Hi all, Rich marked the query about FF disappearance as solved, so I've had to start a new topic. Yes, sadly, FF is no more. Personally, I was never entirely happy with the the subscription model as being the sole means of distribution...even less so with SU itself going down the same path, but that's another story and water under the bridge.

However Gabriel and I have got thousands of models between us that it would be a pity to let go to waste. I was in contact with him a while ago and confided in my plans to start selling my stuff retail. He may well do the same. The price point is about the same as it was way back around 2000 when I brought out the first SU People CD...$1 per model...slightly cheaper, in fact
It was that venture that led to me being contacted by Fred Abler, who had already started Objective Networks (of which the 3D Warezhouse is a direct rip-off, except for the major factors of ON having a quality control and approval system, which filtered-out all the junk and pirated content)
That in turn led us all to attending the very first SU basecamp in Boulder...when even Coen was a member of the team. History lesson over.

It's quite a job, given the sheer scale of the resource, but I'm busy going through my entire inventory; and now I've started updating and repackaging the figures and vegetation ready for resale. The equipment will take a little longer. I assume Gabriel is doing the same with his stuff.

I've got the barest bones website up and running at [http://3d-figures.co.uk] which I'll be using to simply link to the model collections hosted on established digital content sites. I've already got a collection of Pool People (and equipment) hosted on Turbosquid (only did it yesterday) but the uploading procedure there is very lengthy and precise and they take a massive commission for anyone starting out, so I may try various other options. I loaded the same collection onto CG Trader this morning, but they say it can take 5 working days for approval, so no sign of it so far. It's only $49.99 there.
Here's a few of the supporting graphics. I'll be in touch as things progress.

I'm clearing some old stuff off my hard drive and thought these might be useful for some people, if only as small pieces of decor..
I don't like uploading stuff to the Warehouse. We tried that in the early days of FormFonts, to advertise our presence. But in a matter of weeks they were lost in an avalanche of rip-offs. God knows how many 'tuned' versions of my Porsche Boxster are on there now.
They'd probably 'tune' Apollo or Zeus as Priapus.
I should add that these are, as usual, fairly lightweight. Even the Lincoln statue is only 7,600 faces.

Abe Lincoln statue.skp Apollo Belvedere.skp Zeus_Poseidon.skp

When someone requested this a few years back, it was initially quite a daunting prospect. But actually turned out to be fairly straightforward. The flat sections which lie along the floor are simply repeats of a single component, comprising rib and 3 short section of 'track'.
The looped section started life as a completely circular array. I then had to count the number of ribs involved, then simply calculate how far the end of each of the 3 sections of track in the repeated component had to be skewed sideways in order to offset the whole thing by its own width after a single rotation.
There's a slight vertical adjustment too, but what is good for the very first section, joining the start of the loop to the last rib in the flat array is good for all the others too.
Yes, I probably could have used one of the helical plugins, or extrude along a path, but the thought of how to do that hurt my head more than simply going back to first principles.
There are only 3 components in the entire track; and one of those is the flat rib at either end. It's 8000 faces, including the cushions. Sometimes, the simplest way is the best.

Next up, Medical, probably followed by the start of the generic figures and some vegetation. It'll be a week or so (I think) before this stuff actually starts appearing online. There will be things that don't fit easily into collections; in which case I'll likely post them here.

BTW for those unfamiliar with this content, most of the models are vertex painted directly in SU, allowing easy editing of clothing, skin tone and hair colour. They are also somewhat modular, allowing swapping of heads, upper and lower body, or modest repositioning of limbs..

I have produced some fully UV mapped models, but I tend to work with SU rather than against it. So on this model of a Vancouver Canuck, for instance, the stripes are actually geometry (yes it adds a bit, but the entire model is still only 2.5K faces) but the logo is a simple texture. projected onto the chest. I then sampled the blue background to the logo, got the RGB value and made a custom colour that is painted onto everything else that isn't already striped.

@pixelcruncher Thanks for the compliment, Thomas. I really like the look of Rayscaper, but unfortunately it won't run in my SU version as I've stuck with the last one that has a lifetime license, which is V18. Doing what I do, I simply don't need any other features beyond that...and I'm not fond of yearly subscriptions for what is essentially the same product.
In fact FormFonts used to output all models in V7 (which is positively antique...2008) , because that supported Dynamic components and there haven't really been any significant upgrades in the file format since then. Obviously, if you are distributing one-off meshes in a variety of exported formats then something like Live components isn't really necessary.

Apparently it doesn't take 5 days; the first collections are now online. I'm currently processing a large collection of about 180 men and women. Yep! they're all getting loaded into the same skp file for rendering the preview images...that'll be fun..

@Rich-O-Brien said in Trees and SU's OpenGL:

But if you assign the backface material with a 99% opaque version of your front face you get decent enough viewport results but your carrying an extra image.

Thanks Rich, I never thought of assigning front face to back...despite using it all the time in other situations.. It does look slightly better, but as you say, there's a performance hit so I'm not sure it would be worth it if there were several high-poly veggies in the scene.

I recently uploaded a collection of low-poly, temperate trees to CG Trader. Most had previously been on FormFonts, but I tidied and tweaked them a little. It was only when loading them all into the same SU file that I realised that a couple were horribly mis-sized (sorry about that; corrected now).

As you can see, they render okay and are passable...if a little flat...in plain vanilla SketchUp.
I've always wondered about producing higher poly versions for SketchUp that are actually usable, as opposed to some of the ripped-off commercial content that gets pasted to the Warehouse and can sometimes be tens of Mb.
It seems, however, that SU's use of OpenGL really doesn't like intersecting, transparent images. I even switched from using transparent png files to tiffs with an alpha channel in the hope that the green background might eliminate the halo effect around all the edges. It made some difference but it still looks horrible in native SketchUp.

It's a pity, because it renders just fine and can stand any amount of zooming-in, but for an off the cuff walk-through, as opposed to a pre-rendered video tour it would just look weird.
I've attached a high and low poly tree for people to play with. The HP version is about 3x the size of the LP version. The Tiff files themselves, which are 512x512 pixels are the best part of 300kb all on their own.
Maybe I should produce just a few, so that one can be stuck in the foreground of a render, to give a suitable LOD.

HP and LP trees.skp

@Alohaa
Leider werden die Kreise nie ganz rund sein. SketchUp ist ein Programm zur Polygonmodellierung und verwendet daher keine Bézierkurven, sondern gerade Liniensegmente.
Das Beste, was Sie tun können, ist, die Anzahl der Segmente auf Hunderte zu erhöhen ... oder ein anderes Programm zu verwenden.
Ich habe Ihre Zeichnung genommen, die Kreise so gedreht, dass die Segmente ausgerichtet sind, und dann jeden Kreis auf 256 Segmente erhöht.
Entschuldigen Sie mein Deutsch

circle 256.skp

I'm clearing some old stuff off my hard drive and thought these might be useful for some people, if only as small pieces of decor..
I don't like uploading stuff to the Warehouse. We tried that in the early days of FormFonts, to advertise our presence. But in a matter of weeks they were lost in an avalanche of rip-offs. God knows how many 'tuned' versions of my Porsche Boxster are on there now.
They'd probably 'tune' Apollo or Zeus as Priapus.
I should add that these are, as usual, fairly lightweight. Even the Lincoln statue is only 7,600 faces.

Abe Lincoln statue.skp Apollo Belvedere.skp Zeus_Poseidon.skp

When someone requested this a few years back, it was initially quite a daunting prospect. But actually turned out to be fairly straightforward. The flat sections which lie along the floor are simply repeats of a single component, comprising rib and 3 short section of 'track'.
The looped section started life as a completely circular array. I then had to count the number of ribs involved, then simply calculate how far the end of each of the 3 sections of track in the repeated component had to be skewed sideways in order to offset the whole thing by its own width after a single rotation.
There's a slight vertical adjustment too, but what is good for the very first section, joining the start of the loop to the last rib in the flat array is good for all the others too.
Yes, I probably could have used one of the helical plugins, or extrude along a path, but the thought of how to do that hurt my head more than simply going back to first principles.
There are only 3 components in the entire track; and one of those is the flat rib at either end. It's 8000 faces, including the cushions. Sometimes, the simplest way is the best.

Apparently it doesn't take 5 days; the first collections are now online. I'm currently processing a large collection of about 180 men and women. Yep! they're all getting loaded into the same skp file for rendering the preview images...that'll be fun..

@pixelcruncher Thanks for the compliment, Thomas. I really like the look of Rayscaper, but unfortunately it won't run in my SU version as I've stuck with the last one that has a lifetime license, which is V18. Doing what I do, I simply don't need any other features beyond that...and I'm not fond of yearly subscriptions for what is essentially the same product.
In fact FormFonts used to output all models in V7 (which is positively antique...2008) , because that supported Dynamic components and there haven't really been any significant upgrades in the file format since then. Obviously, if you are distributing one-off meshes in a variety of exported formats then something like Live components isn't really necessary.

Next up, Medical, probably followed by the start of the generic figures and some vegetation. It'll be a week or so (I think) before this stuff actually starts appearing online. There will be things that don't fit easily into collections; in which case I'll likely post them here.

BTW for those unfamiliar with this content, most of the models are vertex painted directly in SU, allowing easy editing of clothing, skin tone and hair colour. They are also somewhat modular, allowing swapping of heads, upper and lower body, or modest repositioning of limbs..

I have produced some fully UV mapped models, but I tend to work with SU rather than against it. So on this model of a Vancouver Canuck, for instance, the stripes are actually geometry (yes it adds a bit, but the entire model is still only 2.5K faces) but the logo is a simple texture. projected onto the chest. I then sampled the blue background to the logo, got the RGB value and made a custom colour that is painted onto everything else that isn't already striped.

Thanks Rich, the offer of help is much appreciated. No problem with the closed thread.
TBH I'm quite happy to use the forum to give updates on the progress, if that's okay? I'm thinking of releasing content in compilations of about 50-70 models each, so perhaps a few suggestions on groupings that people might like. There's the obvious ones like business people and casual people, or vegetation by region and type; but if anyone has other suggestions I'll be happy to consider them.

The main problem is sheer numbers. In a way it would be simpler to upload just single figures for $1 each and let people take their pick of exactly what they want, but that would be an open invitation for the entire collection to appear in the Warezhouse in no time flat; and SketchUp's response to copyright violations appears to be non-existent.

Like I said earlier, I am updating some stuff as I go along. Compare the FF biker with the 3D Figures one...spot the Sons of Anarchy influence.

Hi all, Rich marked the query about FF disappearance as solved, so I've had to start a new topic. Yes, sadly, FF is no more. Personally, I was never entirely happy with the the subscription model as being the sole means of distribution...even less so with SU itself going down the same path, but that's another story and water under the bridge.

However Gabriel and I have got thousands of models between us that it would be a pity to let go to waste. I was in contact with him a while ago and confided in my plans to start selling my stuff retail. He may well do the same. The price point is about the same as it was way back around 2000 when I brought out the first SU People CD...$1 per model...slightly cheaper, in fact
It was that venture that led to me being contacted by Fred Abler, who had already started Objective Networks (of which the 3D Warezhouse is a direct rip-off, except for the major factors of ON having a quality control and approval system, which filtered-out all the junk and pirated content)
That in turn led us all to attending the very first SU basecamp in Boulder...when even Coen was a member of the team. History lesson over.

It's quite a job, given the sheer scale of the resource, but I'm busy going through my entire inventory; and now I've started updating and repackaging the figures and vegetation ready for resale. The equipment will take a little longer. I assume Gabriel is doing the same with his stuff.

I've got the barest bones website up and running at [http://3d-figures.co.uk] which I'll be using to simply link to the model collections hosted on established digital content sites. I've already got a collection of Pool People (and equipment) hosted on Turbosquid (only did it yesterday) but the uploading procedure there is very lengthy and precise and they take a massive commission for anyone starting out, so I may try various other options. I loaded the same collection onto CG Trader this morning, but they say it can take 5 working days for approval, so no sign of it so far. It's only $49.99 there.
Here's a few of the supporting graphics. I'll be in touch as things progress.