SketchUP 8
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@jbacus said:
@unknownuser said:
@unknownuser said:
What benefit do you hope to gain from a 64-bit version of SketchUp? This is really the question that needs to be discussed.
Speed (particularly with plugin routines) and the ability to carry higher poly counts without considerable slowing. SU can't handle more than 1 high poly tree or car for architectural renderings.
64-bit processing will have no benefit to managing higher poly counts without considerably slowing. Performance in this area depends either on the capability of your GPU, or the clock speed of your CPU. Memory is not the bottleneck for these kinds of operations.
john
.Yet there are, in fact, other programs which can handle polygons in the order of magnitudes more than SU with a decent gaming GPU and multiprocessor (ie. low clock speed) processor. If the answer to that isn't 64-bit then so be it (there are 32 bit programs which handle many more polygons as well), but the issue can't be pawned off to GPU and clock speeds. All the empirical evidence points to a SU programming issue rather than a hardware one.
Your argument has remained the same for some time now (64 bit isn't needed and may even be bad for SU users). What would be more welcome is for you to improve the aspects which cause people to request 64-bit and point to THAT empirical evidence, showing that you can give them the speed and poly enhancements they desire without 64-bit support. So far it's just been an intellectual argument without any evidence that SU actually can make significant improvements within the 32-bit realm.
In fairness, v7 was a nice step up both speed and poly handling. However it's just still so far below where other programs are currently at (or have been at for years) that the frustration will remain until "significant" improvements have been made.
-Brodie
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John,
I should have been more clear, I meant rendering with a plugin inside Sketchup. I use Twilight, I understand Vray and other render programs have similar trouble. Depending on model size, trouble can start at 2000 px.Thanks for replying.
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@jbacus said:
High resolution image export, especially when antialiased, does require a considerable quantity of memory. But a shift to 64-bit processing probably isn't required for improvement in this area. It would be useful to hear the actual image resolution you're trying to achieve so we can better study the problem.
john
.FWIW, Windows users can only export up to around 4000px wide images. I've never needed more that, but other users (recently Pixero) have mentioned needing larger exports than that.
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I suspect many people are mis-using the whole '64 bit' thing.
Changing a program to use 64 bit sized pointers may well slow it down since you now have to move around twice as much data for every operation. Whether that is a noticeable effect depends a great deal on the exact operations involved and the precise details of the machine you are using. And what other programs are running and how much real memory they are holding on to and how much vmem thrashing that causes.
Changing a program to use the 64 bit instruction set available in the recent intel cpus is a different thing. Hidden under the ugly lump of crapulence that pretends to be a Pentium 17 or whatever it would be by now is a reasonably well thought out RISC machine with a lot of capabilities, many more registers than the stupid x86 instruction set and potentially better performance.
It's like the whole 'why isnt SU multicore' outcry. Not every algorithm is sensibly parallelisable, nor easily. A pity, since massive parallelism is the only way we are likely to be able to take advantage of future benefits of Moore's Law. It may even be that in order to use hundreds of cores we have to change to much less 'efficient' algorithms from the perspective of a single cpu.
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@d12dozr said:
@jbacus said:
High resolution image export, especially when antialiased, does require a considerable quantity of memory. But a shift to 64-bit processing probably isn't required for improvement in this area. It would be useful to hear the actual image resolution you're trying to achieve so we can better study the problem.
john
.FWIW, Windows users can only export up to around 4000px wide images. I've never needed more that, but other users (recently Pixero) have mentioned needing larger exports than that.
Personally I think a better fix, at least in the case of exporting images, would be to have the ability to determine the thickness of SU's linework. I find personally that because a line is always 1 pixel thick I end up having to export very large images even if (especially if) I don't need that much resolution. I'll end up exporting a very large image and then reducing the image size in photoshop. Other than this reason, I'm not sure why someone might need a SU image to export at more than 4,000 pixels (between poly counts being limited and texture resolution limits I can't imagine what benefit you'd get).
-Brodie
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@unknownuser said:
We're not going anywhere. We are planning to continue developing SketchUp as "3D modeling for everyone." Exactly what we've been doing for the last ten years. Happily, SketchUp usage continues to increase at a respectable clip every month, and we're finding new users in all kinds of unexpected markets.
We don't have plans to shift our roadmap to more completely duplicate the capabilities of either the large DCC apps (like Max, Maya, Softimage, Cinema4d, or Lightwave) or the BIM apps (like Revit or Archicad). But this shouldn't really come as a surprise to any of you that have been with us for a while.
john
.Hello John how are you?
John, a SIMPLE work I decided to use a bank that was a model of BB Italia ... the sketchup only took 18 HOURS to explode the bank ...
I do not expect you to transform Sketchup a 3DMax, but what is the difficulty of making the program accessible to read easily and quickly many polygons? A simple database I ate 18 hours standby and worse, he exploded it became impossible to work, I just lost 18 hours of work.
SketchUp 6 + 7 + 7.1 + 8 has nothing but text and 3D Boolean operation, as you can defend Sketchup for everyone if you mention all that you exclude those who want to work professionally with the program?
Thanks!
Forgive my English, I use an online translator
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Mr. Bacus answers remind me the interviews the north korean coach gave on the last Mondial.
The last 3+ years of SU development look exactly like 0:7 'Massacre of the Innocents' from Portugal.
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I'm talking about simple things that I expected. When You need texture a lot of archs than sketchup is a big pain in one intresting place. When I need to export big size image ... again sketchup is dissapointment. When I need export large size model to renderer ... again ... And so on. And nothing is made since version 6!!! I don't ask sketchup to be as powerful as 3ds max but for gods sake do something for every day users not for that crap google earth!
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@jbacus said:
@cadmunkey said:
Jeez.. no 64 bit version in 2010? C'mon Google you've dropped the ball! You beta testers couldnt persuade them?
What benefit do you hope to gain from a 64-bit version of SketchUp? This is really this question that needs to be discussed.
john
.John I hope you are joking. Obviously more memory space and the ability to render out complex models. You said:
"If you are an architect, it may be interesting to know that we have just granted you convenient access to Google's complete collection of geo-spatial imagery for more or less the entire world. In many parts of the world, you can now build a site model with accurate terrain, aerial and street-level photography and rough massing models for adjacent structures in minutes... without leaving your desk."What use is all this if when I get to the point of wanting to render out my proposed building it crashes because SU has reached its memory limit?
Dont mess around, its 2010 and you're saying 64bit isnt the way forward for SU? I guess what you are really saying is "tough luck, thats a render program problem, NOT a limitation of SU". -
Hey John,
Just want to say thanks for replying to some of these questions. I personally find the fact that you have bothered to take the time to reply to us much more satisfying than any new sketchup features. The fact that the sketchup team is willing to openly converse with its users is a big thing I guess, and not something I was really expecting given its track record of versions in the past few years (which is why many complain). Now I can be put to rest and just accept that sketchup will probably never do some of the things I would like it to do, and I mean that in the best way possible. I can plan ahead and make sure that I have other tools on hand to fill the gaps around sketchup. There are of course many simple core problems in sketchup, that, I'm sure will get solved given enough time, but I'm no longer left in the dark half hoping that they will get fixed soon.Thanks
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@cadmunkey said:
I guess what you are really saying is "tough luck, thats a render program problem, NOT a limitation of SU".
Kindof is... SU was designed as a sketching application. By the sound of it, more render apps are moving to studio solutions - to escape the 32bit limitation of SU.
The thing is, people as for more performance at the same time they demand 64bit. As it's been mentioned before, 64bit mean more data to process and can just as easily hurt performance.
However, I use render engines as well, I'd love to be able to use more memory, but I realise that 64bit is no magic bullet for SU it comes with its cons as well.
But I'm curious if SketchUp can be made LargeAddressAware, which would mean under 64bit OS it could address 4GB ram instead of 2. And it's just a compiler flag - pretty much free - without the overhead of 64bit processing.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee418798%28VS.85%29.aspx#The__LARGEADDRESSAWARE_flagWouldn't give you as much memory available as 64bit - but 4GB is a whole lot better than 2GB.
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"No one will need more than 637 kb of memory for a personal computer." -Bill Gates, 1981
"64-bit processing will have no benefit" -John Bacus. 2010(sic!)
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@jbacus said:
@unknownuser said:
@unknownuser said:
What benefit do you hope to gain from a 64-bit version of SketchUp? This is really the question that needs to be discussed.
Speed (particularly with plugin routines) and the ability to carry higher poly counts without considerable slowing. SU can't handle more than 1 high poly tree or car for architectural renderings.
64-bit processing will have no benefit to managing higher poly counts without considerably slowing. Performance in this area depends either on the capability of your GPU, or the clock speed of your CPU. Memory is not the bottleneck for these kinds of operations.
john
.From my experience, if you compare some well build 32-bit and 64-bit apps, that do load plenty of polygons to memory, there usually is no considerable slowdown, if poly count is the same. Increase poly count and then in some point 32-bit program will fail as it does runs out of memory and 64-bit will go on. Is it better to have a failed app or one that works in any scenario (even tiny bit slower)?
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@thomthom said:
But I'm curious if SketchUp can be made LargeAddressAware, which would mean under 64bit OS it could address 4GB ram instead of 2. And it's just a compiler flag - pretty much free - without the overhead of 64bit processing.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee418798%28VS.85%29.aspx#The__LARGEADDRESSAWARE_flagWouldn't give you as much memory available as 64bit - but 4GB is a whole lot better than 2GB.
A good point, better than nothing.
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@jbacus said:
I think if you were a part of our beta program, you'd find that we are similarly responsive there.
Hey, I have volunteered to be on your beta team several times via various groups (this one and the Google SketchUp one). My email address has not changed since then. And I do understand the NDA process completely and know the level of communication changes from the beta room to the open forums. I also know, that you cannot please everyone at the same time.
Rick
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@d12dozr said:
John,
I should have been more clear, I meant rendering with a plugin inside Sketchup. I use Twilight, I understand Vray and other render programs have similar trouble. Depending on model size, trouble can start at 2000 px.Thanks for replying.
Photorealistic rendering operations surely benefit from 64-bit processing. Rendering plugins do not have to execute rendering operations inside SketchUp's 32-bit environment, and can be built to run in their own 64-bit environment outside of the main SketchUp process. I think many of the more popular ones are already doing this.
john
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@unknownuser said:
Personally I think a better fix, at least in the case of exporting images, would be to have the ability to determine the thickness of SU's linework. I find personally that because a line is always 1 pixel thick I end up having to export very large images even if (especially if) I don't need that much resolution. I'll end up exporting a very large image and then reducing the image size in photoshop. Other than this reason, I'm not sure why someone might need a SU image to export at more than 4,000 pixels (between poly counts being limited and texture resolution limits I can't imagine what benefit you'd get).
You should try rendering images in LayOut instead of SketchUp. Layout gives you the ability to change the line weight of the drawing prior to export so that you don't have the problem you're describing.
john
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@d12dozr said:
John,
I should have been more clear, I meant rendering with a plugin inside Sketchup. I use Twilight, I understand Vray and other render programs have similar trouble. Depending on model size, trouble can start at 2000 px.Thanks for replying.
It is certainly the case that photorealistic rendering benefits from a 64-bit environment and access to loads and loads of memory. Rendering plugins for SketchUp can be built either to run their rendering processes inside SketchUp's 32-bit environment or outside it in their own separate 64-bit environment. You might check you favorites to see how they work.
john
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John has entered an infinite loop? /me files a bug report on d12dozr's post. -
good morning John... bright and early and already answering the onslaught. I must say I commend your attention to the users questions and statements.
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