Thanks TIG. I tried-out V3.0, but I've been sticking with 2.6.1 for now, as it still has the preview option.
![](/uploads/imported_avatars/upload/2cde590848b478d382d186ea9f7f6116_1060.jpg)
Posts made by Alan Fraser
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RE: [Plugin] SketchUcation Tools 2.6.1
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RE: [Plugin] SketchUcation Tools 2.6.1
I realise that the plugin gets its stats from the server, but is there any way to actually delete some of the bundles listed...at least at the UI level? When you've been doing a lot of compatibility testing (as some of us have lately) that list of bundles can get quite lengthy...and not a little confusing.
If there isn't any way of deleting listed bundles, can I put in a feature request for one? There must be some way for management to still monitor what's been downloaded without individual users having to carry that record in perpetuity.
It's got to the point now where I'm just using the plugin as a handy overview, but then downloading and installing the scripts via Preferences > Extensions....which kind of defeats the object. -
RE: Brighter3D
@hornoxx said:
BTW - if B3D doesnΒ΄t run properly, it is worth to consider whether Fredo6 plugins are enabled. If so, B3D recommends to disable these temporarily because of any issues.
I've been working on this. The problem seems to be with ThruPaint and maybe also VisuHole. If you have no need for these, then simply don't install them. There is also Tools, which is a collection of a bunch of smaller scripts...including ThruPaint. Just install those other scripts individually instead of in the Tools package.
I found that I can still use all the big stuff...Tools on Surface, Joint Push Pull, Curviloft etc. without any problem. There's no need to disable everything. -
RE: Typist
You need to repaint her body map, Pete. One of those retro Space 1999 outfits would do.
Great model of a Tie Fighter BTW
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Typist
I'm trying to develop a new series of mapped figures. The main problem seems to be the horrendous Bloatfest that is the SU file format. Exporting this model as a 3ds, you get a total size of around 500KB for everything...the mesh and the texture maps. Yet try as I might, I just can't get the skp fle down to any less than around 3.2MB...quite a difference. The few dozen more triangles I could still get rid of just pale into insignificance.
I think it's because SU's weird mapping system records the UV info randomly and separately for each face instead of having some kind of sensible RLE-type system....really inefficient.Anyhow...given that it's the number of faces that's important to SU navigability...and given that this model does only have 8,700...about 3 times as many as my vertex-painted figures, but orders of magnitude better than anything Poser can do (not that you're allowed to distribute Poser meshes anyway), it shouldn't impact a model too badly.
I hope a few of you find some use for her.PS. I guess she could double as a piano player.
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RE: Brighter3D
Haha! I have only just made the connection between the tagline at the bottom of my posts and your avatar.
What I meant about the materials is that although the Bdrf materials have V-Ray type material icons in their library...showing their colour and shininess, when you actually apply them to the model, they appear on the In Model tab as just white. They do this because the RGB value of all of them is 255,255,255.
So...when you then try to find a particular material in the In Model tab, you are faced with a sea of white squares. You can only tell which one is which by hovering over each one to see its name as a tool tip.It would be much better if each material had a RGB value that more or less represented it's rendering colour....rather like when you switch from textured to shaded mode.
The fact that all the RGB values are the same is at the root of the problem with LibFredo6.rb. Because with that active you can't even change your mind about a material. If you paint a ball with a ceramic material; and then decide to paint it gold instead...SU will not allow you too...because you are trying to paint one RGB value with the same RGB value...so it just ignores you. The new matarial will not appear in the In Model tab...however many times you apply it.
In fact, if LibFredo6 is active, you can't even repaint a suurface with a slightly different RGB value...like 254,254,254. It seems it has to be VERY different. -
RE: Managing Textures
I ran into the same problem after upgrading to Win 10. It took me a while to figure out what was happening. I don't recall permissions ever being any problem before when it comes to Materials.
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RE: Brighter3D
To be honest, I find it rather better for lighting than Twilight. To be able to just pull in a HDRI map and get something like this pretty much straight out of the box is rather impressive. I also like the way the glass top can be fairly easily tweaked so that it doesn't cast dense black shadows on the wood immediately underneath it. That's something else that can take a lot of fiddling in other programs...even if the material is so transparent you can barely see it.
I came across issues with LibFred06.rb in another forum. I'm running Win10 these days and it seems (on that platform at least) that with it enabled SU cannot distinguish between materials of closely-related RGB value. Not good when most of the 100 or so Brdfs in B3D are white.
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Brighter3D
Just a heads-up on what appears to be a sadly neglected but really nice renderer. I only came across it last week, but have been impressed so far. http://www.brighter3d.com/
At $99 for lifetime updates, it's got to be a contender for anyone on a budget. The free version will render up to 640x480.
I deliberately stopped the render of the whisky glass at a mere 13 iterations (it's unbiased) It's a really impressive result for just 63 seconds.
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RE: [SOLVED]Can't view materials
Hi Dew,
Did you solve this problem? If not, is it possible to post the model...or even a small part of it, so that we can see if it's particular to your system or something odd in the model? -
RE: How to Place Medallion on Vessel?
Using plugins to distort that medallion might be problematical. It will almost certainly result in the production of thousands of extremely small faces that may refuse to fill in...and increase the file size even further....possibly fairly drastically
My approach would be to make a slightly bowed medallion to begin with.You could make a boolean intersect with a copy of the vessel and a simple cylinder the same diameter as the medallion. This would give you a rough idea of how bowed the medallion needs to be.
I assume you made the existing medallion by constructing a single segment than making a circular array. You could do exactly the same thing again...only this time start with a segment that rises slightly towards the centre.
This would, in fact, give you a very flat cone, but it would look almost identical to a shape that was curving much like the surface of the vessel. You could then use the scale tool to fine-tune the curvature even closer to that of the vessel, create a face across the underside of the medallion and Push/Pull it into a slight cylinder, then move the whole thing into position on the cup and intersect the two.
The slight cylindrical base of the medallion will bridge any uneven gap between the two objects.
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RE: Stretch Marks
I've noticed this behaviour for several years. It's very erratic and hard to reproduce, but seems to be connected to leaving a group or component selected for several minutes...like if you select something from one file to copy into another. Sometimes, when you return to the original file, the object has partially unsoftened.
This might not be the reason here...but it does happen; and is presumably a bug. I guess I should have reported it before now.
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RE: Hello & Import Question
I'm not quite following the problem. A small section of the file would help. Are you saying that the geometry is duplicated a small way up the blue axis?
If that's the case...and there's no offset on the X or Y axis, you could try the Flatten plugin which will place everything on Z=0.
If you want to get rid of any faces; and there are too many to manually delete, then I'd suggest deleting them using boolean deselection.- Switch to wireframe and select everything. Maybe group it for safety's sake.
- With the group still selected, switch back to normal view, Hold down Shift and lasso select everything again. This will select all the faces (and their new outlines...as they can't exist without them) but will deselect the group.
- Press delete.
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RE: Projected Texture - Help!!
It might not be any use to you...but maybe to others reading this thread...but UU3D also has a truly staggering number of import filters. Basically it will allow you to get almost anything into SU, either directly or via 3ds, dae or kmz.
http://www.unwrap3d.com/u3d/formats.aspx -
RE: Projected Texture - Help!!
About the only way you can do this within SU itself is to get (or manufacture) a profile image of a pronghorn head and neck. import it, then scale it to fit the mesh and simply project it from the side. You'll almost certainly need to work on that image and smudge the edges of the profile further outwards to accomodate any mismatches between the photo and your model...especially things like the antlers and ears. You'll also need to choose a section of plain fur on something like the cheek or neck and project this onto the back of the ears (assuming that you're going to have the proper amount of pinkness and fluffy white ear hair on the other side.) That would just look plain weird on the back.
You will also benefit from having a strip of texture (either somewhere else on the profile image, or as a separate texture completely) which can be used to paint the "seam" between the two halves...as any projected image here is going to be really stretched and nasty-looking. You'll just have to wing this and paint along the seam face by face, finding the best blend you can with the existing projected sides.
Another way of doing this is to simply paint out all the nasty stuff along the seam, using the SU default texture. What you can then do is sample the last faces of the projected texture, paint them onto the adjoining (now plain default) face then r-click and remove the projected attribute. If you've added enough extra stuff around the edges of the image, you can get this to paint normally all the way to the seam.
Using a mixture of these two techniques, I made a herd of Fresians a while back. For proper mapping of this kind of thing, you'd be better investing in Ultimate Unwrap 3D. The UV Tools plugin for SU has a function allowing you to export and import UVs to a proxy obj file, which in turn allows you to use UU3D almost like a built-in mapping module.
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RE: How do I fill in these shapes?
AS Elisei says...sometimes with more complex shapes SU needs a bit of coersion to fill-in. I'm thinking in terms of a shape like a hollow hemisphere with an interior and exterior skin (like a wooden fruit bowl). If you'd produced those two surfaces separately and needed to join them together across the cut section of the thickness of the material, you'd probably have to make a few zigzags from the inside to outside surface in order to get a sectional face on it.
In your case, it's probably that little centre circle that's causing the problem. It's pretty much the same scenario...just a smaller interior. -
RE: How do I fill in these shapes?
There are a number of different Flatten scripts in the Ruby section you can use to ensure that all the points are coplanar. Just type Flatten ruby in the search box up above.
But you might also want to try throwing a diagonal or two across the problem shapes, just to make sure that there aren't any microscopic gaps. Obviously...if there is a gap...the shape will fill-in on the side of the diagonal that doesn't contain it. If you do find this to be so, you can zero-in on the fault by trying a succession of such diagonals...filling-in more and more of the shape until you're left with the culprit section. -
RE: Need a few pointers for training
Nothing more than the Scale tool. I selected all the faces on one end, except for the final loop that takes you to the centreline. Then I squashed them slightly. Then I did exactly the opposite to the two loops either side of the centreline...stretched them.
Obviously, all you then have to do is to repeat step 1 at the other end. However, as I didn't note the scale factor when I squashed the first end...and to get it exactly the same at the other end, I actually cut the whole lozenge in half down the centreline, duplicated it (using Ctrl+Move) flipped the copy and joined the two halves back together again.
It sounds complicated, but actually took less time to do than describe.
It sounds like you're coming along just fine. I'm sure there will be hurdles...not least making sure the stl file is completely watertight, but you can rest assured that you can print just about anything in 3D from SketchUp...however curvy and organic.
It's a pretty lousy photo on my phone, but I actually managed to turn thisinto this.
I lost the fine detail on the end of the barrel...but this was quite a few years back
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RE: Need a few pointers for training
Normally, I'd advise people to get a complete grounding in the native toolset of SU before starting to use plugins, but I hope this example will give you an idea of general work flow. You can navigate the attached model by clicking through the scene tabs...showing how to get from a simple cuboid block to the finished fob case.
How you get the key in there is your problem.
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RE: Face won't close, z coordinates the same
First check that all the corners are actually connected. Zoom right in if necessary. Assuming that they are, and whilst still zoomed in, check that there aren't any microscopic line stubs hanging around...either in-line as part of an edge, or sticking out perpendicular to an edge.
90% of the time I've encountered this problem it's been due to small, unwanted sections of edge.