Posts made by AcesHigh

well, its not exactly that I want to do (I already tried that). Because for example, see that triangle detail on the left? Whats the use pf pushing it inside? Still, it should be visible when rendering, but its not, since its lines. Thats why I am asking if there isnt a pluging that will create lines around a line so an "area" will be automatically created...

@honoluludesktop said:

Some of a model's details on a SU surface are images, not SU lines. If so they can not be edited. Can you post a small example?

yes, check this model from 3D Warehouse. Its a nice Monorail train. All doors and windows are lines drawn on the model. I want to know how to show them when rendering (lines WONT show, thus I mean if there is a way to make lines into mesh detail)
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=c24ca1db8ef2641a5173a3acaee9cd0e&prevstart=0

btw, I know that images are not editable, but on the other hand, images DO render.

Ive downloaded some quite nice models from 3DWarehouse. But I am having a problem with some of them.

Basically, many models on 3D Warehouse have details in them made as LINES. That is... supposed you have a train. The doors on the train are not separate entities, they are just "drawn" into the surface.

What I mean is that becomes a problem when RENDERING the image, because the lines of the models wont show at renders (and doing post processing wont achieve good photorealism because lines seen in sketchup maintain their 1 pixel width no matter the distance).

How to solve the problem of lines not rendering and thus cool models from 3D Warehouse losing a lot of line-detail?

I can think of only two solutions. Some way to "indent" those lines into the geometry... like, in your REAL CAR, there is no "line" that separates the door from the rest of the car. That black line is actually a dark part created by shadows from the small space that SEPARATES the door from the main carbody.

Another solution would be to select the lines and have some tool that would create parallel lines in and out of the original line, and then delete the original line, thus, you would now have an area very thin, that you could paint black to simulate a line (and it would show on renders)

So, any thoughts on the matter?

im having a bit of a problem with 2d people and vray. I place lots of 2d people just to discover, after a long render, that several of them lost their texture when rendered (appear as flat color)

not good enough... if you have too many close by entities that you dont want to select, it does get even more difficult.

what I have is a structure made with Soap Skin and Bubble. Lots of Squares. I want to select edges to use a TUBE ALONG PATH to create solid trelices (trussers? Whatever is the english word ). Clicking one by one is quite time consuming. And using the ERASER + SPACE BAR in that is impossible.

Now, in this case, why would an Eraser like Selection Tool be better? Because there is a huge difference between having to click exactly over the line and "passing" the cursor over it to select.

Quite simply put, I love the way the Eraser selects objects, for deletion of course. Its so fast to select lots and lots of models and it only selects things in view (unlike a square selection, which will also select hidden stuff 10km distant behind 1000 walls)

So, I wonder if there is a way, or a possibility to make a RUBY where you SELECT (and not delete) geometry and groups and components the same way the Eraser tool works (of course, with the added possibility of holding SHIFT for minus-select, something that doesnt exists on Eraser tool)

Al, do you think its possible to create Paraná Pines (a type of Araucaria tree that is very common in my area) in RPTreeMaker?

I was thinking more along the lines of procedural texture creation...

@unknownuser said:

Okay. Get Vray. It's expensive, it comes with a learning curve - but it sure as hell spews out good renders in record time.

it custs U$799... doesnt seem so much more pricey than other Renderers. With exception of FREE renderers, of course

nice article that answers some things, but I still look for personal opinions about VRAY vs these 3 mentioned renderers...

Ive been using VRAY with Sketchup. I like it, but I see so many people talking about Maxwell, Kerkythea and Indigo.

I wonder if they really have any advantage over VRAY. Both in quality as in workflow and speed.

Maxwell I once downloaded for test, and for really using it you needed to learn to use its 3rd party application, which was very confusing. Never tried it again.

Kerkythea being free is obviously very good, but how does it measure against VRAY? Do I need two 16 Core servers to render a scene in the same time I render a VRAY scene with a Quad Q9300? How easy to use is Kerkythea?

As for Indigo, well, I have no idea. I heard in a thread that Whaat is the one that made its user interface for Sketchup. Any insight into this software?

I know those 3 are "unbiased" and VRAY is "biased", but in the everyday, how much will "unbiased" give me advantage over VRAY?

wow, thats quite interesting, Hart

it seems to me the Film And Stage plugin adds too much stuff that most of us dont really care... if we could ONLY add the Film And Stage camera feature...

@thomthom said:

It's like you read my mind. Like a carbon copy.

hope you dont want me to pay copyright fees

about the zoom... what zoom REALLY is? Isnt it just FOV?

I dont think this will make sense IN SKETCHUP... but I remember some other 3D programs (cant remember right, I think Rhino3D was one of them) also had the CLIPPING issue Sketchup constantly has.

How did you usually solved the CLIPPING ISSUE? You would CHANGE THE CAMERA SIZE! Yup, the camera was a model that you could change the size. Making it smaller would most times end with the clipping issues.

Ok, I hope some of the Plugin Programmers here on the forum see this...

anyway, I had an idea on how to do the plugin, even how to have integrated with the VRAY...

1 - basically, when you activate the plugin, it opens a window with several parameters and it also creates a camera object. The camera object is nothing more than a little camera model, as a LOCKED group. It also creates a new tab which will correspond to the current camera model.

2 - its not that the camera WILL REALLY be a camera. But through the camera model, you will GET the correspondent positioning, angle, etc of the model, which then will be translated to the real camera language of sketchup. You can move/spin/etc yourself the camera, in which case you will see the numbers change in the camera window, or you can change the numbers at the camera window (and see the camera move around). The camera window will have XYZ positioning both in relation to actual camera position as to also the 000 origin.

3 - camera FOV will be seens as a "lines" piramid (no faces, or a semi transparent face)), coming out of the camera lens. Again, it wont REALLY CHANGE things. We must find the correlation between cone angle and Sketchup numbers, so when we change the FOV numbers, the camera viewing cone will change accordingly. I will do some tests next week.

4 - finally, the DOF for VRAY wont really go to VRAY. You have to little red balls coming out of a straight line from the camera. Those represent the near DOF and the far DOF. You can change them along the line. If you press render, nothing will change in VRAY. But the camera window will have NUMBERS CHANGE as you move the sliders along the line. And its up for the USER to input those numbers inside VRAY DOF. The sliders are there for helping you see and plan the VRAY DOF you want.

@rickw said:

A non-ruby workaround (and perhaps the functional basis for the ruby script) would be to have a graded image (black to white) that you insert into your model in the XZ or YZ plane, at zero Z.

Scale it so the height of the image is the max height of your model, then scale it again to 1.001 (to make sure any flat faces at the top of the model are white).

When you explode the image, the resulting texture is set to "projected". You can then eyedropper the texture and paint it onto your model for a perfect grayscale heightfield indicator.

Go to a non-perspective orthagonal view and export the image, then crop it in your photo editor.

[attachment=1:2s7p1am7]<!-- ia1 -->heightfield image.png<!-- ia1 -->[/attachment:2s7p1am7]

haha, thats awesome simply! And quite smart!

I wont have time to test this weekend, but next week I will try to import a GoogleEarth image into Sketchup, apply your technique and export a heighfield image into Terragen to generate a terrain. Lets see if the generated terrain keeps the same geometry from the GoogleEarth image.

What? The default VRAY unit is an inch?? I thought VRAY was created by europeans.

Thom, I gave up on exploding my model. I will try it next time. My model was too big with too many glass components... the building is 130 floors tall, and I had to select 5 floors each time and even so it would take over 30 minutes to explode them...

I tried using the bulge in a teste model... Ive run into trouble, probably a bug... bulge would work in the first render... then usually it would look too small. I would try setting it correct then suddenly disappeared! No bulge anymore. Even returning to the initial settings, I would never see it again!

haha, I just came with a solution to the above problem... very idiotic, but it works... I created a bullseye plataform... which is in a group of its own. I move the plataform in ortographic view to where I want to put the camera... then I select the POSITION CAMERA TOOL and position it over the bullseye... then I turn the Bullseye plataform layer off

found another use for this...

CREATING TERRAIN ELEVATION MAPS, taken from GoogleEarth.

basically, Terrain Elevation Maps are only easily available to USA.

You can import GoogleEarth elevation data into Sketchup, but you cant export it as Terrain Data... and you cant export it directly from GoogleEarth either (and Ive found no plugin to do that in GoogleEarth).

If you could export from GoogleEarth to Sketchup, and from Sketchup to bitmap 256 colors heightmap, you could then import it into Terragen for example, and then create realistic panoramas, that can be imported back into Sketchup/VRAY.

I hope this plugin begins soon. Btw, I have a huge scene and I am having the old VERY ANNOYING clipping problem with it... I cant even position the camera properly because when I get close to something it disappears, and the end result is that you are zooming in, the feature disappears and suddenly the mouse pointer is over something far away, and then you cant zoom closer to the object you want, because even a little more zoom results in a fast zoom towards the distant object, not the slow zoom towards the object close to you where the mouse pointer was BEFORE the object disappeared.

the CAMERA OBJECT could solve this problem, since you could position it from the ortographics views.