You should go to:

http://www.renderplus.com/pdf/download.htm

to get the latest version of IRender nXt - HH01a.

(You mention the preview window. That is no longer used in the latest version of IRender nXt - so it is possible you are using IRender V2.0, or an earlier version of IRender nXt)

We have not had any crash reports with this latest version (although it is always possible that we will see some crashes)

If you still get crashes with this version, let us know, and send your model to

if you can so we can try it here.

(Usually are crashes are not related to OpenGL settings. They are more likely caused by large models, and with some problems we have been having extracting the data properly for the renderings.)

You can attach images to Forum postings using the Upload Attachment tab.

You can email images or .SKP files to

Send a .SKP model to

and we will take a look.

One problem though Gai - you ask the user for his/her email address, but are sending the email using your own server.

If you PHP could issue a mail-to, then the user would send the email from his/her own email program and you would be more likely to get a good email address.

That would be a good way to do it Gai - just put my email in the signature.

Would you be willing to share the HTML source for your signature and also the PHP file?

You can post them here, or send them to: (oops - almost made the same mistake again. - See the email address in the previous posting)

I have decided to try to avoid some email spam by not posting my email addresses directly onto forums.
(I just removed emails from my website by using a JavaScript encoding method)

Does anyone have a good suggestion.

e.g. al.hart.AT.renderplus.AT.com

or using an image

Or a link to an email URL: http://www.renderplus.com/pdf/contact.htm

What do you do, or what would you prefer?

Or can the forum provide a better solution.

• I could ask for only private messages, but I would prefer to get real emails which are quicker to find or read.
• Also, I want to be able to get emails from non-registered users.

@anssi said:

For me the download stopped at about 3,7 Mb, and I had to force-quit IE.

Anssi

If you are still having a problem with the download, let us know and we will provide a HTTP URL (sometimes FTP URLs fail)

Although we have our own Forum for IRender nXt:

http://nxt.accurender.com/forums/146.aspx

I think many SketchUp users would prefer to post all their SketchUp related questions at a single forum. I was hoping that SCF wanted to be just that - a place for all questions relating to SketchUp - (SketchUp itself, 3D Warehouse, COntent providers, Ruby and other extensions, Renderers, other apps, etc.)

By making the add-ons section more flexible (i.e. a sub-forum for any add-on which requests it), we would make it easier for users to post their questions to the proper sub-forum, to read questions about the add-on, and to subscribe to questions about the add-on)

We have taken IRender nXt for SketchUp and ported it to Revit 2009.

We believe that most Revit users also use SketchUp because it is so much easier to do your early prototyping in SketchUp and then move the model to Revit later. If you are both a SketchUp and Revit user, it may be valuable to be able to use the same high-end renderer for both products.

Take a look at the free beta test version at: http://nxt.accurender.com and let us know what you think.

@unknownuser said:

Just moving the file (date.rb) somewhere else won't fix anything.

No, It will only help next time when I find it in Tools and think it is part of SketchUp rather than a file installed by Render Plus.

Thanks Todd,

I'm also trying to get the user to type in:

::DateTime.now to see if that causes it to use DateTime rather than Fx::DateTime

I'll try putting date.rb somewhere else and see if I can get it to work.

@unknownuser said:

SketchUp doesn't have a date.rb. Where did that come from?

AHA - that's part of the mystery. We are installing date.rb from ruby 1.8.5 ourselves.
(We install several base ruby things such as Win32API.so and date)

Still - I would like to know which plugins are installing the Fx::DateTime.

I have a client who is getting this error:

undefined method `now' for Wx::DateTime:Class

for the statement DateTime.now

When I type in an illegal function for DateTime (e.g. DateTime.xxx) I get this error

Error: #<NoMethodError: (eval):196: undefined method `xxx' for DateTime:Class>

With no mention of WX. I suspect the client may have another ruby script which is defining its own DateTime class.

I see that the Wx::DateTime class does exist for ruby.

Is anyone using it?

Has anyone heard of it?

Can anyone think of how I can force my .rb files to use the DateTime defined in SketchUp's date.rb?

Google SketchUp 6\Tools\date.rb(1092):class DateTime < Date

Thanks Gaius,

It looks like 320 x 240 and 640 x 480 were the defaults I was looking for.

I'll have to check out Google Video - I presume it is something different than YouTube?

[added later}
I'm not sure Google's explanation helps me understand the difference:

@unknownuser said:

Why would a user want to upload to Google Video versus YouTube – or Picasa for that matter, which was recently announced?

Google's vision is to enable anyone to find, upload, view and share content worldwide, and we offer a variety of platforms for users to upload a variety of content -- which includes video as well as images.

Over time, Google Video will become even more comprehensive as it evolves into a service where users can search for the world's online video content, irrespective of where it may be hosted. This is part of Google's overall goal to give users the highest quality search results possible. For example, some users who do a Google search for Martin Luther King, Jr. may want to find websites about him. Others may want to see images of him. Others may want to watch video footage.

Ultimately, we envision most user-generated and premium video content being hosted on YouTube so that it can further enhance the YouTube experience.

The new nXt engine, built into IRender nXt tries very hard to create great renderings with its default settings.

This image from the 3D Warehouse was rendered with the default settings:
(The ground was a Google Earth image in the 3D Warehouse model)

Here is an example of another 3D Warehouse model rendered with the default settings:

I hope you can appreciate the subtle lighting and shadow effects produced by the nXt default lighting model, and the good overall brightness produced by the nXt defaults. It is easy to adjust the brightness after the rendering is complete, but the default brightness is very good. Both of these images took less than 10 minutes to render, using IRender Lite (the low end version).

You can improve the images if you do set some lighting and reflection options (transparent windows are automatically reflective), but you can get very good renderings with the default settings.

For more on IRender, see: http://wiki.renderplus.com/index.php?title=IRender_nXt

As people add replies to this post, I would be interested in what the best resolutions are for YouTube videos - and for other videos.

The Render and other-apps selection would be good.

I think Coen can stay "neutral" if he simply creates any sub-forums which vendors request.
It would only be "non-neutral" if he refused to let some vendors have sub-forums.

I think we would all like a single place to search for, or discover, items relating to SketchUp without having to go to different forums every time we need something.

When Coen allowed a sub-forum for Render Plus applications, I immediately dropped the Render Plus forum. However, if I cannot "subscribe" to a sub-forum where users can make posts regarding Render Plus applications, then I will have to reinstate the Render Plus forums again. However, I would much rather keep them here.

I have an idea.

How about if we create a sub-forum for third party add-ons and let anyone who wants to request a sub-forum for their application.

This might create a whole lot of sub-forums. But it might also be a great value for SketchUp users who use third party applications.

If it creates too many sub forums, perhaps we could add categories of sub-forums (or sub-sub-forums) to organize it better.

Then someone looking for help for a particular application, for instance SpecifiCAD, could navigate to (and bookmark) the sub-forum.

I have to agree ("put back the sub-forums for this forum")

I moderate the Render Plus sub-forum and I can no longer find a good way to get notified when a new posting is made to the Render Plus sub-forum.

@notcourse6 said:

All,

Hi,

Per Al's response on the forums, here is my sketchup model. I've probably missed something essential in rendering; do you all have a user guide prepared, perhaps in a pdf format? Thanks!

Thanks,
-Ricardo-

Model

The problem with this model is that you had turned the Ambient Light slider to 100%. This should have worked - but didn't. ( We will fix it. ) Slide it back to 50% or 90%. If you want to turn ambient light completely off, use the Ambient light radio box on the Sun/Sky tab.

Documentation

All of the documentation is on-line in our Wiki. We hope to create a PDF document sometime so it will be easy to print it out.

This one talks about lights:

http://wiki.renderplus.com/index.php?title=IRender_Tutorial_-_Lights

and the basic tutorial adds some lights to a simple model

http://wiki.renderplus.com/index.php?title=IRender_Tutorial