I agree, it must be hard to judge rendering products by looking at the Gallery images. We used to have a designer using our 256-color rendering product for ARRIS CAD, 15 years ago, who could make just great renderings. His secret was to use lights and materials very carefully, and it usually took him 3 to 5 days to create the model and get a great Rendering. Also, he had a great "eye" for what made a good rendering. (Russell H. I hope you recognize yourself if you are reading this.)

We are currently implementing a new rendering engine, Nxt, created by the original developer of AccuRender. (See: http://nxt.accurender.com) Nxt does much better things with reflected light, reflections, HDRI skies, etc. And it will be a user option to select IRender or Nxt as the renderer (light, material settings, etc. will work with either renderer.)

We are working on a similar interface to Kerkythea which will use the IRender lights, SketchUp lights, light fixtures, material wizards, mirrors, Render Ready Components, etc. and export them for use with Kerkythea. We're not sure people will purchase IRender just as a front end for Kerkythea, but as we put more and more effort into making it easier to define your rendering in SketchUp, it might be worth it to have a product which lets you choose multiple renderers.

Since Kerkythea is free, this is an relatively easy project and will probably make it easier for people who prefer Kerkythea to create SketchUp models which work with it. (If any other renderer suppliers are interested in taking advantage of our SketchUp interfaces, let us know.)

I will be interested in your thoughts and those of other SketchUp users.

@chippwalters said:

Stinkie,

A very interesting subject. Judging a renderer by the quality of it's users renders. I, too, agree with what you say-- for the most part. But, I do find it interesting Biebel and maybe 1 or 2 others have really been able to push Podium to the photoreal level. I wonder how much of it is Podium and how much of it is the artist (I have my own ideas;-)

So, the thought becomes, how does a rendering package, like IRender, woo the render geniuses, aka Biebel, into their OWN fold. I would imagine Biebel, with his sensibilities, could create much better with IRender than what is currently in their gallery. Though, who knows.

The real fact is, many of us use vendors galleries as a measuring stick, and make purchase decisions based on what can be done. IMO, this is the reason for the success of packages like Podium and e-on's Vue as well. Just a single look at 'the best of the best' tells serious users what a package is capable of.

Ooops - sorry - It should have read "Rarely turn skies on for SketchUp"

I have fixed it

We were arguing (discussing) today about whether people use the default color for SketcUp skies, change the color, (or perhaps don't use skies that much at all.

Let me know how you use them.

Re MEMORY STICK

This should be possible. You should be able to copy the contents of C:\Program Files\Render Plus Systems\3D_PDF onto a memory stick, place it into a computer and run skp_to_3d_pdf.exe from the memory stick.

We will give it a try.

However, I can think of a few problems.

1. Some Visual Studio DLL's may not be on the target computer.

If we discover what they are, then they can be copied onto the memory stick and that may work (or we may have to create a new release of 3D PDF with the missing DLLs)

2. You will not be licensed to run RPS 3D PDF on the target machine.

I don't know how we will solve this problem. We can discuss it after you get the comcept working properly.

There are 2 other solutions to the general problem.

1. You can "remote log in" to your own computer, which is licensed for RPS 3D PDF from the client machines, run RPS 3D PDF remotely, load a file from the client machine and process it.

2. You can bring your portable computer with you to the client location, put the .SKP file from the client machine onto your portable, and use your portable to create the PDF file.

Re MAC Version

RPS does not plan any MAC versions of its Plug-ins at this time.

Shadows would be "possible" in RPS 3D PDF - but very difficult for us to implement.

U3D, (the underlying format), itself, does not do shadows (as far as we know). If anyone has seen other 3D PDF products which do shadows, let us know.

So, to do shadows, we would have to places textures on each shadowed face which already had the shadows on them. This is "possible", but very difficult, and it would probably create a PDF file which was too large to use properly.

We have seen some approaches which use .AVI movies, rather than 3D PDF to create presentations with shadows. SketchUp can do this with sun shadows already, or you can use IRender to create movies with reflections and shadows from point lights as well as the sun.

Thanks for the ideas.

1. Pasting components with mateirals

I just tested pasting a component which had materials with the same name as materials already in my model. It renamed the old materials using square braces.

0001_PaleVioletRed - was in my model already
[0001_PaleVioletRed]1 - was the renamed, pasted material

• So it looks like were going to have to modify the code which checks for carets to check for square braces as well.

2. SU 5 models

I downloaded the original model from the 3D Warehouse.

• When I load it in SU 5 - it has no carets on material names
• When I load it into SU 6 - all material names have carets.

I tried a new SU 5 model, and the same thing happens when you load it into SU 6.

Again, thanks for your ideas on this - it put me on the right track.

I am trying to store a raster image on a material to use as a bump map when rendering.

Since raster images (.jpg or .png files) can be large, I am trying to store it without making it too much bigger.

We are currently converting it to a hex string, which makes it twice as large.

You cannot store 4 binary bytes in a ruby fixnum because ruby only stores 31 bits in a Fixnum, before it switched to a bignum, which is longer than 1 word. And you cannot store a Bignum as a SketchUp attribute.

Try:

model = Sketchup.active_model
i1 = 0xaabbccdd # 32 bit integer, which cannot be stored in a Fixnum
puts i1.class
# returns 'Bignum'
model.set_attribute('test','bignum',i1)
# returns Error; #<RangeError; bignum too big to convert into `int'>

I would like to store a "binary" String (which use all values 0-255 for each character) in a SketchUp attribute.

SketchUp seems to truncate String attributes which contain a 0, and also seems to convert strings to multi-byte format when they are in extended ansi format.

We currently are converting our "binary" strings to hex strings - but this involves a 2 to 1 increase in size.

I have tried "unpacking" the string into an array of FixNums using L* and N* format, which should have created FixNum's - but "unpack" created some BigNum's which SketchUp won't process.

Has anyone found a way to store binary data in an attribute without having to hex encode it?

Does anyone remember why some material names contain <> around them?

I have an older model with the material: <Wood-floor-light> and a newer model with the material: Wood_Floor_Light. Both came from SketchUp material libraries.

We had so much spam in the Wiki that we had to shut it down to manual registrations.o

Send me you email address, and desired screen name and I will add you as a user.

Thanks for the response.

I go to the SketchUp Material Window and use Save As, and then view the XML after loading the .SKM file with WinZip.

The .XML is not part of the process, I was just using it to see if SketchUp had saved the attributes materials properly.

Note: This is not a problem creating materials and saving them into the.SKP file. I wanted to be able to put Attributes on a material, save it in a library, use the material in a different drawing and have the attributes still be valid.

Here is the process:

1. Select a SketchUp Material and place it on a face.
2. Place more than 1 attribute directly on the material.
3. Use the SketchUp materials window to save the material as a .SKM file.
4. Start a new SketchUp session and a new drawing.
5. Select the .SKM material with the SketchUp materials window
6. Query the material to see if the attributes are still set.

If you can do all this, I would love to have the .SKM file for the material, and also a new model with a single face in which you have placed the material.

This would be a great help for me if we could get it to work.

Al

Thanks Gai. I searched there and could not find what I was looking for. But it is good to know that it is there.

I remembered what we had to do (finally).

If, during execution of ruby, you change the model, (even just adding an attribute), then all smoothing normals are lost. They get restored when the ruby exits. But you cannot use them -- for instance when exporting faces from Ruby -- unless you let the ruby routine (and any routines which called it), exit first.

We get around this by altering the drawing, and then executing the next function with a 0 length timer. This causes the second function to get executed after the first function completes.

This code will not work because the normals do not get recalculated.

def do_export
    Sketchup.active_model.active_entities.set_attribute("t1","t2","t3")
    export_data # calls another ruby to export faces and normals
    # normals are not recalculated properly after the model was changed...
end#def

def export_data
    #export the data
end#def

This code, which sets the attribute and then uses a time to execute "export_data", will work properly.

def do_export
    Sketchup.active_model.active_entities.set_attribute("t1","t2","t3")
    # use time to run second routine after model cleanup
    UI.start_timer(0, false) {UI.stop_timer(id); export_data}
end#def

def export_data
    #export the data
end#def

I seem to remember that there is some command you can issue to get SketchUp to clean up or repair the model, but I can't remember what it is. If anyone remembers, let me know!

About a year ago I had a problem where a model would "re glue" its components when it did a save. I discovered something I called to get the model to check, update, validate (or something) itself after I performed an operation - such as moving a component - so it would reglue things.

I remember posting the problem and the solution on the SketchUp ruby forum, but that forum is gone now and I cannot find it.

Can anyone remember what operation you pass in Ruby to get SketchUp to repair the model after an edit

and/or

does anyone know if the ruby forum posts are archived anywhere>

@unknownuser said:

Sketchup.get_locale
en-US

Has anyone noticed that the local for the US is now en-US?

Or is this a setting I missed somewhere?

I finally got around to trying to store some attributes on a material. It worked fine for attributes in my model, but when I saved the attribute as a material and tried to reuse it the attributes were lost.
[Note: I added some additional detail to this posting after it was originally posted.]

Here is a Ruby script to place some attributes on a material.

def test_atts
		model = Sketchup.active_model
		material = model.materials[0]
		material.set_attribute("dict1","att11","value_11")
		material.set_attribute("dict1","att12","value_12")
		material.set_attribute("dict1","att13","value_13")
		material.set_attribute("dict2","att21","value_21")
		material.set_attribute("dict2","att22","value_22")
		material.set_attribute("dict2","att23","value_23")
		material.set_attribute("dict3","att31","value_21")
		material.set_attribute("dict3","att32","value_22")
		material.set_attribute("dict3","att33","value_23")	
	end#def

I can fetch the attributes just fine from the Material in SketchUp:

But when I load that material into another model and place it on a face, the attributes are wrong.

Here is the XML code for the attributes from the saved material.
(This is extracted from the .SKM file saved by SketchUp using WinZip.)
(They are correct. So I presume SketchUp is not reading these properly when it saves the materials.)

- <n0;AttributeDictionaries count="3">
- <n0;AttributeDictionary count="3" name="dict1">
  <n0;Attribute key="att11" type="10">value_11</n0;Attribute> 
  <n0;Attribute key="att12" type="10">value_12</n0;Attribute> 
  <n0;Attribute key="att13" type="10">value_13</n0;Attribute> 
  </n0;AttributeDictionary>
- <n0;AttributeDictionary count="3" name="dict2">
  <n0;Attribute key="att21" type="10">value_21</n0;Attribute> 
  <n0;Attribute key="att22" type="10">value_22</n0;Attribute> 
  <n0;Attribute key="att23" type="10">value_23</n0;Attribute> 
  </n0;AttributeDictionary>
- <n0;AttributeDictionary count="3" name="dict3">
  <n0;Attribute key="att31" type="10">value_21</n0;Attribute> 
  <n0;Attribute key="att32" type="10">value_22</n0;Attribute> 
  <n0;Attribute key="att33" type="10">value_23</n0;Attribute> 
  </n0;AttributeDictionary>
  </n0;AttributeDictionaries>

I saved the loaded material and looked in its XML file and the attributes were messed up.
(This is extracted from the .SKM file saved by SketchUp using WinZip.)
(The material was loaded and saved using the SketchUp Materials Window.)

- <n0;AttributeDictionaries count="3">
- <n0;AttributeDictionary count="1" name="dict1">
  <n0;Attribute key="att11" type="10">value_11</n0;Attribute> 
  </n0;AttributeDictionary>
- <n0;AttributeDictionary count="1" name="dict1">
  <n0;Attribute key="att11" type="10">value_11</n0;Attribute> 
  </n0;AttributeDictionary>
- <n0;AttributeDictionary count="1" name="dict1">
  <n0;Attribute key="att11" type="10">value_11</n0;Attribute> 
  </n0;AttributeDictionary>
  </n0;AttributeDictionaries>

Has anyone else run into this?

SketchUp - are you working on a fix?

Thanks.

That worked and also create a multi-byte string, rather than an extended ansi string.

I am trying to work out how to support Extended Ansi characters in ruby.

I can execute these two statements from the ruby console:

satt1 = "Grösse" 
satt2 = "Größe"

(The first word doens't exist but it highlights that the umlauted-o works, but not the double-SS character)

But when I include them in ruby source, the second will not load into Ruby.

	def test_att1	
		satt1 = "Grösse"	
		printf("SATT1; %s\n",satt1)
	end#def
	def test_att2	
		satt2 = "Größe"	
		printf("SATT2; %s\n",satt2)
	end#def

The word Größe is stored in the source file as extended Ascii: (hex) 47 72 94 E1 65

Is there a way to convert extended Ascii to multi-byte characters and/or can I switch to using Unicode?

I am using MSVC for my ruby editor - is there a way to enter accented characters better in MSVC?

Re: RPS 3D PDF

• There is no difference the free trial version and the full version except:

a. The free trial version include the "Created with the trial version..." phrase

b. The free trial version with create 3D PDFs, but will not create U3D files

c. And, of course, we expect that if the 3D PDF helps your business, you will want to purchase a copy to help fund the development.

It cannot handle large models (about 15 meg or so). We have a few tricks to help with the larger modes - such as resampling the texture images to make them smaller. But some models are just too big to process.

• One of the main reasons we chose the Adobe 3D PDF format is that clients are much more willing to update their Adobe Reader (and probably have the proper version already), then they are to download other 3rd party programs.

We're going to add some non SketchUp AccuRender images to the gallery.

We use the same plant and material libraries as AccuRender, the same lighting models and the same renderer, so we can get images just as good as those that AutoCad and Rhino users get with AccuRender (and Flamingo).

Here is the gallery for AccuRender: http://gallery.mcneel.com/?g=43

In addition, we are currently interfacing the new version of AccuRender (AccuRender Nxt). This should be ready for Beta testing in 30 days. This is a brand new renderer which does a much better job with reflected light and materials.

You can see more about AccuRender Nxt at: http://nxt.accurender.com/

Finally, one of our recent clients had just the opposite view about the images on the gallery:

@unknownuser said:

ok i take back the comment about the images in the gallery, i found some nice ones

See his comments and images at: http://forums.renderplus.com/showthread.php?t=677