I'm going out now to buy a lottery ticket so I can contract with you to do the landscaping on the property I intend to buy with my lottery winnings!
Great looking work and well worth learning a render program to bring your images up to their fullest potential.

Yes, don't forget Hypershot.

vieucaillou -

Drawhelix13 is the version I used. Now I can't reproduce the dimensional inaccuracy I mentioned earlier. I started these models in SketchUp7 but I had a lot of trouble with that version so I uninstalled it and went back to SketchUp6. Maybe something was happening there. But I just opened Sketchup and asked drawhelix13 to make me a helix with a pitch of 180" and I get a helix at 180"

Confusing to a novice.

I realize the first image is a bit confusing because you see the vertical slats but not the stringer. The vertical slats weren't difficult at all - I made 5 different slats with different grain orientations so they wouldn't all be identical and then positioned them against the stringer in random combinations.

This image shows the basic stair without the slats. The treads, risers and column were quite simple but the stringer was a bit difficult to get right.

Sorry I'm taking up so much space on this thread.

I did not use spiralstair. I'll have to look into that. I'm a novice so I'm not that familiar with the rubies.

I made a riser, tread and return nosing piece and made them into components. Each tread, riser and nosing piece was copied and then moved up the height of a riser and then rotated into position. Once I had three sets I copied and rotated them as a group, when I had six sets I copied that group and so on.

Then I made the stringer using drawhelix. I made two helix lines 2" apart then I exploded the helixes and drew lines from the ends level to the center of the column. Then I drew diagonals along the bottom to close those planes. I then made one complete section of the stringer from back of riser to back of riser and copied and rotated them one at a time to make the stringer complete.

What's worth pointing out is that drawhelix isn't mathematically accurate. In other words, when I asked it to make a pitch of 180" the actual helix end to end was off by about 3/4". Fortunately it worked out to be a regular 1/8" of an inch so for the sake of the image I was able to raise the height of the riser component by 1/8" and adjust the position of each tread accordingly. But I wouldn't be able to use this method in the shop where I can't be off by 1/8"

Hope this is useful in some way. I'll have to look into spiralstair.

wood stair modeled in sketchup rendered in hypershot

This is a useful site http://www.defcon-x.de/c4d/textures but notice they're very heavy files so they have to be sampled down.

Luis - those images are beautiful. Can I use them in my next stair model?

Thanks for the input Remus.

An update - I uninstalled SU7 and that solved some of the weird problems I was having between SU and Hypershot (images opening in HyperShot that looked like something from a bad move about LSD). So I'm back to work but I still have the strange file saving issue.

I've attached a screenshot of the folder hierarchy but I've never done that before so I don't know if it will show up correctly on the forum.

This shot is after working with a drawing called SpiralSU6Classic. All of the numbered files 0 through 9 are the automatic saves during my most recent period of working on the drawing. And two other things to notice - there's 2 files called SpiralSU6Classic and there are no backup files.

Doubt I'll ever solve this one but thought I'd send off an update anyways.

Thanks again

Very frustrated. Since installing (and uninstalling) SketchUp7 I've had bizarre problems with Save. I'm working on a drawing called SpiralForWebsite. Sometimes when I try and Save I get a splash screen that says File SpiralForWebsite Not Found. The program then saves the file as a number. If I'm working on it for a long time I'll find 20 or 30 files with sequential numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, etc.)

Sometimes the program saves the file but does so repeatedly so when I close and open the folder the file is in I'll find 3 or 4 files all called SpiralForWebsite. Which really confuses me - how can a computer have several files with the same name?

This is happening to all drawings I'm working on since downloading SK7.

I'm rendering with HyperShot (which I love) but Hypershot generally can't see these files until I save them down to SK6. And even then it has trouble handling them. I'm starting the drawings I've created since I downloaded SK7 all over again in Sk6 so I can render them in HyperShot - which will be a lot of work and disappointment.

Any thoughts?

I haven't been around these forums in a long time so I'm not sure if this is the right place for a job offer.

I'm a custom stair builder.

I need someone to take several stair models (and possibly other items) and render them so they are ready for a website that is being built for my company.

You can reach me at amanuele@nyc.rr.com