Now most modeling is finished (yes, the westwerk is a more modern reconstruction than on the old painting). I'm making lots of textures. Here are some test renders without textures:
I have still problems with photon mapping, there are some light phenomenons. I used global illumination and the maximum number of photons, but it is still there.

![view from the entrance hall ("paradise") into the main nave, only normal raytracing](/uploads/imported_attachments/iEcc_render9b.jpg "view from the entrance hall ("paradise") into the main nave, only normal raytracing")

Many Thanks!, it has been solvedlong ago:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=18244&hilit=+organic

I didn't find a better solution than modeling it by hand, until it fits from every perspective to the outlines of the photos. My favorite alternative was the following:

Arc3D http://homes.esat.kuleuven.be/~visit3d/webservice/v2/
Creates automatically models from many photos. Seems to be promissing and very accurate, but off service.

Sketchup photomatch
Very accurate, if you have really orthogonal geometry (not in my case).

pixdim or http://www.photomodeler.com
Similar to photomatch, but using two photos (i.e. stereo photos). Very accurate, if you can place the black/white reference points before taking high resolution photos. Otherwise (photos from web) not accurate.

Archipelis http://www.archipelis.com/product.php
Good for rounded things, not accurate.

http://make3d.stanford.edu
Uses only single images and makes a very inaccurate guess of the depth info. But nevertheless impressive.

http://www.photo-to-3d.com
In the free version, it uses only two images of low resolution and was not able to create any polygons.

I found a better way for screen catching. Here some more better animations (all in real-time).

Since some years, I have been experimenting with the possibilities of javascript and 3d effects. Now I found a very interesting script, that creates an animation of ASCII characters.
http://www.benryves.com/bin/poly.htm

I thought, with little modifications, it could show me any 3d model in ascii. So I added an obj-importer and some more features. You can see it here and try it out:
http://aerilius.ae.ohost.de/ascii3d/ascii3d.htm


Only previews, these examples work in real time with more than 100 frames per second.

(Be careful, it depends not on any graphics card, and javascript needs quite much performance. I only tested it with max. 400 polygons)

I wanted to modify the texture placement. When I untick it, I need to position and distort the texture completely. So I hope the API will allow it in future.

One possibility would be to use the kmz-exporter, which converts texture coordinates, but for complicated faces, I get hundreds of small pieces of textures (ca. 5px)...

Thanks for the advice

Is there already a plug-in that can convert projected textures into textures with normal texture coordinates?

Projected textures are easy to apply to difficult geometry, but you can only edit them a the plane, to which they are parallel (i.e. the face to which they were applied first). They also cause difficulties with most exporter plug-ins (KT, obj...)

I did some test with kmz files: I believe Collada must support components. Otherwise, the filesize would need to multiply after multiplying the Sketchup components.

Obj is quite an old format. But most apps do not dare to ignore it. There is already a good obj-exporter plugin and when I needed to reimport it again, I converted it in other apps into 3ds (most apps have both). It would be good if obj was in SU by standard.

some features:
http://picasaweb.google.com/bruce.polderman/Supermodelers#5366978434850115426

It's called Sketchup 7! in all languages!

It's very much work! And later you need some more textures (especially, never use this standard roof texture, it was not made from a photo).
Have you seen http://www.romereborn.virginia.edu?

Click on the surrounding plane, select bounding edges and make a group. Then erase the rest and explode the group again.

I cannot really comprehend the dwg issues (if I used Sketchup for work or commercial I would rather be able to pay for it than in my current state)

@unknownuser said:

We originally designed the Free and Pro versions of Google SketchUp for pretty different groups of people.
So most people do not agree to Google's new interpretation of this sentence.

Mainly I wanted to tell that I noticed a discussion in the SU help group, where someone angered Sketchup Guide Barry. A bit irritable, Barry could not conceal some details about the new features:

@unknownuser said:

I hope to see SU improved in v8. Why has development slowed under
Google? I wish it was still owned
by people who care about architects!

Because we look at questions regarding performance on the crappiest
graphics card known to the planet Earth?
b

It's only a guess, but the SU guides have mentioned several times that they are working with full speed on something (secret), presumably a better performing rendering engine...

I found something about painting no two adjacent regions with the same color. I twas used in the past for maps when printing techniques did not allow a large color diversity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem

I think the script would need to check each face's neighbouring faces.

Many thanks for the advice!
There are still some artifacts where light is coming through the walls (gaps of zero width)
When it's finished, I will need to exercise which the best render settings are.

Both answers: "No, not yet"

1. The RSS feeds for searches (for example search a user, sort for date) are quite new. Google sabotaged my own development. Just after I put much efforts in developing a Firefox extension for this, they made the RSS feeds. So I also thought of making a feature to see all new ratings, but I won't risk it anymore.

RSS feeds for comments and ratings have been proposed in the Sketchup group, so we don't know if the will do it or when or if tomorrow.

2. Has also been proposed. Currently the only possibility to get more info about a user is to use the contact feature on the model page. Some modelers have a collection of their models where they have a good description text about themselves.

If you found the materials window, it's not difficult anymore:
just click on this icon
When you click on the "edit" tab, you can edit existing textures and change the image files.

Sketchup materials are stored in .skm files in the Sketchup/materials folder. These are Sketchup specific files that do not contain much more than the texture image plus the dimensions, transparency and evt. the color modifications you did in Sketchup.

I personally prefer to store my textures as normal image files in a folder and import them only when needed. This way, they are also usable for other programs. I can add the dimension in the filename if I need. I chose .png, because it is lossless (in contrast to .jpg) but also compressed (in contrast to .bmp). It also allows transparency. But due to the relatively high filesize, I convert textures before uploading the model in 3d-warehouse.

If I'm not totally wrong, I think the solution is not too difficult.
A Sketchup circle or arc is not the sum of its segments (there are cardinal points and you always edit it later and change the radius). So my idea is that Sketchup has the low poly circle and a hidden real circle for editing the properties. Have you tried right click and explode curve?

And also impressive the last paragraph: combining the two techniques. If they can map the structure and also distinguish the elements, I would not need anymore to struggle with those spectra:

That's like if you take a single molecule in your hands, touch it and feel the structure.

At least I think it's neither anthracene nor tetracene...

Maybe you think about something that interacts with sun light?

This is great! It reminds me on an atlas: There exist also (complicated?) mathematical algorithms that prevent neighbouring faces from having the same color.