Lively by Google
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Phil,
I understand what you are saying regarding the "tool" analogy - and I think that is exactly why so many here are expressing concern. SU is a vital tool for most of us in our trade, hence the passionate responses. I think a lot of the concern is raised due to the lack of information Google is willing to provide for the PRO version's development and future plans. Their PR focus seems to be geared towards the GE and now Lively audiences. One could make an arguement that where SU is right now(v6 development)is more than sufficient to support these endeavors, as a bonus - throw in the Warehouse and the majority of it's content into that mix as well. Keep it all free and let Google make their money in the advertising possibilities within Lively. But - what do we do about the PRO users? The tool admittedly is showing some basic development limitations in file size / poly count, as wel as taking advantage of the current (multi-core) hardware capabilities. Beyond that - the ruby community is doing some incredible work with what SU6 has to offer.
Your reference of Autodesk and it's applications is appropriate as well, and that probably has more to do with the level of paranoia expressed here. I am a former user of both Lightscape (from before the autodesk buyout) and an SU like product - which I think was called Architectural Studio. Lightscape was a lighting design application that also was a fantastic radiosity renderer - killed after a few years and only 1 release cycle in Autodesk's hands. Most of what it did has been rolled into the former VIZ and now MAX, but there were some features and aspects that even the current generation of biased / unbiased renderers don't completely match. Arch Studio was out in the early days of SU and lasted only 1 or 2 release cycles - was very SU like (but in an Autocad friendly format) with similar capabilities to the layout tools right in the base functionality. One a great tool - one a good tool which had plenty of room to be developed. Both dead
at the hands of a large corporation, supposedly due to the high development costs for a somewhat limited market.Are we too paranoid? Probably, but given today's economy and market it is understandable. The design software industry doesn't do anything to quell these concerns either. Google is paying the price for what we all have come to expect from the other non-SU design applications. Yearly subsciptions with scheduled upgrades which constitute minor feature enhancements and bug fixes, sprinkled with a few new developments here and there.
I am officially not so paranoid now since I spent several hours last night watching a couple of the videos from the Basecamp sessions. If we all take a step back and view the situation from the perspective of what development has occured to SU in the form of ruby scripts since the release of v6 - things don't necessarily look so bad. If this business model works for Google and the pro version can continue development with the open framework that provides the ruby developers the opportunities to reach even higher - I am OK with that. Just give us the speed and power we need and allow for some seperation between the free and pro user communities!
Sorry to ramble so - Bytor
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bytor
I agreee that large software companies like Autodesk have and will continue to buyout competing software and assimilate thier technology into their own in sometimes successful and sometimes not successful ways but always "FOR PROFIT". However Google does not have a software to Assimilate Sketchup into. Sketchup is the "big companies" technology. IE: Google will be looking to buy or develop Sketchup to make it all things to all people. I have no doubt that research into making SU into a more robust application capable of handling larger poly counts or multiple cores or 64 bit processors is happening. However the sheer numbers of people who do not need that out way the numbers of people that do so I assume it's not high on the list. I think the Pro versus Free debate is a red herring, it's a distraction that is not necessary. Google has a broader more profitable use for keeping their 3d content creation software free, but if that same software can become the little David that slays Goliath all the better. SU is already most likely in every architectural office in existence in one way shape or form. If not formally in use or sanctioned, it's probably in use by at least one of it's employees. Or at a very minimum the firm is aware of it and may at some day in the future use it. If you don't think that has Autodesk concerned you would most likely be wrong. I think I read or heard somewhere that someone was working on a 300mb sketchup file. I have worked on files approaching 100mb. Granted it's slow but with proper file management its possible. So I think we all just need to step back and take a look at the big picture. SU has literally changed all of our daily lives and altered how we perform our work, I agree it's vital but even if there were not one single change in the program I would probably never need to switch to something different to perform the same tasks that I use SU for now.
I do hope that SU7 comes out in beta soon and I hope that some of the upgrades have to do with the core funtionality improvements that architects have been asking for. Support for higher polygon counts, Support for multiple cpu's, Support for 64bit OS,.
But I will also be just as happy if it has minor upgrades and a few new bells and whistles, because in my opinion there is still not viable alternative out there for me.
Regards
Phil
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@unknownuser said:
... I have no doubt that research into making SU into a more robust application capable of handling larger poly counts or multiple cores or 64 bit processors is happening. However the sheer numbers of people who do not need that out way the numbers of people that do so I assume it's not high on the list.
I think if Google wants to expand its user base (Lively users, game designers, etc...), everybody would gain from having multicore/64 bit/high polycount support and not just the 'high end users'.
As an example, the ability to model characters for Lively would imply coping with higher poly counts (organic forms).
Besides, in 1 or 2 years all PC's sold will be 64 bit systems and multicore based.
It is not at all an extreme wish for software to support it. It is a reality every software maker should be aware of, especially in the 3D spectrum.@unknownuser said:
I do hope that SU7 comes out in beta soon and I hope that some of the upgrades have to do with the core funtionality improvements that architects have been asking for. Support for higher polygon counts, Support for multiple cpu's, Support for 64bit OS,.
And again, not only architects.... But yeah, being one of those, it is something we need very badly.
I think if Google could work on that and at the same time improve sketchup as a platform (ruby or Python) for 3td party developers, for me Sketchup 7 would be a success. -
I just wonder (for general education): Is any 3d modeller uses multicore architecture now?
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@rv1974 said:
I just wonder (for general education): Is any 3d modeller uses multicore architecture now?
Most of them do, but not all of them have 64 bit versions .
I believe Rhino doesn't have a 64 bit version yet, but their code seems to be more optimised. (Rhino is not polygon based so not exactly comparable to Sketchup).
Both 3dsMax and C4D do have 64bit versions.The reason why we talk about wanting to have 64 bit is that currently Sketchup has a serious speed and crash problem when working on big files.
Going 64 bit and multicore management could be useful methods to optimise its performance.Sketchup is screaming to use more RAM memory for certain tasks than it can adress currently (a maximum of 2'pointsomething' Gb) and it can only put 1 PC core to its tasks, while some computers, like mine, have 8 cores that aren't used in a good manner.
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I just read that Google will be using its 'Adsense' concept in Lively.
This means 'in game' advertising. -
@kwistenbiebel said:
I just read that Google will be using its 'Adsense' concept in Lively.
This means 'in game' advertising.You find this surprising?
Google is an advertising company...period
Hey!!...how about 'in model' advertising?!!!...say, in V7, you open a tree component and this discreet little box opens up in the top corner with adds for 3D plants, 2D entourage....and well... lots of other vaguely related stuff.
How cool would that be!!!!
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I'd not just quit using SketchUp, but probably also pile ALL of my computers in a mound out back, spray them with lighter fluid, and toss on a lit match...that's how cool I think it would be.
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I'm with LW on this one.
Though I might just finally watch that Silo dvd I had UPS fetch me a couple of weeks ago. (I'm dreaming of a SU > Silo > SU workflow. High poly support! High poly support! Y'all think the Boulder mafia got the message by now? 
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Lively is dead and so it deserves to be, it looked like crap and it played like crap, but the idea of having a virtual space would be great, I create alot of my models on the same theme but with such large files and so many of them it's virtually impossible to display them in a scene, if there were virtual space available imagine the possibilities, allowing others to vertically walk your virtually masterpieces and vice versa, it doesn't have to be a virtual social mmo, just a space to create a visualisation, being anything, leave out all this avatar crap which they messed this lively concept up with, virtual space should be something available to SU users for creating large scenes, more or less like a game engine with built in renders and so on but for SU users.
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