[Plugin][$] 3D Tree Maker - New version 1.10.14

massimo

A couple of things more:
-the trunk & branches faces are reversed. Anyway the materials seem to be applied on both front & back faces, so not a big deal.
-oddly when you export a model in Thea for example, the scale of some elements seems different (?). See the picture below.

ppoublan

Thanks you very much for your tests and feedbacks.

Scaling : I think it should be escalated to the export/render code to be corrected. It looks like (I’m not sure but suspect, maybe some experts could verify) it has to do with the internal way scales are stored within Sketchup. When you use a transformation matrix, the 16th parameter is a scaling factor that apply to the object in all directions. I think this parameter is not always checked and used by all export/render programs. They only use the xscale,yscale and zcale parameter (1st, 6th, and 11th). Maybe it can explain the differences. I will look if I could enforce the update of the other scaled parameters into the component instance definition.

Here is an extract from the excellent book “Aumatic Sketchup” that describes this :
Chapter 4 explained how to create scaling transformations using the scaling method of the Geom::Transformation class. This method accepts a scaling constant, and when you apply the resulting Transformation to an entity, the entity's size will be multiplied by that amount. Let's see the corresponding matrix when we multiply an entity's size by five:
t = Geom::Transformation.scaling 5.0
AdvGeom.print_mat t
g 1.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
0.000 1.000 0.000 0.000
0.000 0.000 1.000 0.000
0.000 0.000 0.000 0.200
This matrix looks a lot like the identity matrix, but the lower-right element is set to 0.2, which is the reciprocal of the scaling constant (1/5.0 = 0.2). Changing this single element changes the size of a transformed entity, and we can check this by creating a Transformation that shrinks an entity five-fold:

Purge of unused elements : yes some materials and components (leaves types) are created and loaded before building the tree to improve performance. I can add automatic deletion of unused elements at the end of the script, but with the risk to delete components loaded by the user or other apps. Do you think Its preferable to add this ? not a great work, very few lines to call.
Faces to be reversed, I have to make some more work to correct this. I’m adding this to the bug list.

Yours
Pascal

Krisidious

Is this SketchUp 2013 ready or is it Version 8 only?
Will it be added to the SCF Plugin Store?

CadFather

Pascal, works fine here - and the trees look great - if you run Thom's 'Cleanup', you can further save yourself 40000 to 60000 polygons. outrageous plugin, this is going to be perfect when 2014 64bit comes out.

Krisidious

I guess I can stop waiting on this...

(www.theplantfactory-tech.com)

massimo

@ppoublan said:

Thanks you very much for your tests and feedbacks.

Scaling : I think...

Purge of unused elements : yes some materials and components...

Faces to be reversed...

Yours
Pascal

Pascal:
-Scaling: yeah, maybe Tomasz or other exporter experts can have a look to that;
-Purge: no worries, running TIG's plugin is fine;
-Faces revesed: as i said not a big deal.

Here are some variations on an olive tree template. Just SU's hidden line style.

Krisidious

Fantastic Massimo...

on revered faces... while this should not be an issue in SU, some renderers will not show backfaces.

CadFather

an olive tree with 1.2 million polys - purged and cleaned went down to 900k, then simplified the leaf comp went further down to 85k. ..what a ruby!

PS (and that's the sat morning shopping, out of the window..)

massimo

@krisidious said:

Fantastic Massimo...

on revered faces... while this should not be an issue in SU, some renderers will not show backfaces.

But materials seem to be applied on both front and back faces, so this should not be an issue because renderers will "see" the mat on the front face anyway. However I agree that having front faces should be better.

driven

hi

working on mac mountain lion with SU v2013.

PM Chris Fullmer re the scaling, I think he may have an answer...

One request I would have is to allow loading from other Folders/Directories, it appears to be hard coded to Plugins Folder.

john

Krisidious

I think Lumion and Revizto don't show back faces unless they have updated the problem. Revizto has an option to turn them on.

Zacchia

Hi
Thanks, it's very nice! When open SU this console is also on every start. Why?

massimo

@zacchia said:

Hi
Thanks, it's very nice! When open SU this console is also on every start. Why?

http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=476285#p476285

Zacchia

@massimo said:

@zacchia said:

Hi
Thanks, it's very nice! When open SU this console is also on every start. Why?

http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=476285#p476285

OK, thanks!

Oxer

Incredible plugin!!
I know is in beta phase but it has a great potential to make fantastic parametric trees.
Like previous comments when I open SU it appears Console window with warning messages, I use SU 8 on mac OSX 10.8.3.
In a quick testing all works fine on Mac, if you want I can help you to give support to translate the plugin to other languages, creating a file with strings for translation, I have done a lot of translations for SU plugins.

Box

He already said he would fix that.

Already answered.JPG

solo

This is awesome, sure there are a few small things but wow! this is going to be a zinger of a plugin.

Anyway to get a console/applet for modifying the parameters and an update button?

Pixero

@solo said:

This is awesome, sure there are a few small things but wow! this is going to be a zinger of a plugin.

Anyway to get a console/applet for modifying the parameters and an update button?

If you rightclick on the tree you can change parameters. Is that what you wanted?

kaas

@ppoublan said:

Dear all,
Just to inform you I made a script to create Sketchup 3D Trees. It's now a beta version,
Yours Pascal

Wonderful - I was messing around last week with Tree[d] but this seems much more to my liking. Will surely test it tomorrow. Again a big

edit: typo

solo

@pixero said:

@solo said:

This is awesome, sure there are a few small things but wow! this is going to be a zinger of a plugin.

Anyway to get a console/applet for modifying the parameters and an update button?

If you rightclick on the tree you can change parameters. Is that what you wanted?

I saw that, what I'd like is a console/applet where I can do all the changes and update without clicking out to see results then right clicking to make more changes.