[NEW]Sketchup 2 Vue

dburdick

Bought the plugin and it's definitely a time saver.

My wish list would be -

Convert Sketchup "Faceme" components to Vue Billboard Face Camera

Translate Sketchup Layers to Vue Layers

Convert Sketchup Scenes to Vue Cameras

The ability to create Vue lights within Sketchup. Perhaps by creating a Sketchup Sphere and naming is Vue_Omni, this could be read by the exporter and the sphere replaced with a Vue light. I just find it easier to navigate and add things in Sketchup. Adding 30+ lights in Vue tends to be a tedious task.

Great job otherwise and thanks for thinking of us lowly SU users!

Great suggestions - thanks for this.
(1) Is absolutely doable and in the plan
(2) Layers in Vue work a bit differently in Vue than in Sketchup. In Sketchup, you can spread a model across different layers. In Vue, Layers are used to manage scene elements (e.g. multiple models, lights, vegetation, ecosystems, etc). So typically, a single model will only exisit on a single layer. We could build a script to distribute the model elements by layer in Vue but I'm not sure that would be useful to you.
(3) Doable and already in the works. We are going to have a very nice automated animation interface between Sketchup and Vue in the next version of the plugin.
(4) We thought about this, but felt that it wouldn't be too useful unless we could provide some real-time preview in Sketchup of how the lights would look in Vue. Otherwise, you could spend a lot of your time going back and forth between the apps to "tune" the lighting. Thoughts?

Krisidious

I've gotten a few errors when trying to import a SU model... Vue says can't read the file.

so removed all the materials. and tried again... the model came in with ease.

I wonder what Vue doesn't like in way of materials? maybe if the material that was on the model when it was made is not found? Vue has said that before but it also asked if I wanted to locate and did so with out error.

anyway no biggy...

I think I'm gonna delete all my renders now.

Krisidious

also... in Vue there is an Option to set your preferences to that of your favorite 3D modeling program... is there any plan to include SketchUp settings? moving around in Vue is very awkward. a middle mouse button rotate would be great. or the ability to set your navigation buttons like zoom and pan and rotate.

Krisidious

so I got smart and started exporting my house and land out of SU separately, however when importing the separate models in to Vue, they don't come in the same place. each is moved from it's original location... this is frustrating. anyway to stop it?

jpalm32

@krisidious said:

so I got smart and started exporting my house and land out of SU separately, however when importing the separate models in to Vue, they don't come in the same place. each is moved from it's original location... this is frustrating. anyway to stop it?

Someone of your talent should download the Infinite version. (You must remove other version) It work for 30 days then still works with water marks. But it has ALL the import/export for 3ds, obj, lightwave.....and more.

It does amazing things.

Krisidious

yeah I'm still on my trial I was thinking of buying the "Complete" kit they have... but I already bought the plugin.

what's the difference? besides price tag?

dburdick

@krisidious said:

I've gotten a few errors when trying to import a SU model... Vue says can't read the file.

so removed all the materials. and tried again... the model came in with ease.

I wonder what Vue doesn't like in way of materials? maybe if the material that was on the model when it was made is not found? Vue has said that before but it also asked if I wanted to locate and did so with out error.

anyway no biggy...

I think I'm gonna delete all my renders now.

Hello Kris,

Any chance you could send me the model you're having texture problems with? I'll give it a good looking over and see if we can find the problem. You can send it to dburdick@e-onsoftware.com

Thanks

Dave

Krisidious

@unknownuser said:

Hello Kris,

Any chance you could send me the model you're having texture problems with? I'll give it a good looking over and see if we can find the problem. You can send it to dburdick@e-onsoftware.com

Thanks

Dave

I just e-mailed the VOB file and was looking around in the folder and noticed the material folder, and was going to send it along when I noticed it's empty. I think that could be the issue. trying to re-export does nothing. for some reason it's not reading the materials in my model.

when importing the land area of that same model I get an error that says "corrupt JPEG data: 37 extraneous bytes before marker 0xd4" but the land does import.

Krisidious

I went back into the model in Sketchup and with the idea that a material was at fault, I looked atr what could be removed. of course being what Vue is the plants were the first thing I deleted. after exporting again it seems to have fixed the issue. one of the plant's textures is at fault I feel.

jpalm32

@krisidious said:

yeah I'm still on my trial I was thinking of buying the "Complete" kit they have... but I already bought the plugin.

what's the difference? besides price tag?

Infinite has ALL the modules and a few other features listed on site.
Input/Output is what I think you would use. Great for converting VOB-3DS-OBJ-SKP-LWO

solo

I also would recommend Infinite as it has everything plus more.

thecravatman

I am building a new machine for SU (this plug in to) Vue and max I always run out of ram with 8gb at the moment. Any recommendations / suggestions. I requested this plug-in from Vue for SU 5 cannot tell you how amazed I am that its here!

Krisidious

yes Vue informed me earlier today that my system was woefully inadequate...

currently running Intel E4300 overclocked to 3.0 ghz 4 gig of ram and 1 gig video

I'm getting ready to go quad core Q9505 and 8 gigs of Ram with (2) 1 Gig video cards.

I'm going to try to squeeze all of that in under $500.00

as discussed earlier in this thread... there are tuts online that show someone working in Vue with 16 cpus...

Vue Infinite suggested system specs.

Windows 64 bit (XP, Vista or Windows 7), Mac OS X v10.6
Multi-core CPU (Intel QuadCore, Core I7, or Mac Pro),
4GB+ of RAM,
4GB+ of free Hard Disk space (on the drive hosting the OS),
An OpenGL accelerated video board (see below for optimal compatibility)

dburdick

@krisidious said:

I went back into the model in Sketchup and with the idea that a material was at fault, I looked atr what could be removed. of course being what Vue is the plants were the first thing I deleted. after exporting again it seems to have fixed the issue. one of the plant's textures is at fault I feel.

Hi Kris,

Yes, I suspected that it might have been a corrupt texture - I've seen this from time to time. If you still feel like it, go ahead and send the me the Sketchup file if you can with the corrupted image. Perhaps we could do a better job of reporting out when that condition occurs.

dburdick

@krisidious said:

yes Vue informed me earlier today that my system was woefully inadequate...

currently running Intel E4300 overclocked to 3.0 ghz 4 gig of ram and 1 gig video

I'm getting ready to go quad core Q9505 and 8 gigs of Ram with (2) 1 Gig video cards.

I'm going to try to squeeze all of that in under $500.00

as discussed earlier in this thread... there are tuts online that show someone working in Vue with 16 cpus...

Vue Infinite suggested system specs.

Windows 64 bit (XP, Vista or Windows 7), Mac OS X v10.6
Multi-core CPU (Intel QuadCore, Core I7, or Mac Pro),
4GB+ of RAM,
4GB+ of free Hard Disk space (on the drive hosting the OS),
An OpenGL accelerated video board (see below for optimal compatibility)

Hi Kristoff,

Looks like a nice set up for Vue there. Why the two graphics cards though? That sounds more like a gaming set up. Vue doesn't push the graphics that hard. Go for more CPU or more memory.

Krisidious

true about the cards but SU only uses 1 core and you need all the help you can get with it. plus I do game... and Sli is just too kool not to do it.

I'll upload that SU model for you to look at.

it's not a professional system, but with todays' economy it's what I can afford. that's why I'm leaning towards the Vue Complete with the huge %50 discount.

I suppose I need to look into what I'll be missing out on with that level vs Infinite...

my problem is that my clients don't pay for renderings... I've tried to charge for them and no one ever orders them, so I end up doing what ever renders I want of a kool project and using them to sell that plan later. and not really doing much of that...

my wesbite is a hodge podge of hand drawn renderings, Sketchup screenshots and some Sketchup renderings.

so far the main draw back for me in doing renders is the time it took to make it look realistic enough to be worth the time. and then not really being paid for the time. with Vue I can do so much work in so little amount of time it pays for itself. not only does it use all aspects of rendering, sky, light, plant, ground plane, sea level it also does post rendering work for you on the fly like lens glare and exposure and contrast...

and the fluid addition of trees and plants is just indescribable...

what's more I feel that Vue will save me time in SketchUp via work I don't have to do and model complexity I won't have to deal with. before vue I would have to add plants and I normally chose 3D plants because I don't care for 2D... this grows the models exponentiationly... and makes them somewhat unwieldy... now I can exclude that from my process altogether and do all my landscape work in Vue. and since Vue does that so efficiently... I will both save time in modelling and use of my model and end up with a great render when I'm done.

I'm very excited...

some things I would like to see.

ability to undock layer list, material view and preview window.
(I have 4 Screens (3)19"s and (1) 42")
ability to render to a fourth screen or maximize current render window on another screen.
ability to assign navigation mouse buttons, rotate, pan and zoom
ability to select materials with an eye dropper.
maximize current view button on each view window
ability to pat you on the back for giving me more than I ever dreamed of in a piece of software... thank you...

Krisidious

is there a way to keep plants leaves from sticking through walls?

dburdick

@krisidious said:

ability to undock layer list, material view and preview window.
(I have 4 Screens (3)19"s and (1) 42")

ability to render to a fourth screen or maximize current render window on another screen.

ability to assign navigation mouse buttons, rotate, pan and zoom

ability to select materials with an eye dropper.

maximize current view button on each view window

ability to pat you on the back for giving me more than I ever dreamed of in a piece of software... thank you...

Hi Kristoff,

#1 and #2 are frequently requested, we've have some interesting things happending here - stay tuned
#3. You can reassing mouse buttons now. Go to File-->Option-->Operations and set the keyboard/mouse shortcuts to anything you want. You can rotate around in the main view by using right mouse down. Most of the time, I just use the camera controls below the preview window or adjust the camera in one of the 4 views.
#4. I've asked for this one for a long time
#5. Good idea - I like the how the zoom entents function works in SU - we need this in Vue as well
#6. LOL - I would settle to see some cool Sketchup/Vue renders

dburdick

@krisidious said:

is there a way to keep plants leaves from sticking through walls?

Not exactly. You can specify a hit radius to use when populating ecosystems which will maintain a safety distance away from objects. Most of the time I end up tweaking the location of veg and trees anyways using the eco-instance selection tool.

Daniel

Dave,

Thanks for coming on this forum and speaking with us about Vue. I use Vue 7 Infinite - love it, and can't wait to try this plug-in, and hopefully upgrade to 9 soon. One aspect about Vue that I like is that you can generate a rendering of any of the three orthagonal views (top, front, side), but unfortunately your limited by the size and there is no way to create a large size rendering or to save it without doing a screen capture. It would be great to be able to apply the rendering settings for the perspective view to the other three views (and maybe add the other side and rear views).