@dprince said:

lol. I plan on using enscape for walkthroughs/animation

Smart plan! I have a pair of GTX 1070's and they're working great with Enscape.

Also, at 8GB memory. Like Solo says, gotta have enough memory.

Looks good. Now you can render a V-Ray animation in one week instead of four.

what, no shot of the acoustic ceiling tiles? Way to rob me of my joy.

@dprince said:

Can you send me some examples please? Thanks

Here's a list from Chaos Group: https://www.chaosgroup.com/render-farms (not all of these have SU+V-Ray support, but if you narrow the list to just SU, it misses farms like Rebus)

And they have their own cloud: https://www.chaosgroup.com/cloud (I haven't used it so I couldn't speak to how it compares.)

If you're serious about rendering an animation with V-Ray, I would highly recommend looking at render farms, there are quite a few options out there.

The settings I would recommend are having a powerful CPU or using a render-farm.

That looks great! I'll definitely need to look at the Pano2VR update as well.

I've moved from V-Ray to Enscape recently for walk-throughs, and can highly recommend it!

@masterpaul said:

I never used blender before. So I don't know what else would have to be done/coded in.

I don't believe there are any tools in SU that are not available in Blender (inclusive of SU extensions.) IMO, the big difference/special sauce is the inference engine in SU. You can already push-pull with the extrude command. Manipulation inside meshes is not a whole lot different than SU, it's just a very a different workflow and shortcuts. The 2.8 UI changes make Blender miles more accessible coming from other software. Do take some time and explore Blender.

@gd3design said:

From Peter at Chaos Group:

A V-Ray 3.6 update with SketchUp 2019 compatibility is being considered but it may take some time. Stay tuned.

And that door is now shut: here's the latest message

@unknownuser said:

After careful consideration a decision has been reached - only V-Ray Next (v4.0) is available for SketchUp 2019. V-Ray 3 is no longer in active development.

Kind regards,
Peter

@majid said:

I am having problem with unstable UI. When rendering the V-Ray window is not "ON top" any more.
Is there any solution? anyone replicates this behavior?

What!!?? This is back!? This kind of thing was happening a couple versions back. What's the deal Chaos Group? Majid, I would post in the V-Ray forums, that way this will get seen by the developers.

@solo said:

We are still waiting for Rich O'Brien to create the subforum, I do not have admin rights to do it.

Sounds like some more changes coming to Sketchucation than just an additional subforum

http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=646088#p646088

@rich o brien said:

OK, we'll get you guys a Blender forum for SketchUp users up and running.

We are doing some server upgrades at the moment as we need to move to a newer php version. So give us a day or 2 to get something set up.

@ntxdave said:

So what is the best way to move my models to Blender 2.8?

I tried .dae and only parts showed up. I also tried fbx but got a message in Blener 2.8 that it did not support fbx.

I've been consistently using .obj export for years with good results. I find duplicate faces and lots of other problems with .dae

You can use AutoDesk's FBX converter to convert to a different FBX format that will import correctly. I forget the details as I use it infrequently, but it is possible.

Now do one for Sketchup with the same commands... Will it include the steps to load and install the plugins needed? Yes, it's nuts to see it all on one page like that, but in practice, it's honestly just muscle memory. Plus with 2.8, much of that is simplified.

@xtov said:

Hum....it is your choice, and you may have right at the end.
BUT...SU lovers, check this Blender QUICK References Card...
You may regret SU simplicity...event with some plugins loaded...

[attachment=0:2852r9xe]<!-- ia0 -->blender-infographic-1280-SM.jpg<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:2852r9xe]

That's incredible! Great job!

Do we have a subforum yet!? I want to discuss pros and cons of obj vs. dae format import. Nice intro video you linked Solo, glad to see they are finally taking seriously the UI compatibility with other software

+1 from me. I'd love to share tips and ideas about using Blender and SU together.

@chippwalters said:

The biggest challenge for SU to Blender is you really have to think in a different modeling paradigm. At first, at least for me, it was difficult. But I started to 'get it' and now it's second nature and I'm now even faster than I was in SU-- which I think is saying something for me as I built the whole Alamo reconstruction in a few short months with historical accuracy for Experience Real History: The Alamo. I also created a full Hyperloop user concept for Elon Musk entirely in SU. There was an article about it at Fast Company.

I made the jump to Blender back in 2012 when I was running into a wall trying to get smooth walk-through animations rendered in Sketchup (not to mention poly-count limitations.) I think the one significant update to SU since then was going to 64-bit, everything else has been basically maintenance (for my needs. I don't use Layout. I'm a 20+ year veteran of ACAD, where I've always had control over lineweights and linetypes)

I am so glad I held off renewing my maintenance this year, as it looks like I will be staying with 2018 and older versions for the foreseeable future. I love using Sketchup and am immensely grateful for the plugin developers, but am done with giving Trimble my money.

Lordy, those fast motion people running through the scene are distracting! The wind animated plants are most certainly NOT Sketchup.

Amazing. Worst fears confirmed.