I pre-ordered one. Delivery is anticipated for Spring or February, depending on which web page you look at. I'll report back once it arrives and I've put it through it's paces.

No, I've not used one yet - the first production run is scheduled for the Spring (they did a Quickstarter campaign with a goal of raising $100,000 - they got 1.3 million)

I think the dilemma is that there are $40,000 scanners that are exact to an absurd degree and then there are 'object' scanners - with little in between. This company is looking to fill the void.

Like you, I need both the real dimensions and a geometrically perfect version of them. I'm doing drawings for a project at the Van Cortlandt House Museum right now and I have a red line model representing the out of plumb, out of level actual conditions with the the drawing of the new woodwork surrounding it in black. But my information for the actual is based on notes taken with tape measures, plumbs, levels, string, glue, luck and hope. And they're probably wrong.

So I'm hoping this product delivers.

Again, apologies to the OP for going OT.

@jeff hammond said:

i'll do a site visit for one day, take measurements with a laser, and draw the building on the computer as i go.

Completely OT - do you use a 3D laser or just a laser tape measure?
I'm hoping this product will be the first reasonably priced 3D scanner for interiors -

http://structure.io/

Re: visualarq - I downloaded a demo but then got busy and didn't have the time to try it out. I have a sense that it's probably of more use to someone who is largely involved in architecture and needs it's implementation of parametric slabs, walls, doors and windows, etc. than to someone like myself in retail design and product display. Nonetheless, it looks like a very impressive program and, being a software junkie, I'd like an excuse to own it.

Re: Rhino vs SketchUp - I love working in Rhino and it can do things that couldn't even be dreamed about in SketchUp but when it comes to modeling simple geometry I have to say that SketchUp is faster. There are a couple of simple reasons for this and V6 might offer some improvements in these areas so Rhino might yet become a replacement for SketchUp. But, when I have to model something very fast and it requires no complex curves, tangencies or other functions that Rhino excels at, I use SketchUp.

I think it depends a lot on what kinds of businesses you interface with. If you're a small firm and work directly to the client you might be able to get away with just using SketchUp but if you regularly work with larger firms dumping Revit might not be realistic. I would swallow the bitter pill and go with SketchUp / Revit or Revit LT. It will make you available, professionally to the largest possible market.

If I were making a fresh start I would probably cough up the $$ for MAX and SketchUp but that's because I work less in the field of architecture now and more in retail display. If I were working solely in architecture it would be SketchUp / Revit for sure.

I assume the date on that video is the point, right?

Although a few years old now, I think this simple 5 minute youtube video gives a good description of the basics of sub division modeling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckOTl2GcS-E

Kind of scary atmosphere around here.

1. The OP posted a job.

2. She was told she should do it herself (no, it wouldn't have taken less time to model it, light it and render it in V-Ray than to post the job offer)

3. Then several people, clearing without communicating a price to the OP, posted models that were not rendered in V-Ray so had no use to her.

4. She was then criticized for not saying Thank You for something she wasn't asking for.

5. Sheesh!

I'm glad to see that at least one person understood this was a simple job offer, responded appropriately and, presumably, delivered the work and got paid. Not sure what all the rest of the heat was about.

MF is a serious game changer. The big deal isn't so much the live booleans (although that's a big deal in and of itself) but more the mesh stripping. The plugin takes an enormous amount of the manual labor necessary in sub d work (the sub d connections between parts, voids and solids) and makes it automatic. If you work in sub d and have ever had to model a complex object, joining all the parts painstakingly with quad strips, this video will leave you gawking. Kind of like the transition from cutting plywood with a circular saw, measuring and marking out each piece individually to cutting on a CNC machine. Major.

I hope this might be of interest to others on this forum.

Very excited about the possibilities of this device at this cost point. I have to do a lot more field dimensioning than I'd like and it's always time consuming and inaccurate (not to say undignified at my age to be clambering around on a scaffold).

I wasn't in the beta group so I can't say how well it works but if it will give an accuracy within an 1/8" of an inch for dimensioning a room it will find a massive market in the home renovation field.

Fingers crossed for the Spring launch.

http://gizmodo.com/this-tiny-3d-scanner-is-the-first-to-attach-to-mobile-d-1334146815

@solo said:

I was looking at a dual Xeon system recently but decided to rather stick with my very tired 1st generation i7 (never did get the funds to take advantage of the deal I arranged early this year for community) I instead gathered up all my sheckles, borrowed a few from wife and bought a Titan card instead.

I'm interested to hear this as I'm in the same boat. I have an early i7 2600K and I find it lagging on lots of projects. But in this year alone I bought a license for Rhino, a license for V-Ray for Rhino, upgraded my V-Ray for SketchUp and upgraded my Modo license. I managed to get good prices on all of them (it is worth it to wait for deals) but it adds up to a lot of dough. I figure a new computer is going to set me back at least $2500. If I could get a speed boost for another year by buying a Titan, that would be more realistic considering the carnage that all that software did to my bank account.

For my purposes I hope it's not too soon as I just upgraded SketchUp V-Ray and picked up Rhino V-Ray when it was on sale. I have a lot to learn and very little thickness in my wallet before they spring V-Ray modo.

Somewhat OT - this is the first year I've really paid attention to holiday sales - took the plunge for the modo upgrade at the 40% off holiday price. I guess this is the right time of the year to buy.

@rafferty94 said:

And this is a website that offers an "Old Wood" material specifically for Vray.

http://www.vray-materials.de/all_materials.php?mat=161

These are all for 3dsMAX. Are MAX materials usable in V-Ray SketchUp or V-Ray Rhino?

That is an incredibly impressive image!

@unknownuser said:

Myself, I won't get a new Modo license until Modo's snapping stops being crap. Come to think of it, Modo's renderer could do with a kick in the bum as well.

The nature of the work that I do now requires that my drawings sit between the designers on one side and the fabricators on the other. Consequently I had to reconsider my attachment to modo in favor of a program that could handle more complex annotations, and more accurate geometry and, simultaneously, generate renderings. So I ended up in the Rhino camp and am quite happy with what that program can do. I no longer model in one program, export as OBJ, clean up and texture and render in another, and so on.

But I do look back longingly at the ease with which I could create complex textures and UV maps in modo. The procedural textures and mapping and gradient controls were a joy to work with and I often find that when I'm about to move control points in Rhino I'm seeing a strategy in my mind's eye that assumes modo's Falloffs which Rhino lacks.

But man, that snapping .... why can't they listen to the angry mob and do something about that?

Could be wrong but I think it will be released as a separate plugin first, then folded into 801. I hope it doesn't force the price of a modo upgrade higher although I imagine it will. Apparently the developer has serious medical issues so when it will be available is an open question.

That's a good looking mesh. A question - was the 'ugly' mesh made in SketchUp / Artisan?

Hmm ... but if your end point is 3D printing I would think you're going to lose a lot of detail with a retopology tool.

But, aside from the issue of SketchUp to Blender, if you're talking about cartoon characters, you're going to love sub d modeling once you get the hang of it.

@solo said:

@arail1 said:

@solo said:

I may have a solution to my mesh problem

http://cgcookie.com/downloads/contours-retopology-tool/

Retopology tools have a different function than I think you're looking for. Create a high detail (high poly) character, texture it, light it, etc. Then bake all the maps down. Then 're-topologize' the high detail model with the retopology tool to make a low detail, low poly version and then apply the baked map to it. The result is a character with the visual look of the high detail model but having a small fraction of the poly count of the original.

What I was trying to do is get some of my SU created cartoon characters which are very heavy in SU into Blender cleaned up, rigged, posed and then 3D printed.

Oh. My misunderstanding. I thought the comment was about architecture, which would be a lot of work for a retopology tool.

@solo said:

I may have a solution to my mesh problem

http://cgcookie.com/downloads/contours-retopology-tool/

Retopology tools have a different function than I think you're looking for. Create a high detail (high poly) character, texture it, light it, etc. Then bake all the maps down. Then 're-topologize' the high detail model with the retopology tool to make a low detail, low poly version and then apply the baked map to it. The result is a character with the visual look of the high detail model but having a small fraction of the poly count of the original.