Sketchup 64 bit?
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Yes, of course you are right, I have issues that I would like addressed like UV Unwrap and triangulation controls (or at least visibility)... however, I would acknowledge those may be outside the scope of what most users might be using SketchUp for.
64-bit is a different issue -- my role on this forum has been to help people... particularly people who are having issues with rendering via Maxwell. That's not to say I could not help with other facets of SketchUp, but there are already plenty of people who do those things here.
Anyhow, the 64-bit issue is a huge roadblock for Maxwell users, and one which creates alot of extra headaches. I can only imagine that the same would be said for similar renderers like Thea.
So from that point of view 64-bit is something that would easily benefit a large chunk of users right out of the gate... and even open new possibilities for other 3d party developers.
I've said all this before in various forms over several threads -- so this is nothing new. I'm only reiterating it here since you made some statements that I cannot fully agree with.
On the issue of SketchUps role in my workflow -- because of the stellar plugin for Maxwell I have a desire to keep SketchUp as my hub... unfortunately other apps I may like either do not have a Maxwell plugin or the Maxwell plugin is not as good. Thus my reluctance to give up here... which has nothing to do with any lingering affection for SketchUp.
Blender would be a great example of a software that I might like to use -- however there is no official Maxwell plugin and the plugins that are available are WIP's. I have other options that are more suitable, and I am ready to move to one of them... there is nothing I need that SketchUp does that my other options cannot do better (with the exception of the Maxwell plugin).
The fact that you have largely abandoned SketchUp should raise huge red flags for the SketchUp dev team -- you have more reason to stay with the software than just about anybody I know... so your situation brought alot of clarity to my own thinking on the matter.
Best,
Jason. -
I'm fairly sure that in some point there will be a critical momentum when a mass of professional users will actually start to look on a other solution. At the moment SU definitely delivers on a certain level (in my use at least
), but I have to say future is foggy.I have used SU about 7-8 years. In that time I have managed to convenience several people to start using it. Unfortunately now I personally know many who are looking a alternative. Have to admit it's not just because of lacking with 64 bit, but simply they need a tool that can produce and handle huge amounts of polygons (for a render engine
) and they also seems to prefer ongoing development that's actually happening with some competitive products.What I have seen is that they tend to jump on Rhino or 3DS Max, some even to blender.
Also SU is getting a stronger and stronger hobbyist stamp and that might also affect. If brand/product gets a stain, it's hard to win back a lost customer. -
@notareal said:
Also SU is getting a stronger and stronger hobbyist stamp and that might also affect. If brand/product gets a stain, it's hard to win back a lost customer.
I agree with this entire post, but this last bit is particularly relevant.
Best,
Jason. -
Don't get me wrong I want to see forward progression as much as the next guy.
It's easy blame Google or John or how the planets aligned for the current status of SU. I just have no facts that either of these were the cause.
But feel free to continue your crusade for 64bit as I'll benefit too. I just can't give an educated reason why it is needed. If I could I would be shouting along with you.
I have to trust the dev when he tells a paying customer there'll be no improvements if they add this.
Maybe if we ran some polls here it would be easier to collate the information they need instead long meandering threaded discussions.
Though I do remember this cryptic response when the original Trimble announcement was made...
@jbacus said:
Hi guys,
Obviously we are still working out the product roadmap and we still won't be able offer any more specific forward-looking statements than we ever did. But it is clear to us that Trimble is better aligned as a company with the SketchUp team's goals than Google. We've learned a ton from our time at Google, but there's plenty we wanted to do that we couldn't.
Trimble is an interesting company and is far more invested in software than most people realize— particularly software for the AEC industry. If you don't know about Tekla, you should. Ditto for many of the other recent BIM acquisitions they have made.
Trimble are committed to growing our team and have invested in our product's future. They understand what our mission is, and support it wholeheartedly. Trimble is about "...transforming the way people work." And that is something that SketchUp has always done.
john
.(ps: just so you guys know, there are 64-bit (and multithreaded) members of the SketchUp team sitting together in a room reading these posts.)
Though that last sentence can be interpreted 50 different ways. Obviously leaving the essential unclear.
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@unknownuser said:
Have to admit it's not just because of lacking with 64 bit, but simply they need a tool that can produce and handle huge amounts of polygons
And this is my only concern, I care less how it's done just that it's done. I come up against this daily as the nature of my work requires higher poly modeling, so I'm at the proverbial fork in the road, do I continue my convoluted and rather hefty workflow by patching all high poly models in studio or do I move on to an app that can handle more poly's?
basically my laziness to learn a new app to the extent I know SU has been the only reason I'm still here.
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I can only go by how often the issue pops up for Maxwell users, where the problem is the 4 Gb limit on RAM, and various workarounds must be used... which I suppose is tolerable for full Render Suite users (like myself), but useless for stand-alone plugin users.
Not knowing the particulars of how Thea implemented rendering inside SketchUp, I would hazard to guess that those users will run up against this issue where, whether they want to keep using SketchUp or not, they will be forced out into the "studio" component simply because SketchUp can't handle the job.
I suppose the situation is even more dire for rendering engines that are run solely inside SketchUp... but I'm not sure any of those would benefit from the extra polygon detail the way unbiased engines do (Twilight would be my only guess here).
I've said it for a long time -- that Maxwell (and Unbiased rendering in general) and SketchUp are working towards contrary goals... meaning the way SketchUp wants to work, and the way a Unbiased engine wants things to be, are not really ideally compatible. I am of the opinion that SketchUps way of working is antiquated, and no longer useful the way it was even as recently as 5 years ago... low-poly modeling is no longer the order of the day -- even in poly-count sensitive areas like video games. The very last place this was useful was Google Earth... but who cares about that now that Google is gone.
SketchUp feels old and clunky -- in more than one way.
Best,
Jason. -
Regarding high poly modelling, aren't most engines supporting proxies now? Even V-Ray for SketchUp is getting proxies in it's next release.
All modelling tools will struggle under heavy poly count. And if you compare against other applications you can see how they usually provide a much more degenerated view of the model and leave the presentation to the render engine. While SketchUp has its real time sketchy render engine running at all time - generally providing a better presentation of the model in the viewport than what other engines do. It's quite a different animal from most out there.
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External Proxies/Instances are besides the point -- the geometry must be still loaded into the 32-bit SketchUp process in order to be rendered inside SketchUp... so even proxies can put you into a RAM based failure to launch the render.
The reality is that SketchUp cannot adequately support the tools visualizers are using as a host app... and the concept of SketchUp as a platform is a failure because of that.
Every workable solution I've seen requires the user to leave SketchUp -- which by definition means it fails as a host.
I've not seen any other modern software that struggles as badly as SketchUp -- the "real-time" rendering in SketchUp might be part of the problem, and obviously you can also blame the inferencing engine as well to a certain degree. But better packages allow you to disable/enable those features as needed, rather than forcing you to suffer through them because of some philosophically misguided rationale of "simplicity trumps all"... which to me reads more like the developers (Bacus) saying "I know what's better for you than you do".
Best,
Jason. -
@thomthom said:
SketchUp has its real time sketchy render engine running at all time - generally providing a better presentation of the model in the viewport than what other engines do. It's quite a different animal from most out there.
If I had my way I'd relegate this to Stylebuilder.
Tyler built a robust tool to load, generate and save styles. It could easily be used to display models to clients.
You could even safely send a client a .style file that contained a model that is locked from editing.
At least this is how I see it in my brain....
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If I had my way I'd relegate this to Layout -- which is natural environment for real rendering of SketchUp Styles. Layout has presentation mode which is far more suitable to the task.
Best,
Jason. -
@jason_maranto said:
Every workable solution I've seen requires the user to leave SketchUp -- which by definition means it fails as a host.
The render engine can pipe the data to a 64bit process - so only the UI is hosted under the 32bit environment of SketchUp.
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True, but it's a complete cop-out...
Each developer would be required to redo the work to make this happen -- which I've already covered the ridiculousness of.
If SketchUp was any kind of competent platform, it should not require 3rd party developers to repeatedly do extra and unnecessary work. I think if most of the 3rd party developers felt free to be honest they would publicly agree with me...
But honestly these conversations keep going in circles.
Best,
Jason. -
@jason_maranto said:
Each developer would be required to redo the work to make this happen -- which I've already covered the ridiculousness of.
One could ask why these developers did design their system like this to begin with...
It's not like they where not aware of the limitations. And it's not like they had been promised it would come in the near future.@jason_maranto said:
But honestly these conversations keep going in circles.
This is all too true.
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At the end of the day Sketchup is now owned by Trimble, and we know what they do, so I believe my concerns regarding SU limits is also theirs as lets be honest low poly terrains for such sophisticated surveying hardware will not work out that well, they are gonna need to up the polys at some point.
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I could put it another way -- do you know that of all the modeling platforms Maxwell supports with plugins (15 and counting) Sketchup is the only one without built-in 64-bit support.
Which means any work done for this type of kludge would have absolutely no benefit for any of their other platforms -- it's wasted energy.
SketchUp is deservedly the red-headed stepchild of the 3D world... not because of it's users, but because of it's developers.
Best,
Jason. -
I've red-hair
Now the gloves are off
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So does my best friend -- and he's a step-child as well, so he gets indignant when I use that phrase...Best,
Jason. -
@thomthom said:
@jason_maranto said:
Every workable solution I've seen requires the user to leave SketchUp -- which by definition means it fails as a host.
The render engine can pipe the data to a 64bit process - so only the UI is hosted under the 32bit environment of SketchUp.
Perhaps platform specific solutions (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.servicemodel.netnamedpipebinding.aspx)? If so, then multiplatform programs could have issues (or at least do require more work). Like said, communication between 32 bit process and 64 bit is possible, but for some reason it's not used that often... I am pretty sure that there must be some good reasons for that
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@jason_maranto said:
External Proxies/Instances are besides the point -- the geometry must be still loaded into the 32-bit SketchUp process in order to be rendered inside SketchUp... so even proxies can put you into a RAM based failure to launch the render.
The reality is that SketchUp cannot adequately support the tools visualizers are using as a host app... and the concept of SketchUp as a platform is a failure because of that.
Every workable solution I've seen requires the user to leave SketchUp -- which by definition means it fails as a host.
I've not seen any other modern software that struggles as badly as SketchUp -- the "real-time" rendering in SketchUp might be part of the problem, and obviously you can also blame the inferencing engine as well to a certain degree. But better packages allow you to disable/enable those features as needed, rather than forcing you to suffer through them because of some philosophically misguided rationale of "simplicity trumps all"... which to me reads more like the developers (Bacus) saying "I know what's better for you than you do".
Best,
Jason.The real time rendering or viewport performance don´t get any advantage from the jump to 64bits, I think also there is no viewport performance gain in any 3d software from going 64 bits or more CPU cores. On the other hand taking advantage of the GPU its exactly what matters in this case, I´ve been using blender for about two years and before that 3dsmax, In fact the viewport in sketchup are ages in front of these two, as there is a clear and unique hierarchy in the visualization as a whole: lines, hidden lines, smoothed lines, faces and textures.
In other apps to have this control over all the meshes of my scene I´ll usually have to jump in specific view preferences, modifiers preferences, proxy object propriety etc. and still only one at a time.
In fact I can only imagine using any other viewport at all it´s because the modifiers, that enable you to manipulate the high poly meshes or polys, they have some LOD setting and don´t display the complete mesh all the time.
And if I want to produce hi-poly renders I´m happy to work with my model surrounded by low poly avatars of the objects. But really for me the unique feature that make me use sketchup it´s about visualize and explore so this is the completely the other way.In my opinion you should take a look in another software, I did some years ago when I was needing to produce and control heavy poly models, and at that time I was feeling refreshed for all the new possibilities, still after some time I´ve came back to sketchup and even became a PRO user for what it is.
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I wasn't referring to any advantages of 64-bit in regards to viewport rendering (which is open GL/video card based) -- there are several competing points being argued here, of which 64-bit is only one small part.
Also, I have said repeatedly (elsewhere) I already do use several other 3D modeling packages (subD, Sculpting, etc.) -- it's not any mystery to me how the other parts of the 3D world live.
I know few people here know much about me, but I do get tired of repeated shooting down the same arguments... I dislike repeating myself, and this conversation has become almost entirely repetitive at this point -- So I'm going to bow out.
I've said what I've said -- I meant it all, and nobody has convinced me otherwise... so I'll let that stand.
Best,
Jason.
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