We have uploaded Version 4.0 of IRender nXt and nXtRender. You can download them from: Downloads

Here is a summary of the New Features in 4.0

Volumetric Fog
Create 3D PDF
Save Rendered Image Wizard
Works properly with SketchUp 8
Integrated Lighting Channels
Material Channels
Planar HDRi Backgrounds
Path Tracer
Image Filters
Post Processing Wizard

Thanks Box - I probably added too much information to the question.

Here is a shorter question:

@unknownuser said:

Can you recommend a good place to stay in France - about an hour from the Musee D-Orsay (presumably their are train stations and connections which make one direction better than another) - where I might be able to find a rental Villa with cooking facitilies for about a week.

Al

I have been to France a lot, but would like to make another visit.

I have two (very different) main desires:

1. To be able to visit the Musée d'Orsay 2 or 3 times - to really have a chance to see things, read about them, and then see them again.

2. To stay someplace where I can purchase some food items at a market and cook some meals on my own.

• I live in a country where almost every chicken is the same size, tastes the same, etc. I seem to remember seeing markets in France with lots of different options for the same types of food items.

(I once worked for a subsidiary of a company which distributed chickens - their "secret of success" was to ship each chicken as far West as they could, even if that meant shipping chickens a day or two to another city where they also processed chickens, to sell the 2 day old chickens there and to ship the local chickens even further west. They also processed flour with exactly the opposite goal - ship all the wheat as far east as they could before processing it)

So I am looking for either:

A. Someplace to stay in Paris where I can do both, or

B. Someplace to stay outside of Paris with a good train connection to the Musée d'Orsay, so I can get there in about 1 hour.

Any suggestions?

IRender works surprisingly well with multi-core, large RAM, 64 bit machines.

I say "surprisingly well" because I have been guilty of explaining in the past how 64-bit won't really speed things up much if you are not running out of RAM, and except in a few special circumstances, it is difficult to create a model large enough in SketchUp to need more than 2GB of RAM while rendering. (There are easy, but non-realistic cases - such as placing a 1GB images on faces in SketchUp to use up lots of RAM - or placing a component in SketchUp and placing 2 million instances of it in the model. But running out of RAM is rarely a problem)

Nevertheless these 64-bit 8-GB RAM machines are working very well. We are limited to 32-bit space while making setting in SketchUp and while extracting the model for rendering - but once the rendering starts things take off. The cores and RAM are used quite efficiently. We have even found slight improvements on 4-core machines by assigning 8 cores to the renderer. (It bends my mind to figure out why this would be the case - but it seems to be true)

Also, Large Address Aware, (which SketchUp is now), actually works on 64 bit machines - whereas it only cripples along with 32-bit machines.

@rock1 said:

Suppose a PC has 12 GB RAM, running windows 7 - 64 bit. SU being a 32 bit app can't consume beyond 4 GB of RAM. This applies to its renderers too. If I open 2 windows of SU, put a scene for rendering in each of them, can the total consumption of RAM reach : 4 GB + 4 GB = 8 GB ?. i.e. 4 GB for each render?

@felderup said:

meshout, intended for imvu models, exports to the native imvu xml format, maybe that'd do ya.

Is that included in the SkethchUp SDK?

I do not get nil if I type in $xxx.copy where $xxx is not defined:

@unknownuser said:

$xxx
nil
$xxx.copy
Error: #<NoMethodError: undefined method `copy' for nil:NilClass>
(eval):95

However, I agree that it would have been helpful if he had typed in $beam_group for me.

He sent me his ruby console:

@unknownuser said:

new_group = $beam_group.copy
nil
new_group = $beam_group.copy
nil

He was supposed to enter:

@unknownuser said:

$beam_group
new_group = $beam_group.copy

I have asked him to try some more things.
He says that he is on vacation, so we cannot try anything else until next week.

@tig said:

I'll wager that he is misunderstanding and typing $beam_group or $beam_groupcopy... and then getting 'nil' as that doesn't exist ?
It's really difficult to test things 'at a distance'.
Tell him to copy+paste $beam_group**.**copy rather than re-typing it - you must know how dumb some people can be !

Thanks for your thoughts TIG.

Inside our ruby we use just 'beam_group'. I added $beam_group = beam_group to the ruby to make it easier to debug the problem the client is having.

I asked him to type in just $beam_group and report the results, but he failed to do that.

Our ruby file does trace the value of beam_group just before the error occurs, ("beam_group: #Sketchup::Group:0xfa63fec"), so it is probably an actual group. If it something else, (except for a few things), then $beam_group.copy would return an error rather than nil.

It is difficult to determine whether it made a copy and failed to report it, since the client is in a different time continent and time zone.

You are right about empty groups, I just tried:

$beam_group.entities.clear! and
$beam_group.copy

and if worked (returned a non nil value).

And, (of course ) The whole process works on my machine.

I will ask him to run all this in an empty model, so I can see what the beam group looked like before it tried to copy it and if anything did get copied. (The whole process stops after the error on the next line when I try to use the 'nil' copy.

This is all part of a ruby which creates parallel semi-transparent light beams to emulate a smokey light effect.

I have a client who is getting a problem when we execute copy on a group.

the group is saved in $beam_group, and I had him type in:

$beam_group.copy

and Ruby returns 'nil' (Which means that the command $beam_group.copy did not return anything. - Usually it returns something like: #Sketchup::Group:0xf9c8d94)

Can anyone think of a time when group.copy has failed?

Can anyone thing of a time that you cannot copy a group?

(I just created the group myself previously in the Ruby)

I will ask him to type in:

$beam_group.entities

and

$beam_group.entities.length

That might give me a clue.

We used to use a project, Win32_commandline, which SketchUp provided in their SDK to import SketchUp drawings into other CAD systems. They do not seem to have it in their SDK anymore.

Our .SKP importer works with SU 7, but not with Su 8.

There is another project called SkpToXML, which may have replaced it.

Has anyone been able to create a .EXE or a .DLL which reads SU 8 .SKP files for conversion to other formats, and if so, would they being willing to share it.

@honoluludesktop said:

Al, There is a snippet developed and posted here by Chris F. that scans the SketchUp window one pixel at a time, and identifies the face at that location. Not 100% accurate, but perhaps you can start with that?

Thanks for the idea. This is probably what the client really wanted - only those faces which we actually visible on the screen.

I was looking for the opposite - the components or other geometry whose bounding box contains, or intersects the screen.

Both might be handy

Ah I wish I had that elusive link to Chris's script or the thread that mentions it.

I tried searching for "one pixel" and for "invisible" but I didn't find it.

OK - here is Al again, trying to see if someone has already written something before we try to write it.

A client asks:

@unknownuser said:

Is there a way for sketch-up to only process what is visible

I explained:

@unknownuser said:

We don't have anything like that yet.

We have avoided it, because sometimes "invisible" items are included in reflections or shadows, lighting, or might add indirect, lighting.

Also, by "invisible", we would mean - not visible on the screen in wire frame mode - we would not mean "behind a wall", behind glass, in a recessed ceiling, etc."

Still, it might be a nice feature. Does anyone have a ruby which selects or identifies visible, (top level), geometry only that he could use to select "visible" items, (and then use our "process selected items only" features?

@unknownuser said:

I would be curious what he's doing with the .jpg's. I wonder if he's just wanting to use the .jpg's as a replacement for thumbnails since they don't work for many people. If so perhaps, he should try MysticThumbs instead which would be a better solution.

-Brodie

One of the problems thumbnail processing may have is that "modern" thumbnail generators can make large thumbnails for Vista and Windows 7, but programs which haven't been updated much still make old XP sized thumbnails.

Here is an image of "Extra Large" Windows 7 thumbnails for a folder with images, movies and SketchUp models:

So things that want to process thumbnails well may not have much to work with with SketchUp thumbnails.

I was thinking of a simple script to load all .skp files in a folder and save a .JPG of the current view and screen size.

If I can't load a .SKP and save a view and continue in the same .rb file, I could use a DOS .bat file with a bunch of calls to SkethchUp.exe -RubyStartup save_image.rb

.BAT cleverly waits for the first SketchUp.exe to exit before starting the next one.

A request from a Render Plus Forum user:

@unknownuser said:

I have a need to print or render a few hundred SketchUp files to JPG, does anyone know of an app that can do such a thing without touching every file?

I told him:

@unknownuser said:

I will put this request on the SCF Forum. If there is not a ruby for this I will make one.

Each one would create a JPG in the last used view.

Do you want a specific pixel width for the images, or would you just use the last size SketchUp was in.

Are all the .SKP files in a folder, or do you want to make a list of files to be converted?

I like that MSE is actually finding some viri on my machine. e.g. MyDoom which was sent to me in an email at an attachment with the suspicious name of "renderplus.com.zip". (AVG hadn't reported any viri for a long time)

Unfortunately I had already deleted the email, (without knowing it had a virus attached), so I don't know who tried to send it.

@unknownuser said:

What is the plural of virus? This neuter in Latin lacked a plural; it would presumably have been virora like corpora, the plural of neuter corpus. (corpi would be as outlandish--as far beyond the pale--as rhinoceri and octopi.)

Earlier this week I uninstalled AVG on my machines and installed Windows Security Essentials. WSE automatically disables Windows Defender, since only WSE is needed.

[Edit: changed installed AVG to uninstalled AVG]

@unknownuser said:

So you are running both AVG and WSE at the same time? Any conflicts?

Oops - the first word "installed" should have said "uninstalled". (I will edit my post.)

I was sick and tired of AVG for lots of reasons. It simply used too much resource by trying to protect me too much.

It has been three years since it found a virus. So I think that other things - Spam filters, Windows itself, etc. are protecting me a lot these days.

I'm making a new post to this thread because I wanted to try out this model with a Volumetric Fog effect: