rhino...don't fool yourself about SU being more capable, no matter how many scripts you employ. Anything can be modeled in Rhino, no matter how complex. And it can be modeled with a fabrication-ready level of precision utterly beyond SketchUp...1/256th of an inch is no problem. I took my Rhino training from a jewelry designer!

But for standard architectural assemblies, however, it can be a little tedious...too many steps are required in Rhino to do simple planar operations. And there are several hundred very particular surface-generating commands...most architects and architecture students (in my rather large experience here) don't understand (or willfully won't bother understanding) the subtle differences and how they impact fabrication.

I mix and match the two apps in my projects. SketchUp is great for quick planar, multi-component assemblies (component/blocks organization is not a strong point for Rhino), and if I need something precisely curved I do it in Rhino...which reads and writes SU files, so I can mash together the results for visualization in one or the other of the two packages.

(And Susan and Brian at the AIA convention talked me into upgrading my Piranesi license, so you can guess at the idiom I use to visualize them.)

swedishnitro

Thankfully, I haven't had much cause to go for Non Euclidian forms yet, but when I do, I'll probably go and learn Rhino properly

Is it easy to learn? The training I got went as far as 'here is how you load a script', without any references to the basics.

lewiswadsworth

@swedishnitro said:

Thankfully, I haven't had much cause to go for Non Euclidian forms yet, but when I do, I'll probably go and learn Rhino properly

Is it easy to learn? The training I got went as far as 'here is how you load a script', without any references to the basics.

Rhino? No, it's not easy to learn, for most people, and the interface has some really challenging issues. It's not SU. Teaching a beginning 3D design class centered on Rhino is like pulling (your own) teeth...over the course of a semester. Generally about a quarter of the students seem to understand the subtleties to the point where I can see them using the software for design and drafting.

This is part of the website I made for the last semester's class. If you scroll to the bottom of the page there are links to the major tutorial sites.

http://lewiswadsworth.net/rhino/resources.html

The Rhino TV site is fairly good:

http://www.rhino3d.tv/

swedishnitro

Thanks for this - I have to admit I had real trouble, being one of the only members of my studio who hadn't used it prior to that course. It's on my to do list of stuff to learn. Thanks again.

Alan Fraser

Some of this would be nice....the What's New videos for 3DS Max Design 2009, the replacement for Viz. The Spline Mapping and Photometric Lighting is pretty cool.

Maverick83

Hi all
So, anybody knows when will SU 7 be released?

remus

Nope, still as uncertain as ever.

kwistenbiebel

After 16 pages of rumors and speculation...how little do we know.

Gaieus

Guys, I1m pretty sure that some info will be leaked at 3D BaseCamp but the timing will be uncertain even afterwards. Every evrsion needs beta testing and that can last for months in fact. So be patient!