How to do this ?

TIG

Proximity does that [has done for years] - you set the distances and if any components have the matching 'proximity' types with the affix +/~/- [near/mid/distant] and they are within the specified distance ranges then they get swapped in that view to be the appropriate type...
Thus any detailed trees are used near the camera in that view and simple ones further away...

Bertier

thank you for your interest into this.

I will try the poly reduction techniques this morning and test TIG's plugins

still I go with ThomThom :
*by thomthom on Tue Jul 05, 2011 11:24 pm

What he's talking about is LOD ( Level Of Detail ). He want to use low poly mesh when the camera is far away and high poly when the camera is close. Automated.

(...) being able to define a set of distance ranges and components - which would be adjusted on the click on a button, that would be interesting for staging scenes for rendering from various angles.*

this is exactly the issue, i am into film making these days... with lots of statues / artifacts / buildings.
very large set.

thomthom

So it is related to animation making you want this LOD feature?
Flythrough, or do you use an animation plugin?

Bertier

it will be fly through

no animation involved

yet we need motion blur, but it'll be post prod I imagine

TIG

You could envisage a version of Proximity linked to a Scene-Observer so as a scene changed the components would get swapped around but it will be sloooooow... Perhaps making it as image frames rather than a movie would be best ?

Bertier

well that is the idea

image frames : 25 fps

render with ???? not decided yet

processed in Adobe Premiere or equivalent

pilou

Why not try OpenSpace 3D ?
It's in French made by Frenchy people
I have made a little video for Sketchup to OpenSpace3D

Bertier

c'est ta voix sur la video Pilou ?
le commentaire est hilarant !

je ne crois pas que ça fasse le match pour nous.

en fait on va faire des mouvements de caméra dans un modèle et des rendus plan par plan dans un moteur à déterminer

Bertier

we are aiming at producing about 3 movies of 3 mn each

4500 frames per movie

13500 frames total

we are looking for an engine that could run a render farm any idea ?

thomthom

Normally I recommend V-Ray for SketchUp, but the current version has a bug in their distributed render engine so it is currently unpredictable.

Thea support render nodes - another one I have tried. And I think you can place proxies in Thea, so you can place low poly components in SU and replace them with high poly in Thea. (If I'm not mistaken. I've not gotten around to play around with Thea that much yet.) Other members here can confirm or ridicule me.

pilou

@Bertier
Oui, on ne se refait pas, s'il l'on n'est pas un imitateur de premier ordre!

Oui effectivement c'est peut-être pas le logiciel le plus approprié
Il est plutôt fait pour de la balade interactive ou d'exploration quitte à faire des enregistrements
vidéos de l'écran

Par contre pour de la vidéo à fond les manettes il y a Lumion,
mais pour de la sculpture je ne sais pas ce que cela donne!