roger is in a long queue waiting to get attention, afraid i've got a bucketload of work at the moment and dont have time for anything other than food/sleep :S
I'll probably get freed up a bit in about a month orso.

actually he'll probably turn out as a maid or something along those lines, good try though .

thanks for the comment orgelf, yeah I will do a better job on the tube/light problem on my final renders. I love photoshop

Hey Remus.

Thanks for the reply

On the topic of lighting:

I lit up the eye/mouth and the parts on the jawhinge(which wil later also act as part of his neck) using SUpodium at first, after that I added the glow/rays to his mouth and eye with photoshop.

I had tried to get this effect using SUpodium alone, but it caused sharp lines of light on the walls around him which I thought where a bit too obtrusive. I have some ideas on how to improve the SUpodium effect as I would prefer a model that worked well even without photoshop sothat I could make better animations should i choose to do so(I'm also hoping to make him very easily posable.)

Hello, I've been actively modeling in sketchup for about 3 years now and have to date only been modeling things for work and some geometrical/architectural stuff in my spare time. Inspired by orgelf (http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=10743) I've decided to start on my first artistic sketchup work to see how far I can take sketchup. I will be using Sketchup, SUpodium and photoshop.

Meet Roger, well... meet part of his head, I'm very buzy these days so I will have to be patient about his progress.

I will keep posting his evolution and sofar so good, some problems in the texture on his head for podium to render which I will look at fixing(I might actually keep it like that depending on what he will look like later.)
Not sure where I'm going with him yet and I know im supposed to draw him first, but as its a hobby thing I'm just gonna follow the flow.

A movie showing just a sketchup render with the shadows from the sun is really easy,
here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCNGQX6j7D4 that will teach you how to make the animation.

just incase it doesnt tell you this info:
when you've made a scene you can right click on it it and open the page scene manager, which gives you alot of control.

good luck

crud, I've just bought SUpodium and ideally would need to make a walkthrough, a 2-3minute one with lots of lighting, detail and possibly moving section cuts.
its a hugely detailed model of a timber frame house, here, i'll post an image

I've still to import alot of things I've prepared for it, plasterboard, all the rooftiles, flooring, the plot, pool, foundation layers and reinforcements and so on, oak cladding, wall ties, patio/masonry details,... it goes on and on plus i've quite a few layers like the fireplace, furniture, plumbing/drainage and so on hidden in the model above. in short the model will have pretty much everything apart from the screws/nails/individual electrical cables. I've even prepared a model of myself to put into it for kicks

dunno if it is actually feasable to animate something with this kind of complexity because I've never seen a sketchup model so detailed.
maybe i should make a seperate thread for this topic

yep that email adress is right, will you delete it from your post though?
because bots actively surf the web looking for them and the more copies of my email adress are posted on the web, the more spam i will get

kerkythea, I'm guessing you've done some research; does it work in making animations?

Some inspiring stuff there.
Keep it up, looks like you are going places

a few tips for sketchup:
the lines you get out of "makehuman" are hard lines.
to make the human parts look smoother select those hard lines in sketchup, right click and then select "smooth edges"
the edges will be invisible at that point but you can view/edit them by clicking "view"->"show hidden geometry"

A problem I would see with that approach is in your renders as you are using an 3rd party renderer so I'm not sure if your edges would still be smooth after
your export or import.

A Rendering plugin for sketchup that I would recommend is SUpodium
quote from webby: "The free version will not expire. The free version is exactly the same as the commercial version EXCEPT it only outputs to 230 X 120 and 500 X 500 image resolution sizes."
You can get it here after giving your email adress: http://www.suplugins.com/index.php?p=page&page_id=Download

another thing I think you would like after seeing your work is the bezierspline rubyscript which gives you more freedom in drawing curves
http://www.crai.archi.fr/RubyLibraryDepot/Ruby/en_edi_page.htm (scroll down to Bezierspline.zip, a PDF is in the zip file with instructions):
rubyscripts add functionality to sketchup, they have the extention .rb and need to be placed in the plugins folder to work.

If you would like instant feedback on photoshop or sketchup you may add me on msn. my adress is russellbeta -"at"- hotma...
I can answer most questions off the bat on both topics in exchange for me asking some questions about Zbrush

PS: the spiderlegs are brilliant

Just found this:

Name: Simplify Contours
Description: Often the site contour data generated by the surveyor is quite dense (more than 5,000 edges). Attempting to generate a surface using the Sandbox From Contours tool may take a very long time. To speed up the process, you may simplify the contours using the SimplifyContours.rb Ruby script.

only problem is, The download doesnt work. am having a hard time finding a working one... anyone have an idea?