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Does anyone know if you can create styles in Ruby?
In particular, I want to use ruby to add a background image to a model.
Al
@thomthom said:
@al hart said:
(And, of course, I am assuming I can place background image into the current style using ruby. Has anyone tried this already?)
This is a good question... I'm not really sure how. I wanted to do something with watermarks via ruby a little bit ago - but I couldn't immediately figure out how. And I never got around to investigate further...
We are considering a free plugin to take HDRi panoramic images and convert them to background images which would work in the current view. (It not as good as having the background automatically change with the view. Although that would be possible later - with a slight pause to grab the new background from the HDRi panorama).
As a first step I tried using the SketchUp Watermark Backgrounds as a vehicle to hold and display the image.
(The idea wold be to automatically create a background image from the HDRi and automatically place it and position it as a background)
Has anyone been using these Watermarks for backgrounds. Do they work well and/or are they a bit cumbersome to use.
(And, of course, I am assuming I can place background image into the current style using ruby. Has anyone tried this already?)
When I use Zoom Area to zoom into the model, the camera moves and Susan disappears.
Is here a ruby somewhere which zooms into an area by changing the field of view rather than moving the camera?
Original View
After Zoom Area
@thomthom said:
@al hart said:
Won't this do what you are looking for?
It would be good to have background that rotate with the model when you orbit the camera, instead of just the static background.
I seem to recall that someone did some work of placing a panoramic image on the inside of a sphere which could then be placed outside of the model.
@jason_maranto said:
3D Studio Max costs US$3,495 -- SketchUp Pro costs $495.
If it isn't $3,000 better than SketchUp then they are being ripped off.
Best,
Jason.
And SketchUp Free is Free!
However, if you are using the product to create a proposal for a potential client and a large project, then any of these prices may be insignificant in your decision.
If one product is actually better - and makes it easier for you to close significant contracts, then the difference in cost is not really important.
You can use watermarks to add foreground and background images to your model.
Won't this do what you are looking for?
We have a lot of trouble with users first starting with 360 degrees HDRI backgrounds. One problem is that the part of the background you see in the image above is about 30 degrees or 1/12 or the whole 360 degrees - so to get good resolution - say 1280 pixels for the background - you need 12 * 1280, or 15,000 pixels in your HDRI image. And a 15,360 x 15,360 pixel image (remember that the HDRI goes 360 degrees in both directions), you need a very large image, just to grab a little of it for the background.
This is necessary if you are using the image for reflections and illumination. But a lot of extra work if you are just using it for a background.
[This is probably getting off-topic]
When 360 HDRIs were "invented" the idea was to stitch together actual photographs to create Panoramic images. But no provision was made in the HDRi format to specify where the sun happened to be when the image was taken, (and what time, date, and location was used for the image). It it were, then we could attempt to rotate the image (automatically) to have the sun direction match the SketchUp sun direction. But, of course, we could not change the date, time or location of the original HDRi image to match the SketchUp sun time. (Since the HDRi image has already been taken)
These backgrounds provide great illumination and reflections. But I, (after admitting to by prejudice in this matter), think that SketchUp should leave the interface and rendering of HDRi backgrounds to the add-on renderers.
HDRI rendering
Original SketchUp Model
@rhplus said:
I checked out V-ray for SU8. There is possibility to use HDRI 360 panoramas as a background and source of natural light in scene, but this is very difficult to positionning this panoramas in accordance to real sun position.My proposition is to enlarge options in styles settings and let set 360 HDRI or raster panorama as a background instead of color sky and ground.
Here is another link from the SketchUp Sage site with some rendering information:
This explains a number of rendering features, such as: Anti-aliasing, Bump Mapping, Depth of Field, Edge Highlighting, Fog, Glow, Morphing, Motion Blur, Non-Photorealistic Rendering, Radiosity, Reflection, Refraction, Shading, Shadows, Soft Shadows, Texture Mapping, Translucency, Transparency — sharp transmission of light through solid objects.
SketchUp model rendered in SketchUp using OpenGL - include lighting and shadows from the sun.
Same model rendered with an add-on rendering package. Demonstrates reflection, and shadows from lights.
We have put out a Beta Test version of IRender nXt which lets you test our new Render Farm.
A Render Farm lets you assign 1 or more high powered computers to do large renderings. You can divide the total rendering into slices, and the Render Farm machines will process the individual slices, and then, when complete, the slices are stitched together to create the final rendering.
We added a couple new features to SpaceDesign - the reporting application for SketchUp.
*Added a feature to extract attributes for all Components in a model, edit them in Excel, reload them, and save them Components into a library. This makes it easier to define attributes for a library of components. See: Attributes
*Added No_Drill attribute setting to make components which should not be drilled into. This lets you create package components - such as a 12-pack which are counted as a package, but for which the individual items in the package are not counted separately. See: NoDrill
@honoluludesktop said:
Al, What about the warnings regarding use on 32 bit systems:
"...........kernel to only 1 GB which may cause some drivers and/or services to fail. ...............). The remainder of 4 GB is allocated to the kernel and can result in failing driver and service configurations....... ". Don't see the value in failing services and drivers, or do I misunderstand?
I was explaining this whole thing to one of our clients:
In general, LAA is not going to make things any faster. The only time it comes into play is when SketchUp actually runs out of memory, which would cause a Bug Splat, or error message. In that case LAA might help you process the larger database.
There have been reports that SketchUp is simply faster for large models with LAA. But I would be surprised if this were true.
Is is very hard to test any of this.
@thomthom said:
@al hart said:
This implies to me that LAA is of some value on 32 but processors as well.
If you enable the 3G switch - but you won't get the full advantage as running under 64bit does.
Yes, but I tried to throw a switch on my 32-bit machine to make it run in 64-bit mode, but I couldn't find the switch. 
Regarding using LargeAddressAware on 32 bit machines.
I found out how to do this, See: LargeAddressAware Thread
AHA! I found the answer to one of my questions - How to enable Vista and Windows 7 to use more address space:
Note: This will make sense for 32-bit processors with 3GB or 4GB RAM
@unknownuser said:
Windows Vista and Windows 7 no longer use the BOOT.INI file, so there is a different method for setting the "3GB" switch which enables to use 3GB of RAM for applications in 32-bit Windows (otherwise they use just 2GB - maximum).
If you want to make accessible 3GB RAM for your CAD applications in Vista/Win7, use the BCDedit.exe tool (Boot Configuration Data Editor). The 3GB memory mode can be enabled with the command:
bcdedit /set IncreaseUserVa 3072
and disabled by the command:
bcdedit /deletevalue IncreaseUserVa
Run this command from a command window with Administrator priviledge - i.e. (in the Start menu) type CMD and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter, or select "Command Prompt" (Accessories), right-click on it and choose "Run as Administrator".
Restart your PC after this change.
I just made the setting. Now I need to reboot to see if it let me use more address space.
I started this separate thread because I did not want to Hijack the SU 8 Upgrade thread
Are you guys trying to hijakck this thread? 
@unknownuser said:
@unknownuser said:
@jhauswirth said:
@unknownuser said:
is that why exporting in SUmac used to be superior?
[just curious]No, by definition, Macs are superior.
Popcorn, anyone?
I ran this about 10 times and SketchUp did not get any larger.
Test.eat_mem(40000000)
@jhauswirth said:
Try-
Test.eat_mem(# bytes)
I know the Ruby scripters like to snoop where they shouldn't (i.e. find undoc'd Ruby commands) so they would have eventually found this.
The page you reference says this:
@unknownuser said:
The first thing most developers notice is that 64-bit processors provide a huge leap in the amount of physical and virtual memory that can be addressed.
* 32-bit applications on 32-bit platforms can address up to 2 GB * 32-bit applications built with the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE:YES linker flag on 32-bit Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 with the special /3gb boot option can address up to 3 GB. This constrains the kernel to only 1 GB which may cause some drivers and/or services to fail. * 32-bit applications built with the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE:YES linker flag on the 32-bit editions of Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7 can address memory up to the number specified by the boot configuration data (BCD) element IncreaseUserVa. IncreaseUserVa can have a value ranging from 2048, the default, to 3072 (which matches the amount of memory configured by the /3gb boot option on Windows XP). The remainder of 4 GB is allocated to the kernel and can result in failing driver and service configurations. For more information about BCD, see Boot Configuration Data on MSDN. * 32-bit applications on 64-bit platforms can address up to 2 GB, or up to 4 GB with the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE:YES linker flag. * 64-bit applications use 43 bits for addressing, which provides 8 TB of virtual address for applications and 8 TB reserved for the kernel.Beyond just memory, 64-bit applications that use memory-mapped file I/O benefit greatly from the increased virtual address space. The 64-bit architecture also has improved floating-point performance and faster passing of parameters. Sixty-four-bit processors have double the number of registers, of both general purpose and streaming SIMD extensions (SSE) types, as well as support for SSE and SSE2 instruction sets; many 64-bit processors even support SSE3 instruction sets.
This implies to me that LAA is of some value on 32 but processors as well.
@thomthom said:
@al hart said:
Also, I was trying this on a 32 but Windows 7 processor. I may need to try it on a 64-but processor.
Yes - LAA is beneficial only for 64bit users. And you must have at least 4GB RAM.
For technical information: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee418798%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
Now, I've never run into a case where SU itself ran out of memory. But when I rendered with V-Ray for SketchUp which runs inside the SketchUp process I have had memory issues. With LAA on I've rendered scenes where SketchUp.exe consumed 3GB+ RAM.
The latest version of SU 8 () adds the /Largeaddressaware property.
@unknownuser said:
In this release, SketchUp is now built using the /Largeaddressaware property on the PC. This change allows SketchUp to potentially allocate/address more memory on 64-bit machines. (Note: 64-bit users must have at least 1.89 GB RAM to see any improvement, and improvement is only noticeable in areas where memory was a limiting factor (e.g exporting images).
This property allows SU 8 to address more than 1.89 GB RAM on some machines.
I decided to test this by trying to get ruby to use large amounts of RAM.
This is fairly easy. The following two commands:
$a1 = []
$a1[100000000] = 1
(100000000 is 100,000,000 - 100 million)
Uses up about 300,000,000 meg of ram.
(You can use Windows Task Manager to see how much RAM SketchUp is actually using)
You would think that if you tried this about 7 times, (using $a1, $a2, $a3, ...) then you could get Ruby to grab about 2 GB of RAM itself. However, it fails on the 4th try with the message: "Error: #<TypeError: can't modify frozen string>"
I suspect Ruby itself may not actually be able to handle that much memory.
Also, I was trying this on a 32 but Windows 7 processor. I may need to try it on a 64-but processor.
When we render, we jump out of the SketchUp process and run a stand alone .EXE, and we are able to have a 64-bit version. However, when extracting the model from SketchUp we are in the SketchUp process - running ruby code and DLLs which share the SketchUp process space. We have to be careful not to use to much RAM, because some of our clients send us models which can just barely fit in SketchUp even without loading our stuff and using it.
I think the answer to one question I am asking is "Is there something 32-bit XP users can do do let SketchUp have more address space" A by product of the answer will be that Render Plus Apps will run better on top of SketchUp as well.
The other question I am asking is "Do you have to do something to the operating to take advantage of LargeAddressAware? For all SketchUp users, that would be nice to know.
@gaieus said:
Al, iRender has been LAA for a while irrespective of SU running behind it, hasn't it? (Or is there a 64 bit version? I can't remember...)
Thanks Gai - it would be nice to see if LAA let SketchUp grow larger for XP users who have 3GB or 4GB RAM and could make use of it.