SU7 news!
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Too bad, I enjoyed it a lot. Thanks for taking the effort at AIA to ask the things we are all curious about.
We can't be blamed being a tough crowd, as the thing that binds us here is 3D modeling.
If this would have been a GE forum, our comments would have been out of place...But I guess you are right. We represent just a niche market.
(for the record, Autodesk got really big by providing soft for this 'niche') -
Cheers form me as well lewis, i enjoyed reading your mini interviews. Good to hear from the people themselves as ell.
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is there a possibility that su7 will be free for commercial and private use?
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Already SU 6 is free for both private and commercial use. There was a restriction in the free version of SU 5 (could not use for commercial purposes) but there is none in SU 6.
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Good morrow, gentles.
Well, I'm finally back (and unjetlagged) from the AIA, having spent the full 3 days there. The FF booth was right next door to Autodesk and about 30 ft away from Google...and we had plenty to talk about with both. I spoke with Aidan, Bryce, John Bacus and Peter Saal. We spoke about stuff I can't repeat here and there is much that they still can't tell me directly...but these are good guys...fully committed to the kind of SketchUp that most people here have grown fond of; and I am fully convinced that developments in that field will continue.It ought to be remembered that SU never was an AEC-specific tool, it was developed as a general-purpose modeller-far-all. It just happened to get latched onto by many architects and the like because it deals very easily with rectilinear shapes, which is their main stock in trade....and of course many of its developers come from an AEC background.
The fact that it was acquired by Google makes perfect sense. It will continue to develop aspects which some here might see as just eye-candy, but that doesn't mean that it won't continue to develop tools specific to AEC and related industries. I can't tell you what I know...or even if I know any more than other beta testers...all that is covered by the NDA. But I can tell you that I'm optimistic about the future.In any case, many of the things that some people regard as eye-candy actually turn out to be pretty useful to other people, or even to initial doubters when they dig a little deeper. Google is a web-based company, so it ought to be no surprise that everything they own is going to serve that end to some degree or other. The YouTube link is one such case. It fits right in alongside other stuff like Google Docs Google Apps and Google Gardgets.
It has been a while since the last version...about 16 months...but that is quite reasonable. Adobe averages 18 - 24 months and I don't see much wailing and gnashing of teeth and predictions that there never will be a new version among their userbase. The program is simply too sophisticated these days to expect an upgrade same time every year.
Am I just shooting the breeze? Well, some of you may remember that a couple of weeks ago I advised someone to wait on investing in anything to put an interactive SU model on their website...then I protected my NDA by showing a 3D Flash file I did a while ago which rotated when you pulled the mouse across it. Well, guess what. http://sketchup.google.com/download/plugins.html#gsuwebexporter
FF will be impimenting this technology fairly shortly. -
Thanks for the heads-up, Alan..!!
Very interesting reading indeed..!!
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Hey Alan, thanks for the news.
It's great to have spies all around...And the 'Web exporter' concept is actually pretty neat!
***Google SketchUp Web Exporter (Beta)
Last updated: May 9, 2008
The Google SketchUp Web Exporter (Beta) allows you to enable a simple interactive view of your model for any web page without a browser plugin. This is an early release intended for web developers who are interested in adding dynamic 3D content to their website, or are interested in an example from which to start writing their own interaction for the browser. Learn more about how to use the Google SketchUp Web Exporter.Requirements: The plugin works only on the PC, but the results are cross-platform and cross-browser. Access to web hosting services (e.g., pages.google.com) are needed to publish your results.***
[flash=425,355:17e38m6f]http://www.youtube.com/v/j0Tmlko5YTU&hl=en[/flash:17e38m6f]
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The thing I like about the Web Exporter (we're calling it Thumbspin at FF) is that being just an image series, it's totally secure. That new online SU clone, 3DVia ShapeIt has a sister program (also free) called 3DVia Printscreen. This is a 3D screen grabber, probably based on the OGLE application (OpenGLExtractor). This means that nothing in OpenGL (or DirectX) is safe. You can grab the geometry from any 3D model displayed onscreen in OpenGL. It won't save the hierarchy, but if you can see it, you can grab it...game characters included.
Be careful what you post out there, or...come to think of it...you can now populate your models with characters from GTA4. 3DVia seem to have no qualms about hosting these grabs on their site, but I wouldn't be surprised if a ton of litigation was heading their way.
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I've used OGLE (I wrote the thread on the old SketchUp Forums on how to use it to pull GE cities into SU) and read the whitepaper on 3DVia. The latter's a branch of Dassault...perhaps the ties to the French military-industrial-complex make them think they can get away with giving away a free screen grabber. As far as I could tell, to get what you grab from 3DVia into SU, you need a translator for their proprietary 3D format. The only thing I could find to do that was one of the more expensive pro versions of Adobe Acrobat.
Sorry I missed you at the convention, Alan. It didn't occur to me until they threw us out on Saturday that I had never stopped by FF.
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Yes, I got the same impression, Lewis. But I wouldn't be surprised if someone figures out a way of parsing the 3Dxml file to 3ds or whatever before too long.
I thought the Convention was excellent...well, apart from cancelling the shuttle buses and causing queues for the taxis that took hours to clear. Thank God for the T.
Sorry I missed you too. I haven't been to Boston for years...well before the Big Dig...Wow! but it's changed some.
It always amazes me how quickly the thing gets dismantled. They were rolling up the carpets past our booth within 5 minutes of the final whistle. When we went back Sunday morning the entire place looked like the last shot from the first Indiana Jones movie...just a giant hall filled with packing crates.
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