Google living off the backs of the bruised?
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Do any of you people have the faintest idea how much work it takes to maintain and improve a piece of software like SU?
I've done complex software for years and I've also done a moderately complex house design in SU/LO. Apparently quite well, according to various people. In my opinion software is typically one to two orders of magnitude more complex. Bear that in mind next time you feel tempted to slag off someone.
Fascinating and wonderful as some of the plugins are, don't forget that without the large amount of work required to provide SU and the external plugin api there wouldn't be any of them.
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Tim, if your not going to take this seriously...
the make excuses for google thread is 2 doors over on your left.
have you looked at Moi3D or 3DBrush or Indigo lately; complex software, one developer tons of respectable, timely progress!
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@kwistenbiebel said:
Improving the core off course is primordial.
But after that, yes, new feautures are3 very much welcomed!!NURBS, better animation, you name it....
yes, i would welcome nurbs very much (though at the moment, i'm actually enjoying learning rhino and am kind of excited about fully learning a 3d app other than sketchup)
nurbs, UV mapping, more powerful surface editing and transformation tools, all of it.. i surely welcome it and think this could be a great way to distinguish between pro & free versions.. thing is, i'm ready for that stuff as i've been working with sketchup since version4 so i'm not too sure how i'd feel about it if i were just beginning.
that said, i highly doubt google is going to take SU in this direction and i'm not going to sit around complaining & waiting for it to happen while being fully aware that the tools i now need are already out there..[edit] and just to clarify my stance a little more, i think it would be very stupid for google to add -for example- subdivision capabilities to sketchup when i can't smoothly work through a model containing only 25,000 polygons without grouping & hiding etc.. same can be said for many of the plugins out there that are capable of adding to the poly count rather quickly.
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Improving the core off course is primordial.
But after that, yes, new features are very much welcomed!!NURBS, better animation, you name it....
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It’s horses for courses. SU is used in a huge number of ways; but as Jeff says, many of the plugins can rapidly lead to a vast number of faces. Maybe you can live with this if all you are doing is hobby-modelling a single mesh or designing a single piece of furniture.
However many people are using it for the purpose for which it was originally designed…an architectural napkin program. Whilst some may drool over beautifully detailed models of vehicles, furniture and the like, for others…while appreciating the skill involved…such models are totally useless, especially if you need to import them by the shedload into an architectural model that’s already heavy with just the architecture.Personally, I’m quite happy to have all the add-on functionality provided via Ruby script (and pay for that, if necessary)…just as long as Google keeps its end up and concentrates on raising the workable poly count and generally speeding up the program. Despite Sketchuping all day every day, on a wide range of content, I actually don’t use more than a tiny handful of scripts on anything like a regular basis…so it would be largely a matter of indifference to me whether they were in the program or not.
SU really ought to have some decent UV mapping by this stage, however…although, again, I can see why this would not be important to someone designing kitchen cabinets who merely needs to apply some wood and formica textures to basically flat surfaces.
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@unknownuser said:
@kwistenbiebel said:
Improving the core off course is primordial.
But after that, yes, new feautures are3 very much welcomed!!NURBS, better animation, you name it....
yes, i would welcome nurbs very much (though at the moment, i'm actually enjoying learning rhino and am kind of excited about fully learning a 3d app other than sketchup)
nurbs, UV mapping, more powerful surface editing and transformation tools, all of it.. i surely welcome it and think this could be a great way to distinguish between pro & free versions.. thing is, i'm ready for that stuff as i've been working with sketchup since version4 so i'm not too sure how i'd feel about it if i were just beginning.
that said, i highly doubt google is going to take SU in this direction and i'm not going to sit around complaining & waiting for it to happen while being fully aware that the tools i now need are already out there..[edit] and just to clarify my stance a little more, i think it would be very stupid for google to add -for example- subdivision capabilities to sketchup when i can't smoothly work through a model containing only 25,000 polygons without grouping & hiding etc.. same can be said for many of the plugins out there that are capable of adding to the poly count rather quickly.
I fullheartedly agree. It is a matter of 'first things first'.
Fixing what needs fixing and taking it from there. -
@unknownuser said:
I am only distressed by Google when they spend money trying to create markets for weak applications. There are many teams competing for development funding at Google. They must plead a case to get their ideas off the ground. "Wave" would be a good example of an application who's funding would have been better spent on Sketchup. They need to make more intelligent decisions about where the funding is going and stop dragging thier feet pushing applications that are just not going to fly.
Really bruce, wave hasnt even been released yet. Seems more than a little pre-emptive to say its "not going to fly."
To address your point more generally, i think googles willingness to put money in to things that don't immediately make money is one of the best things about them. From a users point of view it means we get very strong applications that otherwise wouldnt exist because of a lack of funding.
Take gmail for example, its leaps and bounds above the competition and i highly doubt google makes a significant profit from it.
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It seems like there must be some middle ground here. None of us, I think, wants SketchUp to become 3ds Max with it's ridiculous learning curve, and awful tool management. But it also seems that Rubies alone aren't the best answer either as there's little collabaration from one developer to another which causes conflicts and horribly complicated UI menus.
I think it would go a long way to have SU take over a good many of the rubies and properly integrate them into the programing and UI of SU. However perhaps they could still work more like they do now where you simply download the ones you want. I see no reason that just because SU incorporates them that they must be bundled w/ the initial install. In addition there could be some basic packages that would work sort of like the Film & Stage Plugin. For example, a grouping of these Plugins that's geared towards Architects, or Landscapers, or Woodworkers, or Mechanical Engineers, or Organic modelers, or whoever.
I've also long hoped for a more distinguished Pro version of SU. In my mind the Free version is almost perfect as is because of it's quick learning curve (although they could make a sphere button perhaps). But I'd like to see some more functionality in the Pro version even if it does add some complexity.
-Brodie
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What would help a great deal is a UI manager where plugins would register their menus and toolbar - specifying default positions - but which the user where freely able to re-arrange. That and ensuring Sketchup's UI where responsive while rubys where performing heavy processing with ability to abort operation would be a huge improvements.
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I don't think google is "living off the backs of the bruised", but rather a incredible bad decisions in terms of project decisions.
And It started with them removing the layers toolbar in sketchup 5. After that it just come out more, at minimum, questinable decisions. From removing back bottons, not listening to users, not solving bugs, and the worst for me, the lack of diferences between the pro and free versions in terms of modeling. Don't get me wrong, layout it's good and all, but i don't want it and making users like me paying for the developtment of an another software i simply don't have use for, with people in the mean time having close to 0 new features/bug solves in sketchup it's just wrong business.
In the end, this means that because the program is basicly the same that it was 5 years ago, and there's no new stuff you could do then that can't do now in terms of modeling, texturing or animatiion, what happens to the "pro" users, like silvershadow, that need more? they move on...simply because, as good as a ruby can be, it doesn't do miracles.
And we know that it takes a lot of effort to do and maitain a software, and we woudn't mind much if all the other software stoped in time but then we see something like 3D coat with a price like that, doing complex stuff like it does, with a "one-man-team", and we can see something's wrong...
And i'm sorry guys, i also don't want a 3dsmax clone in sketchup, but i consider pushpulling more than 1 face at a time, selecting and manipulating multiple vertexs, a workable UI, sphere, cubic and cilindrical mapping as minimum uv options (not eve talking about unwarping), or suporting more than 3.3Gg of ram in the end of the year 2009, prety basic stuff needed in ANY 3D app, just to name a few...
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Regarding other things Google makes that are free to everyone, some of those items are moneymakers in their own right such as GE, which I've seen used by news outfits on TV.
While I agree very strongly with the people that point out that the core of SU has not seen bugs cleaned up or realistic useful improvements made such as NURBS functionality, good UV tools, or multi-core support, the fact remains that the vast majority of users have a virtually fully operational 3d modeling program without any limits (save export file types and LO) at no charge! Try getting a fully operational Maya or 3DS Max from Autodesk with .OBJ capability removed and no time limit on the demo, or any other good 3d package for that matter. Let me know how that goes.
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I am on OSX , when using the material panel I have to hoover over the materials to see the names of materials slowly popup. With some dozens of shades of grey or whites its a nightmare for daily use. I know this will never change. I will not mention how slow the material panel is in daily use. To think texturing geometry is a major part of the workflow one can imagine SU wil be taken over by an other easy to use modeller sooner than later.
The real development of SU is now in the plugins and extensions. Soon someone will see what is happening and says hé, I can sort of rewrite the whole thing into something more sensible. It would be great if a few of the most talented plugin developers would group together and actually started rewriting and come up with a new 3D application based on what @Last had in mind. I think this is already happening somewere. We all know there is a huge whole in the market. I think all experieced SU users would jump the Google ship and with that users base the new app should not have to be expensive to be profitable.
Francois
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I have issues with SU, http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=23448
But I would never trade it for any other 3d software program.I recently watched a Digital Tutors Maya tutorial, in which the author was drawing a simple interior space, with was developed from a cube. The procedure involved in just trying to see within the cube shaped room, which had no wall thickness, was extremely painful to watch. It really makes one re-appreciate the SU push-pull concept. Btw. It was equally painful to see how windows, doors, and moldings, were handled in Maya.
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SU is a fantastic modeler for architecture. But for Zaha Hadid not of course and not for a architectural firm doing 3D production work for the actual building process. Also not for those who want to do any photorealistic rendering using cars and trees available for rendering in 3DS etc. The only good reason to use SU is for its intuitive and easy modeling of not to complex architectural designs, not to forget those should not be too detailed or large in polygons.
If you are in the industry of architectural design you are constantly looking around to see if things move on to the next step. Thanks to Modo we have seen more of the future then SU could ever bring us, Vectorworks also has a very easy modeler and I think Revit stands a good change because of its integration of BIM. Again SU does nothing there.
SU is maintained by Google, not developed or going to be further developed. Layout is ridiculously slow and a good reason to doubt Googles efforts in the area of CAD. But Sketchup is for now a great little app for its simplicity and elegant UI, something most other apps should take a good look at. Its also abvious that we will not be doing sketchy lines for ever when in todays world Chinese firms offer photorealism for a few hundred euros or even less.
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@unknownuser said:
SU is a fantastic modeler for architecture. But for Zaha Hadid not of course and not for a architectural firm doing 3D production work for the actual building process. Also not for those who want to do any photorealistic rendering using cars and trees available for rendering in 3DS etc.
I think you're mostly right here. Without a solution from the rendering side this is currently impossible. I currently, for example, export my building and site to Maxwell and place my cars and trees directly into Maxwell's Studio. It works but it's far from ideal.
@unknownuser said:
The only good reason to use SU is for its intuitive and easy modeling of not to complex architectural designs, not to forget those should not be too detailed or large in polygons.
I'd 1/2 agree with this. I'm not sure it's totally incorrect but I believe that there are very few buildings that can't be modeled fairly efficiently in SU. I think even most of Hadid's buildings could be done w/ the help of some rubies. I think the main limitations with SU are it's UV mapping and it organic modeling capabilities. These will deter all the animation folks from joining up but architectural design can still go a long way with the current capabilities.
-Brodie
PS. don't get me wrong, I hope and pray for some decent UV tools every day.
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@frv said:
Layout is ridiculously slow and a good reason to doubt Googles efforts in the area of CAD.
I disagree with that,
on the contrary, Layout 2 is to me the proof of Google´s efforts in the area of CAD.
And, by the way, I would not be so sure that Zaha Hadid does not use SketchUp, but better dont tell her. -
Yes, UV tools. That's what maybe the weakest point of SU is at the moment (let's not talk about poly count and rendering because there are several external apps we all use for that on an every day basis). But UV mapping is part of the modelling phase and merely for a little bit of more free and advanced mapping tools, we should not go to other programs.
Now I really hope that this will be one of the fields development will go on (plus maybe a couple of new toys if you wish but what is a gift and real time saver for one, may not interest others - like have a look at dynamic components for instance).
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agree that most plugins are for people that have "learned the basic SketchUp" and are ready to "walk instead of crawl" .... wouldn't want them shipped with SU and bloating it.
Easy download access/organization from within SU's interface for those tools similar to 3D Warehouse something like a "Ruby Warehouse" would be pretty cool
(Didier has it pretty well started with his "Ruby Depot")@unknownuser said:
... incredible bad decisions in terms of project decisions. And It started with them removing the layers toolbar in sketchup 5. ...
which one was that?
@unknownuser said:
i consider pushpulling more than 1 face at a time, selecting and manipulating multiple vertexs, a workable UI, sphere, cubic and cilindrical mapping as minimum uv options (not eve talking about unwarping), or suporting more than 3.3Gg of ram in the end of the year 2009, prety basic stuff needed in ANY 3D app, just to name a few...
all very good points. agree with all of those.
It would be good if the plugin writers were better able to access some things as ThomThom mentioned... can't change a layer's color via ruby script afaik, and the ruby programmers would be better at the other wish list... is there a Ruby wish list somewhere solely for Ruby coders to ask for things?
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@fletch said:
is there a Ruby wish list somewhere solely for Ruby coders to ask for things?
Oh yes, they keep wishing and requesting and whining all the time (especially between two betas as there nothing else to do then)
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