Sorry for the delay been on holiday

Thanks everybody for the comments, Thom Thom; example build a terrain then the clients wants me to add some steps, then next day wants them taking out and a ramp adding. I end up with a mesh with patches added and over a period of alterations it gets messy and hard to use. I notice the expert users always display clean equally proportioned meshes so either i need some training in sandbox / quads or there must be a way of re forming a mesh once i have made the alterations.

I have enclosed a screen shot of an example, this site has been regularly altered over a 12 month period.

Going to post this question here as it on the same subject.

So 3d scanned a panel ready to unfold but currently the mesh is to complicated to unfold.

Tried terrain reshaper but it does not seem to change.

Trying to achieve a more consistent mesh which is not to time consuming to unfold.

.skp is 8mb so put a share on dropbox

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ur1su2eyv9eutyn/side%20panel.skp

Multiple cookie or bottle of Scotch donation is someone can help!!

Used thru paint and it worked great, love quad face tools my only problem is i think i need some lessons on quad faces and how to create, as most of my time i create in sandbox and it gets worse from that point onwards.

Great plugin love it!

Thom Thom

Once again your knowledge seems to have saved the day. Early tests on unfold seem to work, will post if successful.

Thanks again.

Morning

How do i flatten a domed shape to 2d but keep its area?

I have enclosed a rough shape.

The reason is to be able to model a shape then flatten it so i can send it to a vinyl cutter which then cuts the correct dimensions.

Cheers

model showing rough shape

Cheers all for the info.

Brodie thanks for the link, will get it bought and have a look.

After many year of coping with poor terrain i have decided it time to start doing it all properly ish..

My problem is i create a kerb with dale martins profile builder but when i try and map a texture to it using thom thom's quad face tools, it either only partially creates rings of edges based on selection or not at all. (image enclosed)

i used to just used projected textures but there is always an area when it does not map properly.

kerb.skp

Thanks Alvis

Really helpful info just need to study the plugins.

Hi All

How do i map a image of a road to a curve?

I've seen how its done in max but can something similar be achieved in sketchup.

Can anybody recommend a tutorial.

Cheers

added a road to a sandbox now need to map the texture.

@notareal said:

@atlastudio said:

Would like to know how to reduce noise if there's any experts reading!

Not sure how materials and scene is set, but I do get a impression that most light comes from the Sun trough a glossy based glass (a real glass that creates caustics) curtain wall.
Some "tricks":

• Thin Film based glass (architectural glass) will speed up convergence a lot.
• TR2 will render most challenging light paths and materials (naturally with cost of render time)
• Super-Sapling set to "High" with TR1/TR2 helps to reduce noise
• Use some fill light (a emitter that is not visible to the camera) to boost convergence, if most of the light comes trough glossy based glass.
  Note: light components and mesh emitters intersecting nearby mesh may cause noise as well as emitters that has really dense polygon mesh. Make sure that pure white and black are not used, keep diffuse colors in 6-96% range.

Thanks for the tips, have just coughed up and bought it today so looking forward to seeing what i can achieve.

Turns out it appears to be the amount of points in a curve. cropped a portion of the outer path and it imported fine....

Hi Gaieus

Not sure will have another look through, its appears okay when its in cad.

Hi All

Created a pattern in illustrator exported as dwg, when importing to sketchup the external edge of the pattern loses its shapes as if its been oversimplified. Any ideas??

pattern imported from illustrator

So far ThomThom's method is the only one that works, tried desperately to avoid it as I still have over 100 houses yet to drape!!

Hi Sonder

Thanks for the tip, tried draping just a simple square and it still plays up, so think it must be the mesh.

Hi All

Hope somebody can help with a problem with draping cad onto terrain.

I have tried using Sketchup 8 and 7 and normal drape and super drape.

It draped about half the cad but what ever i try to do with the rest it just crashes after 30 - 40 mins.

Any ideas??

N.b Can not add the terrain to the post as it is 16mb but could send direct.

@unknownuser said:

Great texture but how do you map it to a curved side walk / curb?

Found the answer ThomThom Quadface Tools UV Mapping.

About time we had ruby developer of the year awards...

Great texture but how do you map it to a curved side walk / curb?

have you got the .skp so i can have a look