Many of you know I do a lot of digital landscape art. What you probably don't know is that my wife is also a landscape artist - but in a very non-digital way, working outdoors in oil-paint. After years of working as a designer, like myself, she decided a couple of years ago to pursue her dream of being an artist, and now has work in galleries across the UK and has collectors of her work as far afield as the US and Australia. She has her first solo exhibition in July this year.

Anyway, she has just launched an ambitious Kickstarter project here:https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/378987088/365-landscapes to produce a painting every day for a year. I know there are a lot of art enthusiasts amongst us, so I'd really appreciate you taking a look, and perhaps sharing the link with anyone you think might be interested.

I hope you'll forgive this shameless bit of advertising

Andy

Thank you Ken.

Here's one more from the set, SU model and paint-over version. I'm currently working on some space vehicle stuff which has a lot of proper SketchUp modelling. I need to get them into Thea for some basic render passes, and hopefully will get something posted here asap.

In the meantime...

@ken28875 said:

That sounds great. Maybe in the near future when both of us have free time.

Free time? What is that exactly?

Thanks all. Really appreciate it

Marked001: yeah, you're not wrong: these are a bit light on SU content, I almost didn't post them here. But I know you guys are suckers for a bit of sci-fi
I have got some more stuff in the pipeline with a LOT more SU in them - watch this...erm....space

A.

That's good to hear Tina

To be honest, it was all the complications and work-arounds of swapping files between applications that made me ditch 3dsMax. I now use Thea4SU for all my renders and have never looked back

A.

Yep, Full Heirarchy is the one you need. When importing into Max this keeps the SU Groups, but you can drill-down into those groups to apply material on a sub-group level. Hopefully FormZ will treat the objects the same way.

If they are doing the texturing, weld vertices shouldn't make a difference. In the 3ds export, set it to 'create objects by group' (I think that's the wording...)and it should be fine. When working in MAX I used to apply complex materials on a face-by-face basis at sub-object level, as applying a texture to a whole SketchUp group was very hit and miss. Been so long since i used formZ that I can't recall if it has the same methodology for texturing.

Good luck with the demo version. I could never get on with FormZ, but that might just be me

A

Been years since I worked with FormZ (I was happy to see the back of it!) . What format are you exporting as? Sounds to me like FormZ is looking for the textures in a file-path that doesn't exist at your client's end. Are they getting any kind of missing-map error message when they import your model?
I used to have this problem when supplying files to a 3DSMax client (this was back in the days of SU 4 and 5). In this case, the solution was to ensure that the .3ds file and texture files were all saved into the same folder at the client's end, then tell MAX where to look. Also, from memory when exporting there was the option to either weld vertices OR preserve texture maps - using the latter worked best.

Not sure if that helps you...?

A

Great visuals, and a really nice design too. Also, nicely integrated entourage. Lovely work

A.

Thanks Richard, I really appreciate that.

Over the coming weeks I will be swapping the images for higher- res versions. To be very honest, I kept the res low for now because all these images still need some details touching-up. Once these are sorted I'll upload them, and hopefully you'll feel immersed

A.

Thanks Bryan,

One more from the series....

@pbacot said:

Would like to see you collaborate with Andyc

That's certainly something I'd be very happy to take part in....

A.

Beautiful model Ken. I hope it gets the chance to be more than just a wreck in the future!

A.

Thank you Ken. I'm a real admirer of your work, so appreciate your feedback

A

I've started work on a new website to house some of my personal work, and thought some of you may be interested. It's very much a work in progress, and a lot of the images are low-res placeholders, and there are a lot more images to be added to the gallery section.

Rather than just make it an on-line portfolio, I thought it would be nice to give it bit of a story angle.... anyhow, crits and comments are always appreciated, so please take a look http://www.someothersun.com

(mods - not sure if the gallery is the place for this - feel free to move it as you see fit!)

cheers,

A

Another one from the same series...

Camera and tripd model by me,astronaut courtesy of the warehouse/ Max Grueter. The rest is Photoshop & Artrage as usual...

Much more conceptual than mine, Pilou

Latest thing I've been working on. SU wireframe (apologies to all the good modellers around here for the crap quality of modelling! ) followed by a paint-over in Photoshop.

cheers,

A

Hey Mike - never too late

I agree with your pragmatic approach to this, and it is a view that I have adopted towards previous projects - better to be on the inside trying to do a little good, than on the outside doing nothing.

But, in this particular case, as I'd have been working purely as a visualiser, rather than a designer, there wouldn't have been much opportunity to influence things for the better. Besides, in this instance the problem isn't so much a question of how the animals are cared for (though I doubt it is good), but also that the act involves animals (bears) being dressed as people and made to perform in ways that in no sense reflect their natural behaviours. The whole set-up just felt very wrong to me, to the point where even if I had taken the work, I'd never have felt able to give it any level of genuine commitment. This would go against my professional ethics, never mind my morals.

In your example of zoos, which I agree can be morally ambiguous, I completely agree with you that being involved and exerting a little influence, however small, is a positive way to wrestle with the ethical dilema.

I was in the fortunate position that I didn't NEED this contract to pay the bills or put food on the table (not that I can afford to turn much down!) And, this morning, I was asked to pitch for a project which looks really exciting and has no moral issues whatsoever... Karma? Who knows!

A

Ands43: for some reason Vectorworks is quite widely used in the exhibitions industry. No idea why, as it isn't especially suited to it...perhaps the VW sales guys decided to target a niche industry. From experience (20 yrs in the exhibition business) I can tell you that SU is absolutely the right way to go for 3D. Even die-hard Vectorworks users agree after seeing what SU and a good renderer can do. For 2D Vectorworks, auto cad, whatever you're comfy with. Exhibition design simply doesn't require a high-end integrated 2d/3d solution. Go with what is fast, easy and works.