@pixero said:

Probably a silly question...but I can't find where to scale and rotate a texture in Thea.
All I've managed is to create a new texture layer.
Please some hint here. (End of silly question.)

Not a silly question.

While waiting for the video tutorials, a handful of short 'here's how to do this' documents would be helpful.

The Thea manual tends, like most manuals, towards what the program can do from the technical aspect with not that much attention to the How - that is, step by step How To Do This type of instruction.

@solo said:

Regarding importing models, SU has a very serious poly limit problem, we all know it, in fact rumour has it that even Podium is going studio because of it (too bad Google does not give this issue more priority)
So where Thea can have an advantage is for either using proxies (implemented very soon into exporter) or doing straight 3d imports using .3ds, .obj etc.

Thanks. That's the information I was looking for. I don't create the sort of extraordinary images you do, and maybe never will, so I don't have so much the poly issue but I have the 'models spread over several different software applications' issue. Right now I have a client talking to me about a design for a stair that could use some objects I created in SketchUp but also some objects that are in modo. Instead of going back through one or the other I'd ideally like to take things from each application out into one renderer - which I guess Thea could do if I read your post correctly.

Frederik -

I understand the impetus for your post but I think it's a misunderstanding.

I wanted to try to use OBJ files because I'm comparing VRay and Thea for a possible purchase. The problem I have with VRay is that it's locked to SketchUp but I want to be able to use 2 or 3 modeling programs. I'm not quite clear about whether Thea has the same limitation or not, the manual didn't help out there.

Manuals vs video tutorials -

Most software is designed and marketed by extremely advanced computer users. And the loudest voices on the forums driving the development of the software tend to be also from very advanced users. The problem with this is that very often these same people are not particularly good teachers. The ability to present material in a way that a novice can understand, or to even remember what questions they had when they were novices is actually quite rare. Thus the poor quality of most training material.

I skimmed through the manual and it's very detailed but it didn't help me at all to get started. I still contend that a couple simple, basic tutorials that do not go into depth, do not go into complex technical detail, do not explain ad nauseum every panel and widget on the screen, but instead take an object or a scene and explain step by step how to get it into Thea, how to change a couple of materials, how to add or remove a texture will be more useful for novices than the manual in it's present state.

This was not meant to be a criticism - just a suggestion going forward.

Thea is desperately in need of a couple simple video tutorials that show you how to open a model in Thea and render it.
I go to File / Open and select an OBJ file of a simple workbench and, well, I don't really know what happens. I don't seem to get anything in the viewport and I don't know what to do next.
I guess I'll have to read the manual which is hardly too bitter a pill to swallow but a couple videos covering the basics wouldn't hurt at this stage of the software.

A thank you to both xrok1 and Bonzai support for a very useful exchange. For someone who's not sure of the way forward this type of thread is incredibly helpful.

I must have written my post while you were posting yours.
It's not really a nurbs program? In what sense?
I think they advertise it as nurbs software.

Thanks xrok1.
I'm looking for a program that's kind of mid way between SketchUp and modo - modo being a little weak on things like inferencing and any kind of drafting capabilities and SketchUp being a little weak on the organic modeling front.
And I'd like to have a nurbs program.
So Bonzai3D seems like it might fit the bill.

I wish my trial hadn't expired.
I don't know if SketchUp still does this (I bought my first license years ago) but they used to do their trials as 8 hrs - no matter when or how long it took you to use up the 8 hrs. I liked that much better than these 30 day gigs.

A quick question - what file formats can Bonzai3D export as?
I'm curious as to how (or if) I could bring a Bonzai file into modo and, in the other direction, could I bring it into SketchUp to use with VRay?
I had a trial for Bonzai but I got a big project and then never managed to open the program more than once or twice. Now the trial is expired.

Thanks in advance for any info you can provide.

Made my day!

Mike 1158 -

My sympathies of course.

But the anecdotal horror stories that are told about various countries health care systems tend not to show up in the statistics. Most comparisons will show that form point of diagnosis to point of cure the actual numbers are quite similar country to country. England has no larger percentage of death by cancer or any other disease than other countries do - including the US.

The Republicans bandied stories like yours around as 'proof' of how much better off than we are. But no industrialized country has any intention of scrapping their public health care system and no politician could hope to get elected if they ran on such a platform. This is similar to the often repeated sound bite that the Canadian Prime Minister came to America to see a specialist. But he was a multimillionaire. Ask a self employed carpenter in Canada if they want to come to America and pay $16,000 a year for their family's health insurance. You'll get a very different answer.

This is an interesting health care graph - you might have to zoom out a bit to see the US position in the upper left hand corner.
http://blogs.ngm.com/.a/6a00e0098226918833012876a6070f970c-800wi

@solo said:

In this country we are forced to have car insurance (thank you lobbyists) failing to do so will get you car towed away and you getting fined in Dallas. Now the same will happen with health insurance, this is the part I absolutely disagree with, I do not need to be forced to get something that’s not free. Make it free social health care then force me, but forcing Americans to pay through their noses for over inflated health insurance is just wrong.

I agree with your larger sentiment and I also agree with the phrase 'over inflated health insurance'. But I think the system will not work without the mandate.

I do some free lance work for a contracting outfit (3 guys with a pickup truck). They're all pretty far to the right politically and this is the one aspect of the health care bill they want to go to war over. They talk loudly (and sometimes drunkenly) about rights and freedom. But in conversation with them it becomes immediately apparent that not one of them is actually paying for health care now. They've all had reason to use health care in the past (one had an accident and another one became a father last year). And this is the problem. If we all could choose to buy our car insurance only when and if we had an accident, there wouldn't be enough money in the insurance pool to make the insurance work.

These 3 guys are in their late 30s and they're only now beginning to talk about getting health insurance because they have kids and they're getting older. For the system to work, they need to have been paying into it since they started work in their late teens or early twenties. There's no way these guys were going to voluntarily start paying into a system when they were in their early 20s and in good health. Same thing with Social Security. When you're 23 you never think you're going to be 70 and out of work. If you didn't have to pay it through the tax system from the time you started work it wouldn't be there when you need it.

Thanks for the reply.
I tried several other models last night and they seem to act as expected so maybe there's something unusual about this one.
I work in modo and I like rendering in modo but VRay seems to give everything a very distinctive 'light'.
There's a clarity to the light that I haven't been able to achieve with other rendering apps.
I'd like to have that as an option so I intend to spend some time exploring VRay.
Hard to beat the modo Preview though.

Again, thanks for the reply

I'm not a VRay user.
I'm working on someone else's computer who has VRay installed and he's not around to ask this question to.
I can't seem to control the output size - the cabinet in this image is small in the VRay output no matter whether I have OverRide Viewport checked or not. How do I control that?

Another question - there is a price difference of $70 between VRay on Vray.com vs asgvis.com. Is there a difference in product? Support? Any reason to consider the higher price over the lower?

Thanks in advance for any advice anyone can give.

@xrok1 said:

whats wrong with modo's renderer? you can import your SU files and render them in modo too.

Nothing whatsoever. I just want to have several different tools to work with.

I'll be looking forward to any other impressions you have about Thea.

Seth Richardson was contracted to create a Thea plugin for modo but managed somehow to not finish the project. Now Thea is saying they're going to bring in somebody else to complete the job.

I'd like to use VRay but a render engine that could work with both SketchUp and modo (the two software programs I use) would be ideal.

Any thoughts on how Thea compares to VRay?

@unknownuser said:

On first viewing it seems simple, but more time invested yields more details and more appreciation.

Well said.

Actually, it isn't the alignment of the corner of the closest panel with the one behind it that bothers my eye, it's the dark shadow line under the left middle panel that's darker than the shadow line under the panel to the right of it that troubles me.

Talk about 'close criticism'! Maybe I should cut back a bit on the coffee.

A. There's something odd about the perspective in this that I like. Forbidding? I'm not sure. I think you've done this in other images.

B. The way the top closest corner aligns with the bottom middle creates a bit of visual confusion that I'm not sure about.

C. I've been on the fence about SLIK. Bought and paid for cadbuddy and a couple of other modo things so the bank account's a bit low. You like SLIK? It's useful? Makes lighting easier?

D. I think the grey is perfect.

@earthmover said:

Welding is really only important to a mesh congruent when applying some type of subdivision process to it, could be smoothing or shading, could be bending, could be using displacement in a renderer. These all rely on subdividing a mesh and without the verts being welded, you will have "tearing". Other than that, Maya, Max and most other "top gun" modelers all rely on quad faces in their algorithmic processing of geometry manipulation and subdividing. Sketchup is not a quad modeler, it's a polygon (face) modeler, and so models generated in SU are "Not Good" when using them as a starting point for further modeling and manipulation in true "quad" programs. They are not good as starting points for Sculpting programs (Zbrush, Mudbox) either.

Very well said.
And it's why I've given up trying to bring geometry from SketchUp into modo.