Posts made by AcesHigh

how come I totally missed this plugin for 4 years? It should be on the list of essential plugins!

Can I make an improvement request? It would be nice if you could choose if you want the texture exported with the MATERIAL name (as it happens now) or the original texture name, if available.

Thanks for the tips guys. Somehow, I managed to use Sketchup for years without using Glue to Faces.

And sincerely, I don´t know what I am doing wrong. I create the component as "glue to" set the axis I think correctly, and yet and copying and pasting, the component doest glue to the face.

**Anyway, I solved my problem for now with a plugin... Chris Fulmers "Components Onto Faces".

The plugin has placed one copy of the component at each of the glass pane faces (the glass panes are not groups nor components, so I can select all faces at the same time) all in the same height and perpendicular to the face.

So I just deleted the components that werent needed (left the ones at approximate correct distance to left and right borders of the panels) and selected them all and corrected their height.**
I had checked Chris Fulmer plugin before (I already had it) when thinking on how to solve my problem, but I had not thought about this solution.

Btw, I am not the architect, I am just doing the 3D. I told the architect that having each glass panel customized would be a pain in the ass, but he wanted that way because apparently the client wanted that way (client probably has not seen the cost yet), so I am not in a position to enforce logic in this case.

I think it will look better in the 3D but in the end (after trying to minimize costs) they will change to flat panels and maybe a few ones curved for smaller curves.

Thanks.

I have this atrium with several floors, where each floor hole is different. The ballustrade will have curved glasses made specially for each position.

I need to place on each curved glass pane the supports/screws (gee, I don't know the english word) that hold the glass pane to the structure.

Because each glass pane is different, I can´t make a component and be done with it. I have to place the supports/screws in the proper approximate position in each glass pane.

But there comes the problem that I need to align them to the part of the curved glass pane where I will place them.

Here is an image of what I have done.

Notice the method I used for THIS floor was placing the two sets of 4 "screws" straight and connected by a line. Then I SLOWLY AND PAINFULLY would grab the group by the line, place the line in the botton left corner of a glass panel and use that same corner as pin axis of rotation, thus making the other end of the line (with the other 4 "screws" component) pass over the other corner...

Not only this was SLOW (and I have SEVERAL FLOORS TO MAKE THAT!) as each set is not properly aligned. The two sets only have an average rotation in relation to the entirety of each glass panel.

THUS, after this long and badly written explanation of my problem, I think maybe I was able to show what is the issue here so you can help me find the correct plugin to use for what I want:

I want a plugin to easily (because I will need to place a few hundred of these) place components/groups on a face and that they stay aligned (the alignment can be relative to the plugin axis). If the plugin is more visual (like Fredo plugins usually are), great. But if I need to place the component by just clicking over the face without seeing the proper placement, that will still be better than what I am doing.

Btw, as I said, I need to place hundreds of these, so if the plugin let me select the component once, then each click will place a new instance of the component over a new face, awesome.

ps: I am not asking anyone to make this plugin. I suppose such plugin already exists, I mean, I doubt nobody needed such important feature before. I just don´t remember any such plugin nor was I able to find something like I want in a search

Thank you!

for 2 or more terrains imported from GoogleMaps I always use the Clip or Trim Terrain Mesh plugin. No complaints. But of course, it was not made to use with two terrains that don´t match.

But don´t worry Sdmitch, I followed the "skirt" advice. While draping the terrain over the other terrain crashed Sketchup, draping the detailed terrain over a flat surface worked. Then I just deleted the border of the flat surface and I had my skirt.

(ps: just thought now that instead of draping, I could have selected the entire terrain, used the SELECT ONLY plugin, select only border edges... then the projection tools plugin to extrude lines along a vector... select the bottom edges and resize them... that would also create a skirt.

I have a small terrain (about 300x200 meters) which is highly detailed, created after height curves.

I want to merge it with a much larger (1.5 x 1.5 km) GoogleEarth terrain.

Problem is... borders do not match. Some of the detailed terrain borders are floating above the GoogleEarth terrain... other borders sunk into it.

My first thought was stamping the detailed terrain over the GoogleEarth terrain... in theory it should work, however, Sketchup crashes all the time when I try to do it... after 12 tries, sometimes copying only the selection needed to a new GoogleEarth instance, etc, I gave up stamping a complex terrain over another complex terrain. I guess the native stamp tool was thought to stamp "flatter", simpler shapes over a terrain.

So, does anyone remembers a plugin that can help with that? I am only worried about the borderlines btw... I do not need to "mix" the meshes, because I intend to keep the detailed mesh and delete the GoogleEarth mesh for the same area I have the more detailed one.

Awesome, I will try as soon as I can.

Quick question before downloading it: saw the first minutes of the tutorial video... when moving the stencil shape over the surface you want to apply the stencil, it seems the stencil is "grabbed" by it´s middle.

Is it possible however to for example, move a stencil by it´s corner, and then position it precisely somewhere?

another option that could be used, if all your points are in the perimeter, would be to just connect them all in a perimeter with lines, then select all the lines and run the Soap Bubble plugin...

@cuttingedge said:

hmmm.. any update here?

posted earlier

@unknownuser said:

and certain big software names might get a little upset about this. Watch your back because the 3D mafia might start taking notice.

@adamb said:

I was simply surprised to get the results I got.

It´s hard to believe someone who develops a rendering software has no knowledge of real results from a camera at those apertures and shutter speeds.

Also, even if you were surprised, you could have worded your responses to people telling you about aperture and shutter speeds, as if you were learning. But no. Your responses to people telling you about that was more on the line of DOUBTING what they were telling you. Even after I posted the results of a real camera, you DOUBTED the results, saying it was a bigger room and that was the reason it was darker. Like if it was a 2x2 room it would be much brighter, and completely forgetting my test used TWO lamps.

So for someone simply "asking a question", you doubted a lot people's answers to you.

@unknownuser said:

LightUp doesn't aspire or wish to be an emulation of a physical camera. It provides a simple to use, fast lighting solution that allows users to navigate their models in realtime with reflections. The reason companies such as Pixar use LightUp is not to replace their Renderman rendering engines. Its because they can quickly play with lighting ideas and share those results with the teams. Ditto many others.

The reason many architects, set design and conference designers use LightUp, is because they can quickly get a good result to share with clients and move around at 30Hz to explore the space.

ok, after all this advertising, I should tell you to check Thea's new render layer in Sketchup, but forget it. That´s not the question. The fact is that you started the topic by suggesting Thea, Maxwell and VRAY apparently did not got realistic results for a 1200 lumens lamp with ISO 100. And that LightUp seemed to be better in that regard.

Then, as we proved to you that those other renders get it more right than LightUp, your tone in the thread has changed to "LightUp doesnt aim to get realistic results, our aim is to provide fast lightning and feedback".

The source is in the middle of the bedroom. Thus it´s 1,5 meters from the source. So it won´t be 1/9th of the power. Furthermore, there are two 75w lamps, so double the power. Furthermore, the lightball you used to illuminate your scene was larger than my lamps, and closer to the walls. Stop fighting with reality. People asked you again and again to give your shutter and aperture settings and you did not. You would answer just saying you expected any place being lit with a 75w lamp and by using ISO 100 to be brightly lit. I proved that was not true and you still won´t accept?

The truth: Thea and Maxwell are physically correct in your experiments above.

Here, a test a model of my room... same space... same settings as the first photo

you accused Thea and Maxwell of illuminating too little compared with real life. In my test, it shows they actually illuminated too much.

Of course, a REAL REAL test would depend on several other things, like really MODELLING the lamps and getting the real values of emmitance per watt, etc, etc, from the lamp manufacturer. It´s a compact fluorescent lamp, 15W, but the manufacturers and salesman say they are illuminate the same as a 75W incandescent lightbulb.

Having watts alone is not enough, we need watts AND efficacy, and probably also temperature color in kelvin.

but one thing is certain from the tests... even not modelling the real lamps, Thea and Maxwell results are much closer to real life results.

thanks for the answer Pingpink.

somebody opened a thread about your Plugin in the Plugins sections of Sketchucation just the other day. Can you please post more info there?

http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323%26amp;t=58694%26amp;p=534451#p534229

Pingypink posts here at Sketchucation. There is a topic where she made some questions and I asked her about Curtain Wall Plugin. Her answer:

@unknownuser said:

Hello AcesHigh
Thank you so much for your interest !! It's a surprise that many people watched my videos. Actually , I did YouTube for a good memory , and applying for a job. Now, I'm preparing documentation for this time ,and looking for some experts to lead me here because I'm not a programmer. I hope there's a possibility to distribute soon.

I will direct her to this thread

Hi PingPinky. Is your curtainwall plugin available to download somewhere?

that is awesome, but why there is no link to download or even to buy it?

Really, the thread creator should have researched a little before making such uninformed comments. Did he even try to take a photo at a totally closed room at night, a single 75 watts lightbulb, ISO 100, shutter speed at 1/60 and F8?

Really, he should have before "guessing" that it should be bright.
"Surely a 75 Watt bulb in a small box photographed with a real camera loaded with ISO 100 is going to be brightly lit."

No, it won´t.

Just made tests with my camera. A bedroom in my apartment with 2.8 x 3.3 meters. Two 75 watts lightbulbs. Room totally closed.

At the settings above, that the thread creator "thought" it should be bright, and therefore VRAY and Thea sucked... well, checkout below.

F8, ISO 100
shutter at 1/60

shutter at 1/30

shutter at 1/4

F4, ISO 100
shutter at 1/60

shutter at 1/30

shutter at 1/4

camera used: Canon SX130

ps: sorry for the hanging lamps. That´s the bottom of the ceiling fan. It happens the ceiling fan malfunctioned, so I opened it to see if there was any burned equipment, and somehow I lost the screws

worth mentioning however that if you create a low resolution TIN and it has a complex shape (like you made it with Soap Skin Bubble, or you have cut it after stamping) you might get some problems. Therefore if the plugin had automatic smoothing either after or before creating it, it would be very good.

Example... only move in the vertical vertexes that are at least 5 vertex from each other (or set a distance in meters instead of number of vertexes) and then the ones in the middle have their height calculate based on average/medians?

can´t live without it. Use it all the time to make terrain. Gee, even ramps I do with it.

Could this plugin be updated, (or in the case another plugin exists, please point me out)in order for a more smooth randomization to be possible? Right now, the plugin simply changes the vertical distance of every vertex in the TIN by the amount set by the user.

However, it creates some artifacts often due to the normals, and even not counting the artifacts, you just can´t get a smooth random terrain, specially if you want bigger random elevation...

Only way I found to achieve that was repeat the process inumerous times...

Create a TIN with Soap Box and Bubble in a way the squares will be like let's say 2x2 meters. Apply randomize TIN with 0,7 meters of vertical displacement.

Notice this is a low resolution terrain... but if you want high displacement with Random TIN, you need a low res terrain, otherwise you might have two points 20cm apart, one of them 1 meter high, and the other -1m!!

After randomizing with high displacement a low-res terrain, then you ADD DETAIL... run Randomize TIN again, this time with smaller vertical displacement (say, 0,3 meters), add detail again, run Randomize TIN again this time with 5cm only.

What when you ALREADY have the faces, but you have closed shapes inside that however won´t close (profiles won´t turn to edges), so the two surfaces will become different surfaces?

I have one here that I already projected onto a face, run stray lines, etc.

There are no stray lines. It was projected on a surface, I also did drape it onto another surface. Retraced everything. Nothing works!