Google is Listening!
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Hi John.
Love your list of features.
my two cents on this.
improved texturing tools: maybe we need to start small and slow so that new users don't get scared, but we have to start somewhere because we're talking about mostly pro users and somewhere along the line they will have to map something like a sphere or a bend cylinder. So start with the basics: box, cylinder and spherical mapping - that's pretty easy to learn and understand for anyone. Unwarping UVs is another beast but at is basics it's still selecting lines as seams and unfold the mesh into a plane based on the seams you've selected (i know there's much more to it but lets start simple). I think this concept is pretty easy to follow to anyone and a good base to start more advance texture tools in sketchup. (you're the guys that did "face me" components when everyone was using RPC characters, so i know you'll find a way to give your version of this "beast";) ).
improved Ruby Plugin management: This is not really related, but seeing this made me think, that in Google summer code a lot of new stff is developed for Blender, can't that be done for Sketchup too? And related to plugin managment, start at a small scale again, do a selection of free scripts every year that could be part of SK, ask permission to his creator and give credit to him in SK, and review, enhance, and update the code and use it in SK itself (for example, Freedo's surface tools you could use part of it like when drawing a circle if you press shift it will draw the circle directly in the organic surface, the same for JPP, this way it doesn't add more bottons to the UI and keeps things simple). joining more and better your developers with "our" developers, for the same goal.
improved performance: This will allways be a cat and mouse game for you. But If you think you've reach a limit in polys maybe you could try to give more stuff in ways to present models, Like better shadows, or shiny materials or lights (nothing fancy), and try to give a better performance there. And because we are talking about the pro version something that could use more professional hardware or better graphics cards.
improved import/export: I'm 100% for COLLADA, (a universal format it would be a dream). but you will allways have trouble with this because the problem it's not the future but the present, the people that need other options now and not when it's standart (this doens0t bother me right now because i'm using max and it has support for skp, but i've been there and can understand others). So your best bet here is make to pressure, help in better ways to turn Collada bet known and respect, show to everyone the beneficts of using, anything that can turn this process faster for everyone.
i have some more simple ideas for litle tweaks in SK but would like to hear your opinion in each of these topics.
And for when a basecamp in other countries?
Regards
David
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Ok- so I'd say you guys have communicated your needs to the SketchUp team. I was able to recreate your list without checking my notes, which you should regard as a good sign. Unfortunately, knowing what you want is different from actually getting it done. All these requests have been discussed extensively either here or on the official SketchUp Help Forums.
Let me summarize what I've said elsewhere- you can follow up for additional detail in any of the related threads on the SketchUp Help Forum:
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improved texturing tools: SketchUp was designed with a 'simple' texture implementation. Other apps that you guys like may have up to 30% of their UI dedicated to the management of material properties or UV manipulation. Adding equivalent features to SketchUp would add considerable complexity to our app (I recoil from this) and require significant engineering effort (Tyler recoils from this) at the expense of everything else we're doing. This is a feature of clear significance to the 'hard-surface modeling' community, though of less clear benefit to everyone else.
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improved Ruby Plugin management: I recognize that a significant number of our Pro users are using one or more Ruby scripts every day, and that improvement here would benefit most users. Also that it would benefit our API developer community. Significant legal hurdles remain in place (think: Android Store) in addition to the engineering effort.
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improved performance: SketchUp's performance increases with every release we make. Sometimes you guys notice that
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improved import/export: I'm going to keep pushing COLLADA here. Industry players are lining up behind this now, in no small way because of Google's advocacy. Solving problems with proprietary import/export formats is like playing whack-a-mole for both you and our engineering team. Is there an important workflow (move model from [source application] to [destination application]) that we can't support for you today?
john
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Texturing: I'm sure it would require a lot of work and extra complexity which is why I'd never expect it in the free version. But a Pro version should really have more depth to it than is currently available. That said, I wouldn't necessarily expect SU to rip off the methods of other modelers. The great thing about SU is that you think of new and inventive ways which make a task that in, say, 3ds max is convoluted and mind numbing, and turn it into an intuitive simple process. I don't know what that would look like, but I trust you guys will figure something out.
Ruby: Any integration and progress made on this front, I think, will be well received.
Performance: The boost in SU 7.x was very much appreciated. But honestly, for better or worse, this will continue to be a huge issue until a method can be found which allows us to work with models which have multitudes more polygons than is currently possible. Working with things like high poly trees, cars, 3d grass etc. is essential for professional arch-viz. I'll grant you that this ability wouldn't help many of the other folks, but I would hope that although SU is for 'everyone' we would be a group near and dear to SU's heart.
This would go a long way to pulling in a lot of those folks currently working in other software.improved import/export: not much of an issue with this atm.
-brodie
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Anybody who renders (either in Sketchup or outside of it) would benefit from stronger UV mapping controls -- Woodworkers (woodgrain on curved surfaces), Arch Viz (organic shapes) , Vehicles (more organic shapes), and even Film Production... just because they can kind of "get by" without does not mean it has no (or even little) benefit.
All the others I agree with more or less -- but I cannot agree about the UV tools as they are essential once you start applying textures to any flowing form.
I have suggested in the past and I still think it is the best option to simply move the UV editor outside of Sketchup proper in the same way as Style Builder works:
1) select any object you want to edit in Sketchup.
2) context click and select "edit UV mapping" -- which would launch the stand-alone UV editor.
3) edit UVs
4) save changed UVs back to Sketchup.A simple workflow that any Pro user would accept and the nice thing is it never even has to be visible in Sketchup outside of one context menu command... Sketchup can work with UVs like this so updating Sketchup itself would really not be necessary at all.
Besides this is really not all that terribly complex of a concept -- it's essentially the same thing as skinning an animal... and we've been doing that since before we were "civilized".
Best,
Jason. -
...and not to forget...
More and better ruby api access to core functions of SU so that the community can continue to create amazing plugins.
There still are big areas we can't access with ruby. -
@unknownuser said:
And for when a basecamp in other countries?
One in the UK!!
I'd be happy to organise one
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@pixero said:
@jbacus said:
I can say with confidence, however, that our singular agenda is also not archviz/rendering nor advanced animation.
Sorry, but as I am not nativly english speaking I have a hard time understanding what you actually mean by that sentence.
Would you care to rephrase it more clearly?
Thanks.Jan, sorry to bring you bad news, but I think it's known as "getting on a bit"
I'm 44and my memory is f**ked
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Hi John,
Can you provide some links for the discussion on the Help Forum?
Also I'd like to see some of the Tools in LayOut part of SU
- Ellipse
- Lozenge
- 2pt and 3pt Arc
- Pie
- Join
I realise I can export to SU and it's a minor request. But I feel it merits inclusion and compliments both applications.
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What about dynamic components!? This is a unique feature of SketchUP among other 3D software and holds huge power! Nothing fresh here?
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@pixero said:
There still are big areas we can't access with ruby.
What would you like to be able to do with Ruby that you cannot do today?
John
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@unknownuser said:
Can you provide some links for the discussion on the Help Forum?
You can search to find a variety of related threads, but here are some URL's to get you started: Improved Texturing Tools, Ruby Plugin Management , Plugin Manager for Ruby Scripts, Improve Performance (plus numerous topics on "multicore" and "64-bit"
There isn't really a single forum post to point out for import/export improvement, as workflows differ depending on the apps you're trying to make work together. Often, import/export problems are really tech support issues, not missing features in the product.
john
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@jason_maranto said:
Anybody who renders (either in Sketchup or outside of it) would benefit from stronger UV mapping controls -- Woodworkers (woodgrain on curved surfaces), Arch Viz (organic shapes) , Vehicles (more organic shapes), and even Film Production... just because they can kind of "get by" without does not mean it has no (or even little) benefit...
Good point Jason. I had a similar thought when reading John's post but forgot to include it. It's really the "hard surfaces" which would least benefit from added uv texturing capability. Would it be nice to be able to map a stucco material to a simple cylindrical column? Absolutely, but with some patience I can at least do that much. I don't do many spheres so that would be very situational. But when you get to more organic shapes having some form of an unwrap function becomes crucial. In my work, trying to map furniture for an interior scene is the main issue.
-Brodie
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@jbacus said:
What would you like to be able to do with Ruby that you cannot do today?
There's plenty and I'm sure other programmers could fill this in but from the top of my head:
- Set color of light and shadow. Not all shadows are grey.
- Set a face's normal direction. (This is commonly used in game engines to make a "face me component" (grass and others) have the same shadowing as for example the ground.) Something like: face.normal.set(0,0,1)
- Access Open GL to add more advanced features like lights and specular materials.
- Use image as skydome. (I PM'ed you about that one but havent heard from you.)
I'm sure I can think of more when I'm not this tired.
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Me again.
I'm not in any way against the suggestions posted above and elsewhere.
Personally, most of them are not applicable to what I use SU for, but I am sure many out there can make good use of them.All I said before about making SU better, at this point, is
FIX WHAT IS BROKE first. Please!
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@jgb said:
FIX WHAT IS BROKE first.
Please define what broke things you'd like fixed. Do you disagree with the wants and needs of the archviz folks who would like us to prioritize the list of things I itemized above?
john
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@pixero said:
I'm sure I can think of more when I'm not this tired.
Looks like you'd mainly like to see the rendering pipeline opened via the API so that advanced rendering features can be implemented by the Ruby community. Is that correct? It is true that we don't provide access to that at this time.
john
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@jbacus said:
Looks like you'd mainly like to see the rendering pipeline opened via the API so that advanced rendering features can be implemented by the Ruby community. Is that correct? It is true that we don't provide access to that at this time.
As far as I know it is.
I know other developers want more access to things like section planes.
Changing interpolation type between scenes would also be a good addition for better looking animations. (Now its only linear interpolation.) -
@jbacus said:
@jgb said:
FIX WHAT IS BROKE first.
Please define what broke things you'd like fixed. Do you disagree with the wants and needs of the archviz folks who would like us to prioritize the list of things I itemized above?
john
.First, I'm not sure what you mean by "archviz folks".
This is the list of SU shortcomings I have complained about since nearly day 1 of my using SU (Aug 2008). Some may say a few are added features, but I say SU should have incorporated them as intrinsic functions I would expect from the design team. I have stated all of them on various SU BBS's, and quite frankly, John, you are the first Senior SU team member to respond to my postings. Kudos for that.
My 3 biggest "bitches" relate to face forming and Pan/Zoom.
Face Forming
In version 6, at least when a face failed to form with "form face" you gave 1 of 2 error messages, either there was a gap, or the entities were non-planar. A small clue, at the very least. Now V8 just says "Can`t do it", far less than useful. If SU is "smart" enought to know it has an error, please tell me what it is and where. When I was a Project Manager I read the riot act to more than 1 coder and SA that gave an all encompassing meaningless error message after an extensive input data check.1 - Finding a GAP in an entity selection for face forming.
When SU finds a gap, highlight between which 2 entities the gap exists.
If you need a clue how to do this, see TT's Solid Inspector.2 - Cannot form face due to non-planar entities.
You have 2 choices here; either just highlight the non-planar entities, or, face whatever part of the entity set that is planar, leaving the remainder highlighted.
If you need a clue how to do this, see TT's Solid Inspector.Pan/Zoom; Commonly refered to as "Hyper Pan" or "Hyper Zoom". When you select the pan or zoom tool, or wheel to zoom, you need to have the cursor on some entity. Then the pan or zoom rate is proportional to the distance between you and the object, which is logical. However if on subsequent sweeps or wheel rotations the cursor "slips off" an object into empty space the pan or zoom rate goes HYPER and you are off "to the moon, Alice". Getting back to where you were is a real pain.
The solution to this is simple. Maintain the last "on object" pan or zoom rate even over empty space. Maintain this rate till either the cursor is over an object, or some other tool is selected.Startup Tool. Native SU defaults the "Pencil" tool on startup. Many of us have inadvertently marred a model when loading it, then have to delete. "Startup.rb" solved the problem by defaulting to the very much more logical "Select" tool on SU startup.
Almost everybody now uses "Startup.rb" because SU still does not do the logical thing by defaulting to the "select" tool.Restore Toolbar locations. Version 8 is a good try, no cigar. Not sure avout V7, but V6 every now and then would scramble the toolbar locations for no reason.
V8 has a mmenu item to set and restore the toolbar positions. Great, but IT DOES NOT WORK.
Every time I loaded a new plugin in V8 the toolbar for that plugin would set itself in the left side of screen and blow most of the other toolbars out of position. Restore justs does nothing. Please fix it.Units. I know SU was initially and today is predominately an architectural tool. And the choice of units follow that standard. However a lot of users develop models for aerospace and other non-arch disciplines. I use it as a poor mans' 3D CAD.
Most of those disciplines use Feet - Inch - DECIMAL inchas the standard units.
SU needs that set of units. And, no, Feet - Decimal Feet is not a valid alternative.Mouse Buttons. My old Logitech mouse had 12 buttons since way before I started using SU. My current one has 10, all used in most other PC apps.
SU only recognises 5, left/right buttons, wheel down, wheel rotate and wheel left/right.
It would be totally impractical to redefine my mouse keys just for SU, then redefine them as I switch apps while I am using SU. SU needs to be able to recognize those additional buttons regardless of their default function definition.
To solve this, SU needs to "Learn" what each mouse button sends as a function, then redefine that function for SU shortcut purposes. It IS do-able.Additional Keyboard Control Keys. Right now SU only recognises the Tab, Shift and CTRL as control keys for shortcuts and functions. There are several other keys that can and should be used as well; Function keys, the Windows key and perhaps the TAB key. They have no other SU function.
And finally;
Material/Colors list. The Entity Info and Materials lists have a major deficiency. There is no capability to modify the set of colors, textures and materials. Many models collect (via other components and models brought into the model) all sorts of colors (etc) many of which are duplicated, especially black.
There is no way to consolidate all the blacks (for example) into 1 black, or even sort the list to place the most used colors at the top.
Just recently I discovereda plugin to correct this, but not yet loaded it into my SU. BUT this editing & sorting function SHOULD be an intrinsic SU function.Thats it for now. There are others but this list is my oldest bitch list and it has taken about 3 hours to write.
What say you, John??
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@jgb said:
First, I'm not sure what you mean by "archviz folks".
By "archviz" I mean the community of professional SketchUp users who use it as the modeling front end to an advanced (photorealistic) rendering process for the pre-visualization of architectural design projects, either still images or animations. As for example represented in the CGarchitect forums.
From your list of issues, I'm going to guess (please confirm or correct so I can answer your questions more accurately) that you are doing more "MCAD" kinds of projects with SketchUp. In other words, the sorts of projects which might also be done in Solidworks? Things which might eventually be fabricated in a machine shop?
If this is the case, then I can imagine the sorts of problems you are seeing in SketchUp. And to be fair, we didn't design SketchUp for this sort of work. As you may know, SketchUphas a hard lower precision threshold at .001". For folks working on projects from 'furniture' to 'office campus' scales, this precision is perfectly sufficient. For folks working on projects smaller than 'furniture', problems like those you describe can occur. I think this probably accounts for all of your issues with 'face forming' and I'm afraid the only recourse is to scale your project up artificially while you are working. There is no fix for the .001" lower precision threshold coming in a future version of SketchUp.
The issue you refer to as 'Hyper Pan' or 'Hyper Zoom' likely comes from the same root cause as the above issue. You're working close to the lower precision threshold in SketchUp, and tools which have been tuned for use at larger scales are beginning to behave in an less predictable way. You may find that the "Camera>Previous" command will allow you to recover easily from errant Zoom or Pan operations.
The adoption of "Pencil Tool" as the startup tool comes from a historical decision that drawing should be the default behavior in SketchUp. Over time, alternate opinions have asserted themselves. In fact, for several releases, we flip-flopped on this decision. Which folks also found upsetting. In our current build (SU8M1), "Select" is the default tool on our Mac OS X build. Perhaps one day we will also make it so on Windows.
Toolbar positions are very difficult for SketchUp to maintain when you are using lots of Ruby scripts that add their own toolbars. The addition of a new Ruby toolbar is currently the most chaos-inducing thing you can do. We're still working on this problem, but you should know that it is like 'cat herding' for us.
As for your preferred units, I think this is a simple tech support issue. "Decimal > Inches" are supported in SU8 today. In fact, under the hood, SketchUp uses decimal inches natively for all calculations. If you would like this to be the default for all your new models, learn about Templates.
Now for your mouse with all the buttons- this is a tech-support issue as well. SketchUp can never hope to support every mouse in the world natively. There are literally thousands of them. Most mouse drivers for more complex mice include some kind of application-level settings for their buttons. This is your best bet for configuring your mouse to use more buttons in SketchUp.
There will always be some keys on your keyboard that are either reserved by SketchUp for some purpose, or by the operating system. Are you really running out of keys to use for all the thinks you want shortcuts to access?
And finally, Materials. Certainly it is possible to modify sets of materials in SketchUp, though perhaps not in the ways you wish to do so. Probably you'll find some crossover with the archviz folks here (or maybe not?). I find that purging unused materials often solves the majority of my problems with ballooning material lists. A way to consolidate all of the similar colors in a model would be useful and I'm glad you've found a plugin to help you resolve that.
john
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I got some good names if you decide to go with an external UV unwrapper:
WrapUp
CutUp
SliceUp
TextureUpI'm sure there's more...
Best,
Jason.
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