SU7 news!
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+1 to what Remus and Frederick says.
It's time for more cake.... less icing.
Having a youtube link is 'fun' and not such a bad find from google (sharing an animation of a project with a client over youtube can be a useful thing), but it is more of a gadget than a feature.
Sometimes I have the feeling someone closed the door to the SU core and threw away the key.
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I actually feel there is going to be a weird split here.
If the last 'upgrade' is anything to go by I'm not expecting anything stunning in V7 [probably a few nods to the pros amongst up.....but marching steadily in the direction of GE.]
So there is going to be SU for the masses and then a somewhat esoteric customisable version that is employing all the absolutly incredible rubys that are coming out. And because of the diverse places these Rubys can be found a person will need to do a fair bit of research to actually find them all.
The difference between a stock standard SU and one loaded with Rubys and plugins is pretty amazing now....and in a year or two?......probably the output will be almost unrecognisable!
Its almost like an underground is developing
Stu
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@solo said:
We must not forget our recent upgrades, what you say? well we recently got FFD, Bevel, curved surface offset, (others that i have forgotten) for free and Subdivide and smooth at a nominal price with a brilliant lightning plugin to look forward to. Just these ruby's would have made an awesome version 7 addition.
I would say that is in fact a problem...those aren't upgrades. They are scripts. Although I am forever impressed with the ingenuity of our Ruby-coding friends, I should like to point out that there is not a single one of these effects that is not available, currently, built-in and relatively bug-free in competitive programs at the moment...and this has been true for years in some cases. Even AdamB's amazing "LightUp" is not unique...a similar idea is now being pushed in Rhino's public beta-lab.
Why don't I post much anymore here? Because I'm largely modeling my projects in another piece of software, that's why. SU began stagnating, as a piece of design software useful to someone like me, at least a year ago...and that is a shame.
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Being in software development myself, (my day job), something akin to a ruby interface, in any piece of software, is a godsend to closed-source code developers. Why? Because instead of the masses waiting for a new feature to be developed, they can write the feature themselves and have it NOW. It's that simple. Give the users a toolbox and they will build. And that's what's happening.
Todd
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@lewiswadsworth said:
I would say that is in fact a problem...those aren't upgrades. They are scripts.
True. While some of the scripts we use daily are absolutely brilliant, they certainly don't lessen (that's a word, right?) the need for some serious improvements.
The central question here is: what is SU to Google?
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I haven't been online for aaaages (not since the @Last forums went bye-bye) - so can someone tell me if this feature was actually requested?
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@unknownuser said:
Because instead of the masses waiting for a new feature to be developed, they can write the feature themselves and have it NOW. It's that simple. Give the users a toolbox and they will build. And that's what's happening.
I think there are more interrests from different users than programming. It get out of control with the tons of rubys here.
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What feature, the YouTube thing? If so, this looks like something the marketing boys at Google HQ came up with.
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It sounds a little bit like: "If we dazzle them with some shiny, sparkly thing, then maybe they won't notice that there has not been a meaningful update in almost a year and a half. Maybe they won't notice that SU still only utilizes one processor, or that animation exports on the Mac are basically non-functional, or that SU still can't handle high poly very well at all, or that the middle button orbit function doesn't work very well at all in Leopard (acknowledged by support, even!) and I could go on.
Google buying SU was, as we suspected at the time, the absolute worst thing that could have happened to SU, short of Autodesk buying it. They simply are not interested in growing the professional side of things. I would happily pay $200 for a real update!! I, like Lewis, have been spending more and more time with other softwares, not only because they can do things better, faster, though certainly not as elegantly, but because I can sense the lack of commitment from Google to improve the software I need, and I may as well suck it up and start learning other softwares now, as they will rapidly leave SU in the dust, if this lack of development continues.
Can you even image SU without Layer Manager, or Line Projection, of Flight Path, or Find Center Point, not to mention all of the fantastic new scripts that are breathing life into a SU that seems stuck in its own inertia. My point being, I probably would have quit using SU a year ago if all of the scripts had not continued to improve a software that needs improvement.
Unfortunately, the lack of multi-processor support and the inability to gracefully handle large poly counts will be SU's death knell, for me, anyway. It is annoying at best to see the spinning beach ball in SU while trying to subdivide 7000 polygons (which is miniscule in the big picture) and seeing ONE of my EIGHT processors completely pegged out while the other SEVEN are twiddling their thumbs. It is just this sort of inefficiency that begins to completely outweigh the time savings that the brilliant modeling environment of SU provides.
I feel like I am watching a very slow motion car crash...
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I wish I had the language skills to express myself as good in English as Kannonbal just did.
The things he just said are exactly my feelings about SU the last months (year).
If it wasn't for Cinema4D being a lot less intuitive for a modeling task, I might have kissed SU bye bye some time ago.
But indeed, the (ruby) contributions from users keep me holding the spirit. -
@kwistenbiebel said:
I wish I had the language skills to express myself as good in English as Kannonbal just did.
Same here. I absolutely love SU, but it's in desperate need of an overhaul. I'd rather not feel obliged to learn how to use another modeling app.
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I use Cheetah3D quite extensively.
I am also just starting to use Z-Brush.
I have dabbled with the Rhino3D Mac port, but I haven't put anywhere near enough time into it to be able to produce at a professional level.
I am also looking into perhaps getting a copy of Modo.
I still use SU more than anything else, and I still enjoy the SU interface more than anything else, but it is definitely starting to not offer what I need. But, really, it is the obvious lack of interest in improving the core SU by Google that makes me nervous for the future and makes me less likely to continue to devote time in developing work-arounds in SU, since it may soon cease to be a "pro" app, without a ton of customizing and tweaking and making-do.
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I have been doing the same thing, trying out different software that is making progress in keeping up with the times. I love Sketchup and always have, it's just that in the last year I have been trying to find other solutions to help my work flow along. Sketchup is the BEST when it comes to massing something in 3D in a matter of minutes.
I think that we may have to end up using Sketchup as a simple part of our larger work flow in the future if it does not move forward in some way. I could be wrong, never know. I still love Sketchup though.
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I agree with the level of disappointment for all the flash added to SU instead of worthwhile fixes, improvements, enhancements, etc.
Many, many thanks to the dedicated ruby programmers who selfishly share with us.
I’ve been a designer since 1984 and seen many great software packages sold, with the promise of being taken to the next level….only to stagnate or the next level being some other market that the current user base didn’t care about.
What are some (modeler, rendering) options for us windoze os based dudes?
Glenn -
We're quite the pessimists.
Oh hell, for all it's annoying shortcomings, I probably won't give up on using SU for quite some time. Not only am I far too stupid to learn how to use another app, I happen to enjoy using SU quite a lot. I realise that every day - even after the 10th bugsplat or - aaargh!- SU coma.
But Google boys, if you're reading along, I'm willing to pay for a serious and useful update - and I'm fairly sure that goes for many of my fellow SU users.
So ... get to it, you lazy frappucino slurping code monkeys!
Amen.
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Gee!
You guys are ungrateful!!
Aren't you forgetting that in the last three years we got such great stuff as Layout [beta] and Style Builder [beta]
And what's more these are worhless!! [eh...sorry I meant they didn't cost anything] -
@unknownuser said:
We're quite the pessimists.
But Google boys, if you're reading along, I'm willing to pay for a serious and useful update - and I'm fairly sure that goes for many of my fellow SU users.
So ... get to it, you lazy frappucino slurping code monkeys!
Amen.
Haa lol ...Well many of us are also smartwater drinking, rock climbing, bicycle/motorcycle racing, hardcore road running, skiing, mountain biking, fitness monkeys who give that all up on a regular basis to work our butts off making SketchUp, Layout, Stylebuilder, 3D Warehouse, and Google Earth as good as possible.
We understand your frustrations with the pace of development at times (and you can see that when we do things like give FREE upgrades to SketchUp Pro 6), but I can say that we are working very hard, and continuing to brainstorm many new and interesting things for all of the SketchUp faithful. So...please continue to keep that faith in us!
The SketchUp team is strong and our goals are often difficult to achieve...so we do appreciate encouragement as much as we appreciate learning about your frustrations.
Some of the things we plan to do will not be as important to one person as they are to another, but know that we are trying to do a good job by all of you. ...especially the SketchUp faithful.
Cheers,
- CraigD -
Who's one and who's another. What direction is forced? Where are the interrests?
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@craigd said:
Some of the things we plan to do will not be as important to one person as they are to another, but know that we are trying to do a good job by all of you. ...especially the SketchUp faithful.
Mmm'kay. Sounds reasonable enough. You know what? Throw in the high poly support, and we wont whine about the Style Builder etc anymore.
Seriously, though, it's indispen ..., indispan ... We can't go without it.
And neither can SU itself, I believe. If the poly limit is, errr, releived - well, that might very well seriously boost SU's popularity. I think. Would be nice. -
@unknownuser said:
@unknownuser said:
marching steadily in the direction of GE
....no doubt about it.
So Lewis...cannonball what are you using??
Sorry, I was away this morning...teaching a bunch of graduate architecture students 3D design using Rhino 4.
That should answer your question though. It's a shame...one of my greatest frustrations is the lack (as far as I can tell) of a real forum(I hate to use the hackneyed term "online community") of dedicated souls like SCF but devoted to Rhino. Blender is another matter though...those guys have found religion.
Of course, on Thursdays I teach a different set of grad students 3D design using SU, but they immediately start asking me how to do various things ("I need a smooth curve like this, I need to model thisGehry thing for studio, I need to be able to make a model thiscomplicated, I need to get thisrendered like a photo...") and I end up spending time trying to explain how to get their vestigial models into another program. And then I must grasp for reasons that they shouldn't just use some other program from start to finish.
I really hope, Craig, that you guys have something great to show me at Basecamp. It's hard being an advocate for a program I rarely use for my own work now.
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