What if unwrapping sketchup models was kinda easy....
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Every time I see one of the community's great SU innovations I keep thinking:
What DOES the Trimble team do each day as so little comes out in each yearly update? -
@pixero said:
Every time I see one of the community's great SU innovations I keep thinking: What DOES the Trimble team do each day as so little comes out in each yearly update?
Surely the wrong place for this discussion but recently I had the same thought and wondered: when was the last time the community was happily posting pictures, models and ideas about a new SketchUp tool by the official developers?
Are we just spoiled brats here and is it wrong to expect new fancy tools from the Trimble team? Like good uvTools, more shading options, native quads, native lofts, running dimensions, etc.
Should they focus on making a stable framework (behind the scenes stuff) for other developers? Are we missing something very crucial here?Just asking.
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@pixero said:
What DOES the Trimble team do each day as so little comes out in each yearly update?
A lot - for the size of the team we got. And remember not everything is sexy user-facing features. Personally I prefer this stuff coming out as an extension - free of the SU release schedule and able to specialize. Remember that SketchUp is as successful as it is because it's generic and free of clutter.
Over the years people have been telling me that they want to see my extensions as part of SketchUp out of the box. And I've never really understood that - what for? What value would it be from them being shipped with SU? A rigid release schedule? Exposing a lot of users who don't need my extensions to a myriad of menus and toolbars? And in the time before I was an SU team member - when people saying they wanted to see my extensions as part of SU they basically said they wanted someone else to take over development. Why?
My theory is that people tend to extrapolate their own need to the whole of the SU userbase - which is hugely diverse. Any specialization will alienate another user group.
In my years as an extension developer before I joined SU I advocated that SU remain a generic platform for extension developers to create specializations. And I still believe that. (This is my personal opinions btw, none of this is official policy or anything.) I want to see a growing third party developer community - because I believe that can provide a much richer feature set to SU. More modular. Faster.
Consider this SketchUp, Trimble - we have our main target in the market. There is no way we can accommodate everyone in all markets. But with a platform that is generic, simple and ease, it can be built upon by anyone.If SU had added all the stuff from extensions that people ask for then it'd be a bloated beast.
(This answer became longer than expected, and we probably shouldn't dive too much deeper into this subject in this thread - but I felt compelled to respond to the number of comments. Let get back to the original topic.)
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@rich o brien said:
Thing is should we keep going with developement? It would be a priced tool as it's a mammoth undertaking to get something SketchUp would immediately understand.
I think a good UV unwrapping tool that is more user friendly is something that would have good value beyond the realms of just SU. A tool that focused on the main tasks and streamlined that really well.
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Thomthom...
You also know very well that some extensions have become native SU tools and with good reason...I agree to most of what you've been writing, however there's a lot of feature requests that never get the attention from the development team as it - IMHO - should...
Better UV-mapping tools have been asked for as long as I can remember - meaning at least back to ver. 5, yet I haven't seen anything from the core team being developed in that direction...
I'm sure I'm not the only user asking the question WHY NOT...?!? -
@rich o brien said:
... It is packaged to look and behave exactly as you're used to in SketchUp...
Think of it as the easiest to use unwrapping tool you ever encountered...
Thing is should we keep going with developement? It would be a priced tool as it's a mammoth undertaking...
If you have thoughts let me know here...enjoy the weekendHow should I enjoy the weekend ?!?!? - holding the finger on the paypal buy button all the time
getting such a tool with the SU-Look and feel is a fantastic outlook! -
@rich o brien said:
Export to Wrap-R
So, I'm not sure I get it. Will it be a standalone tool, or an integrated extension?
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@thomthom
I don't mean it as criticism. I am genuinely curious why so little has happened in SU since version 2015. It seems most was done to Layout that I hardly ever use.
I kind of agree with you that the main focus should be to make SU a platform but there are areas that 3rd party developers have a hard time adding/fixing stuff.
Better animation with easing is something that should have been added years ago.
(Now finally Fredo is doing something in this area but I still think SU native animation sucks mostly because it only has linear interpolation that never looks good. A plugin like Lumen RT has a very simple to use animation that still looks good. )
Built in support for quads would have been great and would have made texturing easier.
(I really thought that was one of the reasons they hired you.)
I also believe a better graphic engine with lights and shaders would benefit all SU users.
Just to mention a few. -
@jiminy-billy-bob said:
@rich o brien said:
Export to Wrap-R
So, I'm not sure I get it. Will it be a standalone tool, or an integrated extension?
See my previous reply to you.
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"We want to see Skatter here also"?
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One of the useful things in the Sketchup Community forum is the ability to 'Reply as linked topic" which means your reply becomes a new thread allowing the conversation to diverge somewhat without hijacking the original thread.
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@pixero said:
It seems most was done to Layout that I hardly ever use.
If only it was so...
Unfortunately it's not...
A few things has been added to LayOut, but although it's the most significant thing distinguishing SU between Pro and Make, there's too little that has been done... -
We so desperately need this ...I first heard of UV unwrap in 2002, if im not mistaken. 14 years after it's but fair to expect something like this to come up to serve millions of SU loyal users.. I'll be most delighted to buy the extension.
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I noticed the size of the UV mapping was different from Wrap-R than what was imported:
Was that an artefact of alpha-software?
@kaas said:If you're going to support fbx, maybe add the option for a 2nd UV channel as well? No use for it in SketchUp itself but for people who need a lightmap channel in Unreal that would be great.
How often do you have different UVs for the light channel - or other channel? Don't you normally have multiple channels matching their size and placement?
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@thomthom said:
...How often do you have different UVs for the light channel - or other channel? Don't you normally have multiple channels matching their size and placement?
For gaming elements in general they are the same. For architecture though, the lightmap usually is totally different. The mapping coordinates for a tileable texture (brick, concrete etc) can have any value. The lightmap channel must have all uv's in the 0-1 space.
In the pic the lightmap uvs for a concrete structure: unwrapped in 0-1 space.
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@thomthom said:
I noticed the size of the UV mapping was different from Wrap-R than what was imported
In SU I painted the default checker material. In WrapR when unwrapped it unwrapped within the texture space.
So the texture needs scaling in SU or in WrapR.
What you see in WrapR is not the texture you saw in SU.
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@rich o brien said:
What you see in WrapR is not the texture you saw in SU.
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But it will be... Right?
Will WrapR be able to convert a model that was mapped with tileable textures into a single texture?
Like the "combine textures" context menu feature but with multiplanar faces (and no image scale reduction)?
An atlas but only for selected component/group/mesh?
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Another one of my silly questions. Can someone give me a practical definition of what UV is. I have looked it up in places like Wikipedia but, at least in the context of threads like this one, and do not think I "get it". Thus, why should I understand why UV unwrapping is a big deal?
To be honest, I have seen some examples and videos and I think I get what the issue is even though I do not fully appreciate what the term UV really means.
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great news ! will wait patiently in line with paypal in hand .
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