Walter de Maria's Seen/Unseen Known/Unknown
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That's exactly how it works with the geometry. For instance, see the image below. I have a separate folder which contains these dosch trees in other formats but this is my "Maxwell Ready" tree library. So you see an .mxs file which contains the 3d tree with appropriate materials applied. Then I did a quick render to make a thumbnail for myself. And you'll also notice a textures folder which contains all the image maps for the leaves and bark.
Workflow-wise, as you say, you export from SU to MW Studio then within Studio you import one of the tree .mxs files and it comes in at 0,0. You can then move it around, copy it, clone it, rescale it, rotate it, etc. I have a similar folder for my cars although since then I've also starting creating the same thing but with 3ds Max files so I can position and tweak things in 3ds Max rather than Maxwell.
As an aside, since you mentioned GPU rendering, I should point out that Maxwell's interactive render engine is NOT GPU based. So far as I can tell that's a huge advantage, at least at this stage. It seems to be as fast as any of the interactive engines I've seen out there, but you don't have to invest a huge amount into a GPU. Instead you can focus on your CPU which will speed up, not only the interactive engine but your final renders as well.
I'm not a mac guy so I'm not sure I could expertly recommend one OS vs. the other. However, I would suggest that from what I've seen if windows isn't more 'efficient,' these days it at least seems to have more options. For Arch-Viz, it seems that at least 80% of the very good renderings out there are created with 3ds Max and V-Ray. And for production work, AutoCAD can be very important. The common thread I see running through those are that they are about the most versatile programs of their kind. The downside to versatility is that the learning curve is steep and you end up with a lot of tools you'll never use. The advantage is that they can do almost anything. For example, a large part of my motivation behind trying to learn 3ds max and vray is that with a SketchUp/Maxwell combo you don't have much of an option if a client/employer wants an animation. SU sucks at animation and Maxwell can do it, but unbiased renderers aren't ideal for animations since they have longer render times and noise issues to worry about.
Trying to relate that back to mac vs. windows for rendering work now. Currently there seems to be no inherent hardware advantage from using a mac. Unlike the old days, when macs may have been necessarily better for visual work, now they're all built from the same major components. Until fairly recently you couldn't get an autocad for the mac. Now they have it, but that seems to be a tenuous relationship and who knows if it will always be supported. And as things switch over to revit, I don't know that it is or will be mac supported. With a windows pc, you can build your own which means ultimate versatility. You can build your main computer with all the specs you might want and if you want to connect pc's for it for a render farm, you can build those with very different components to suit their purpose. If you want to upgrade, you can just change out processors or add ram as needed. Obviously with a mac you have some options in the beginning but from there, upgrading means buying a whole new computer and if you want to create a render farm down the road, I'm not sure what options you'd have.
Those are some of the cases that come to mind. Obviously the trick is deciding how much flexibility you may need and weighing your options. The answer isn't always to just jump into the most flexible software/os you can get but you definitely want to leave yourself room to grow (something you're suffering from now as a result of trying to break free from artlantis). The day I feel I can create a model as quickly and of equal quality in 3ds max as I can in SU, is the day I'll switch. Likewise, if I felt I could do in Vray what I can in Maxwell, but in less time, I'd switch there as well. The good news is I'm set up such that I can continue to use what I'm familiar with and explore these other tools, using them as a supplement for now. It's a smooth transition. And truly, what I see isn't a full switch but rather using each tool for what it's good at. SU for architectural models, 3ds max for high poly, texturing, furniture, etc, Vray for animation, Maxwell for stills. Of those SU is the most limiting and the only one I could see going away altogether, but it's just so darn quick and easy that it'll be there for some time yet.
That talked about a LOT more than your question but there are a lot of issues wrapped up in that.
BTW, looking at olishea's post got me thinking. I may have mixed up Twilight with Thea. I'm thinking of an unbiased renderer with an interactive render. I recall seeing a video by solo of a jeep or something. Maybe someone can help me now, now I'm thinking it's Thea actually. Twilight seems to just be a biased renderer. Maybe someone can help me out with remembering.
As for your hardware discussion it looks like your mac would have 12 cores at 2.66ghz using a couple new xeons. If you put 16 gigs of ram in there (based on the $750 price tag, I'd guess that it's made of solid gold which is nice
) and you're looking at $5,700. That'll get you one hard drive with so no raid, and hopefully you like the monitor you've got now because I didn't include it. If you want to upgrade to the 2.99ghz processor or get a monitor (or 2), each upgrade will set you back another $1,000 or so. It also has an ATI video card which scares me a bit since ATI has a bad reputation with SU...but I haven't heard mass complaints from mac users so I guess you're safe?A similar machine from BOXX (albeit with 3 hard drives, 24 gb of ram, and an nvidia graphics card, but the same processors...so an overall higher end machine) will set you back $4,600.
In my opinion, BOTH of those systems are overpriced, although the BOXX is obviously less overpriced. If you really get interested I could price out a machine on newegg.com for you but I'd be willing to bet that you could build a machine with either the same specs for a chunk less or you could build a better machine for the same amount of money. I wouldn't be surprised if you could build a machine with dual intel X5680's 3.33ghz (they seem to be the best processor on the market right now for a workstation - i have the i7-980x which is the equivalent processor but you can do dual i7's) for somewhere in the neighborhood of $5,000-$6000.
-Brodie
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I would just add that if you are really going to be primarily working on Sketchup (and Layout) then the Mac is the better choice -- there are some really nice options for both with the Mac that do not exist for the PC versions and don't seem likely to be ported because they come direct from the Mac OS itself.
It's enough of a difference to make me consider getting a Mac Mini for my Sketchup machine and doing Linux/Windows machines for the render nodes for Maxwell... if all you use the machine for is rendering then Linux allows you to spend the money for more processing power instead of an OS license.
Best,
Jason. -
Interesting Jason, what sort of options?
-Brodie
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A few stand-outs are the ability to customize the toolbar, import PDF files (Sketchup), Greyscale and CYMK support, Drop shadows on fonts(Layout), custom kerning of text(Layout)... there's more too but conversely there is hardly anything that the PC has as an advantage.
Two other things really stand out -- a full install of Ruby comes standard on the Mac which you have to manually install on PC and OpenGL support is much more current on a Mac... both are very useful for Sketchup users.
Best,
Jason. -
@jason_maranto said:
A few stand-outs are the ability to customize the toolbar, import PDF files (Sketchup), Greyscale and CYMK support, Drop shadows on fonts(Layout), custom kerning of text(Layout)... there's more too but conversely there is hardly anything that the PC has as an advantage.
Two other things really stand out -- a full install of Ruby comes standard on the Mac which you have to manually install on PC and OpenGL support is much more current on a Mac... both are very useful for Sketchup users.
Best,
Jason.Holding out for SketchUp on Chrome OS. Sketching in the cloud baby!
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@jason_maranto said:
A few stand-outs are the ability to customize the toolbar, import PDF files (Sketchup), Greyscale and CYMK support, Drop shadows on fonts(Layout), custom kerning of text(Layout)... there's more too but conversely there is hardly anything that the PC has as an advantage.
Two other things really stand out -- a full install of Ruby comes standard on the Mac which you have to manually install on PC and OpenGL support is much more current on a Mac... both are very useful for Sketchup users.
Best,
Jason.Interesting. I do envy your custom toolbars, although it doesn't bother me much as I try to use as many keyboard shortcuts as possible. Importing pdf's would be nice. It doesn't come up much but it'd save me a trip through photoshop. I don't use Layout but I could see how those would be handy as well.
I don't recall having to install Ruby separate so if that's true it must be pretty seamless. As for OpenGL, I think both versions use v1.5, do they not?
-Brodie
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With the install of Sketchup for windows they include a simplified core version for Sketchup to use, but Ruby is much larger and that complexity can come in handy for automation purposes if you re in a production environment -- from that POV Ruby can be used in the same way Adobe uses ExtendScript/JavaScript.
OpenGL is very limited by Windows policy on the matter (I suspect it has to do with them pushing DirectX) but since the Sketchup dev team has shown a willingness to utilize the better features of a Mac in those builds I would not assume that they have limited access to needed OpenGL features of later versions... Lets not forget there is a cold war going on between Google and Microsoft.
Best,
Jason. -
@jason_maranto said:
With the install of Sketchup for windows they include a simplified core version for Sketchup to use, but Ruby is much larger and that complexity can come in handy for automation purposes if you re in a production environment -- from that POV Ruby can be used in the same way Adobe uses ExtendScript/JavaScript.
OpenGL is very limited by Windows policy on the matter (I suspect it has to do with them pushing DirectX) but since the Sketchup dev team has shown a willingness to utilize the better features of a Mac in those builds I would not assume that they have limited access to needed OpenGL features of later versions... Lets not forget there is a cold war going on between Google and Microsoft.
Best,
Jason.Can you flesh out the ruby thing a bit more. What does that actually look like? Are you saying that using this...more complex version of ruby, existing plugins can run faster? Or that you can write better plugins? Or something totally different that I'm just not grasping.
-Brodie
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Ruby doesn't run better per se -- or at least I cannot see how it would.
However there are parts of Ruby that you can have access to that do not exist in the core version distributed with Windows Sketchup installs -- If they want to use any of that extended functionality plugin authors have to add those parts into their plugin for Windows users. It's not a huge issue but it is certainly a limitation (not something you are likely to worry about unless you get into Ruby coding -- which I will if Layout gets a API).
Here's a quote from: http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/faq.html
@unknownuser said:
What are the differences between the Mac and PC when it comes to the Ruby API?
The biggest difference between the two platforms are the WebDialogs. On the PC, the embedded browser is Internet Explorer, and on the Mac it's Safari. See the WebDialog documentation for details about all of the differences. if you're not using the WebDialogs for anything, then you don't have to worry about it.Another difference is the fact that the Mac supports "MDI" (Multiple Document Interface), meaning there can be more than one SketchUp model open at a time under the same SketchUp process. This can cause Ruby scripting challenges if your code is doing something with an entity only to have the user change the active model out from under you. There's no easy answer for how to handle all of the potential problems with this... it's probably enough for you to be aware of it and be sure to test what happens when a Mac user changes the active window while your script is active.
Finally, there is a difference in the way that the Mac boots up SketchUp that you should be cautious about: there is no Sketchup.active_model when the Ruby scripts are first loaded. So if your script is making changes to the active_model at load time, it will not work on the Mac. The answer? Ensure code that references the active model is part of a UI event handler, responding to the user selecting a tool or a menu item. You can also use an AppObserver to get a callback whenever a new model is opened, at which point it's safe to talk to the active_model.
Best,
Jason. -
Gotcha. Well all in all, I'd have to say, personally, that even for those of us who use SU a LOT, it should play very little role in choosing hardware, and probably no role at all in choosing an OS. In pretty much ever case I've run across there are more demanding issues that dictate that sort of decision that SU.
-Brodie
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Certainly a bigger issue for Layout -- which I do use and like quite alot... but the question came from a Mac user who was wondering if there was an advantage to switching to PC and the answer is there is none unless you are doing it for non-Sketchup related reasons.
Best,
Jason. -
On this we agree
[and so pc and mac user CAN live in harmony]
-Brodie
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That's interesting guys, i think in my case it might make a big difference. I often have multiple files in sketchup open at the same time. For example i often copy out a detail of a model into a new window,cmd C,cmd N (paste in place works fine). Or i can move geometry between open projects. Obviously this slows everything a little especially if you have 10 wrought iron gates from the warehouse open ! I won't get into a mac pc fight right now.There are bonuses on each side for instance i have read 3D studio max works great (more stable) under bootcamp. For now i want to stay in one environment. I believe maxwell is established on the mac while Thea has great prospects. Autodesk have made a lot of movement in the mac os perhaps the holy grail is 3D studio max natively. Building PC's is a no no for me i could never match the inside of a mac pro ! Thanks again Brodie your responses are very usefull.
(ps never buy apple ram or hd's)
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@chedda said:
Olishea i will look again at Thea, it uses the GPU for rendering ? Again a windows environment i think ?
At the moment, Thea Render does not use GPU with with it's interactive renderer (IR). One have a option to use biased or unbiased modes with the IR. GPU support for rendering is on the road in some early point of 1.x versions. You may want to watch a resent Thea Showreel at youtube. There is a promotional offering while Thea Render is in beta phase. Thea comes with 32&64-bit Windows, Linux and Mac builds (Mac 64-bit build should be ready with 1.1 release).
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I can understand wanting to buy a put together pc/mac from a warranty/support standpoint. But otherwise, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss putting a pc together. There's really no art to it. You want to watch some youtube videos first just to see it done and make sure up front that everything will fit together but really it's mostly just plugging stuff in.
Keep us posted on your decisions. Look forward to following your progress.
-brodie
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Ok Brodie, this interview is quite compelling:
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Yeah, it sounds like they've put some time into it's development, which I suppose you'd have to for that sort of thing. He seemed to skirt around the questions regarding what sort of meaningful changes were put into the mac version (...um, it's prettier and the UI is less costumizable, but you have 2 color options?). And the guy who piped in at the end seemed a little overly defensive regarding autodesk's relationship with apple. It felt a bit like the guy being accused of being a racist who says, 'well, i've got a lot of black friends!' (or in this case we bought maya which is on the mac and there are lots of people here who have iphones).
All in all, I'd say that it's a good sign for mac users that they've created the mac version and I suspect it will work just as well as the windows version.
-Brodie
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