Wow definitely cool but kinda scary at the same time.

Edit:glad to see I'm not the only one who thought its a little scary too.

Its funny how Pittsburgh is described as a steel mill city or with a rust belt image, when it actually hasn't been that for 20 or 30 years already. We actually have quite a few high tech companies based in Pittsburgh and most of the steel mills have been torn down and replaced with shoping centers or parks ( http://pittsburgh.about.com/od/shopping_malls/p/waterfront.htm http://pittsburgh.about.com/od/amusement_parks/p/sandcastle.htm , sorry I couldn't post better sites, kinda in a hurry this morning). We also have quite a diverse cultural district and a large open market area (http://pittsburgh.about.com/od/shopping_malls/p/waterfront.htm ) I also don't think that we've been hit as hard as the rest of the country by the econmic crisis, yes a lot of large companies like Bayer, Glaxo Smith Klien, Alcoa, have had alot of lay offs but our housing market has been pretty stable and work has been a little thin in the last few months but it looks like things are starting to pick up again. And of course we got the Steelers winning the Super Bowl and now the Peguins trying to win the Stanley Cup, even though these events seem insignificant compared to the current world situation, I think it helps with the city's overall morale.

Mike

Watching the announcement that the next G 20 summit will be hosted in Pittsburgh, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm2xH4plPXI , and hearing the press reaction to it made me wonder how we're viewed. I know we're not usually on the world stage but I'm interested if forum members have heard of Pittsburgh Pennslyvania, what they've heard about it, and their opinions of Pittsburgh, if they have any.

Mike

Boo, did you ever get this straigtened out?

You can also try to adjust adaptive amount under dmc sampler to .85

Mike

You can try something like this, see attached skp, but I would lower the arc segments so it wouldn't be so high poly, if you turn on hidden geometry, you'll see what I mean.
@ lucifer, thats not exactly right about an external renderer, SU accepts transparent pngs and if you were refering to getting somewhat correct shadows you can cut around the image by hand or use Rick W image profile plugin

Mike

Bristles.skp

You'd probably do better asking this at the Podium forum, but there are several things you can do. 1) Try a different preset, if that doesn't work 2)You could have a problem with a texture, try doing a clay render, if it works then its a bad texture, if it doesn't work 3)You could have a problem with a component, paste your model in a new file and start deleting one component at a time till you get a render. This seems to solve most problems with a blank render.

Mike

Another texture site, have to register to download but lots of textures, http://www.texturextras.com

Mike

Just a shot in the dark, I don't use SU7 but I know you can link to a photo editor, did you make any recent changes there, maybe some paths got crossed or corrupted and its actually your photo editor thats reloading your textures, nevermind I dont think that would affect standard SU materials.

Mike

It seems that hes taken the image down which makes me wonder was it a render or a photo? If it was a render it was fantastic and I'd be interested in how he modeled the leather furniture, very "soft" for SU.

Mike

I'm pretty new to Vray myself, but I'm pretty sure that Vray for Su doesn't have a command line and that you can't set the sun position, but I guess I could be wrong. These are the only sun settings I can find in Vray for Su

Thanks Jim

Thanks Chris, much appreciated.

Mike

Any chance of making it a seperate commercial ruby?

Mike

Have a look here, http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=6708%20... , extremly useful plug in

Mike

Haha solo, you gotta get that new rig paid for somehow.

Mike

Also you should just model on layer 0, then move your groups or components to your desired layers. In the one picture the floor 2 layer is active and thats the one you're modeling on, this can get quite confusing on a model with lots of layers.

Mike

My apolozies, I had no idea that they were paid tuts, they were listed on several sites with no mention of being pirated and as I couldn't get them to open I had no idea what they were except for the description which sounded like some good Vray tuts, my bad.

Mike

I found these tuts on the web, but for some reason I always have trouble with the rar extension from rapidshare (I have winzip and 7-zip) so if someone would be kind enough to upload them as zips and hopefully we can all learn something as there's been quite a few Vray questions here lately. Thanks.

MODULE 1: The Critical Settings - Part I
MODULE 2: The Critical Settings - Part II
MODULE 3: V-Ray Materials
MODULE 4: Animating Static Scenes
MODULE 5: Image Based Lighting (HDRI)
MODULE 6: Lights
MODULE 7: Advanced Features Part I
MODULE 8: Advanced Features Part II
MODULE 9: Practical Exterior Lighting
MODULE 10: Practical Interior Lighting (in 2 parts)

edited out by remus. please don't link to pirated content.

Mike

Ok, since noone seems to be able to answer my previous questions, I have some more basic ones.

1. What resolution do most people render their stills with to be used for animation?
2. What are some of the free or cheap video authoring software people have been using and getting good results with?
3. What are the best codecs to use for a good ratio between quality and file size?
   Thanks.

Mike