Can't LightUp do this inside SketchUp?

The Cathedral and Bazaar reference is really interesting actually, and particularly when you consider SU in comparison to Blender. In terms of capabilities, Blender can do far more and is a lot more flexible. I guess that's the 'Bazaar' for you. SketchUp, as the 'Cathedral' is a much nicer application to use and benefits from a very strong vision that structures and organises everything. The thing that always struck me was quite how impenetrable Blender was (and still is I guess) to use. SketchUp has shown everyone that 3d does not have to be complicated. You would have imagined things to be the other way around.

Perhaps it's not really a fair comparison, and I ought to be comparing Blender to Lightwave, SoftImage or Maya. I have read that SU has quite a few limitations in terms of the ways in which it allows interaction with other applications. In terms of the UI though - what a mess! That sort of complexity is just crazy. Blender could learn a lot from SketchUp in terms of intuitive workflow.

I do think that there are core things that need implementing/fixing for SketchUp to really progress. Multicore support, support for much higher polygon count, shadow bug, better texturing are a few. I doubt it will ever become as flexible as Blender, but we can only hope I guess.

You mean that Google should adopt Microsoft's business practices?
It certainly makes sense in this instance. Maybe we should wait for SU7 before we nag them hard about this.

I didn't get that problem, but even if there was a problem with that site, I wouldn't have identified it because I'm using a Mac. One of the nice benefits - for the moment.

Crimson Editor (http://www.crimsoneditor.com/)supports Ruby, is free. I have used it a lot (not for Ruby much though) and found it to be brilliant.

solo, actually I don't agree

I appreciate the poly limit thing, but for me anyway the thing is, if we have the facility, we can choose which scenes we want to use it on. You are familiar with the sort of very simple image where the quality comes out of the texturing and lighting, where you don't need to have millions of polygons for everything. For scenes of this type, like this:- http://www.pushpullbar.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=36601&stc=1&d=1200063120 that I know you have seen before I think rippled geometry would work nicely and enhance it even more.

Also, let's face it, its arguably little different to a detailed curtain, pillow, tablecloth or blanket. You more than most know the value of having the tools to do exactly what you want. You have more than most, but don't use them all on every scene.

These scenes here http://www.techtut.com/showimage.php?image=21/22.jpg, the first and second last images here http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2007/06/nice-water-with-miamaterial-arch.html and here http://img.tfd.com/cde/_RNDWATR.JPG are interesting and show what I mean.

Daniel - thanks I like the look of this script. I'll see what I can do with it. It might be just the thing.

This post was prompted by this one:- http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=13111 where Taffgoch uses Excel to create sketchup entities. I thought it might be a way to generate rippled surfaces in water.

Accurender has quite a nice procedural water texture which does something similar. Sqirlz (http://www.xiberpix.net/SqirlzReflect.html) and Redfield's Water Ripples (http://www.redfieldplugins.com/filterWaterRipples.htm) create some nice 2D effects in Photoshop but it's not quite the same as having an actual rippled surface to use in your models for rendering.

I know there are some very clever plugins which plot mathematical functions in 3d (Jim's eq_grapher, Rick's graphit and k_tools which makes me feel really stupid because I don't understand how to use it but feel I ought) but I don't know if they can produce surfaces which look like water. To be honest, if these plugins could produce water-like surfaces, I wouldn't know what values or equations to use anyway.

What would be helpful I think would be a plugin that generated 'water' surfaces, or even an extension to one of the aforementioned ones. The ideal thing would be to take a flat plane and apply the plugin to it, prompting the user for the type of ripple (e.g. linear, concentric, combined, random, whatever) and offering some basic, easily-understandable parameters.

I think it would be really useful for those of us who do a lot of rendering.
Does anyone else need this?

Awesome tool, but lack of OS X & Vista support is kind of limiting - does it support skp files directly or is it a matter of exporting to 3ds?

Taff, this is epic! You really need a blog page to show off the cool stuff you do with SketchUp, that is totally different to what everyone else does!

Hwyl

[Edit: Actually this reminds me of something I have been thinking about for some time. You are obviously very mathematically-inclined, how difficult would it be to do a similar thing for a rippled surface in SketchUp. Lots of people have trouble with this, and I'm guessing that it's a mathematical function relating to amplitude. Accurender has a nifty function which can add one of 2 types of ripple to surfaces. Water is the main use for this. For rendering it makes a big difference. Is it possible, given a predetermined surface, to plot the mathematical function relating to ripples, and create the geometry to describe these sorts of surfaces? For rendering purposes, it would be really useful.]

@gaieus said:

(This is not particularly against or because of your last post, Bigstick, so don't take it personally).

No offence taken - naturally

I did warn everyone early on though...

@mpowell1234567890 said:

Oh, Well - I did my part in trying to share the Gospel of free salvation, but men do have freewill - but in the end, there's consequences.. For now on, I'll post gospel tracts in 3D on the 3D warehouse. To further spread the Gospel truth that Jesus is real. ~John 3:16. Christianity is not a religion, it's a relationship with God through Jesus. It's your choice..

Dude, look, leave it alone. I'm a militant atheist, but I don't go making comments about the great 'sky fairy' - well not until now at least. This forum is is for discussing Sketchup - mostly. It isn't a place for arguing about religion, and let's face it, that never achieved anything in 2000 years did it?

PS don't even think of saying, "I'll pray for your soul".

@bruell said:

Alas, now in the Emirates lies the architectural PARADISE

Er, that really rather depends on your definition of "architectural paradise". If you mean that it is a place that is all about making lots of money with very little real architectural talent, then fair enough.

Personally I think that a place that is all about making money with very little architectural talent is architectural HELL.

Let's put it another way, I think P Diddy would love Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

This is fantastic! Thanks a lot wikii!

Er, I'm not sure what this link relates to. The whole page is Chinese, and to be honest, on an English Language forum the overwhelming majority of us aren't able to read any of this.

If there is a Ruby plugin which can do this (as your post seems to suggest), it would be great if you could post it here. I'm sure loads of people would find it really useful.

I can't understand Coen's defensiveness. If you aren't moving forward, in effect you are moving backward.
I agree with kwistenbiebel, yes I use the tricks, but using components means it is easy to add a huge amounts of detail to a model. When you have models which have lots of components of say, furniture with lots of curved forms (even tubular chairs for example) SU can get very slow indeed. When you work up the detail level internally and externally, add trees, some cars etc, your model gets really slow.

I'm afraid I just don't buy the argument that SketchUp was only intended for modelling simple sketchy scenes. The program liberated us all from complicated tedious modelling packages and multiple 2d views, and we all loved it. Then when enough people get competent enough to fully exploit the software and ask for more, the response is,"Well you are pushing it beyond what it was intended to do".

The things that are being requested are natural extensions to the program's capabilities. Seriously, obviously it's achievable. Max, Lightwave, Rhino, MoI and C4D can do it, why can't SU? I have mentioned elsewhere that Google employs some of the best and brightest people in the industry (and some others that are responsible for LayOut ) and this is what we reasonably ought to expect from one of the most powerful software companies in the world. There ought to be almost nothing they can't do.

I think it is fair to say that SU raised the bar for everyone, and if it doesn't keep making good progress, it is going to lose users as the opposition (driven by commercial pressures) gets smarter and delivers what the market demands.

I see nothing wrong with the voting options, and for people to think of leaving if development doesn't offer enough progress.
I think it is sometimes easy to overlook the fact that we are here because we love SketchUp and want more from it. It will be a really sad day for me if I have to start using something else. I never had so much fun in my work before SketchUp came along, and it is a real joy to use - mostly. I'm not ready to jump ship yet, but the opposition is catching up, and I can see a scenario where I start to use another modeller.

There is nothing wrong with prodding Google to focus their attention from time to time

Actually I think this a fantastic link! The Pat3d and Engraver tools in particular are awesome. Also the roof and wall tools could easily be done in SU. Their ease of use and parametric ability are really impressive.

Definitely some things to inspire the Ruby gurus IMO. The idea behind posting this was to get ideas from other applications, not propose that people move to LWCAD. Lightwave is complex, and most of its workflow is way more complex than SU. It has lots more tools and a much more complicated interface and workflow. However, some of the elements of LWCAD should be easy to implement in SU.

Thanks for the link Bakbek!

Actually I think it makes perfect sense to have a free version. Because it is so easy to use, it is really popular with students, and anyone can have access to the same modelling tools as the professionals. It's also the easiest way of getting content into Google Earth, which could be the most comprehensive and accessible marketing tool the world has ever seen.

It doesn't seem logical to stop the free version.

@mpowell1234567890 said:

Why was God mensioned in that sentence?

Aaaand proving my point exactly.

@maxel99 said:

What about a proper photo-realistic renderer built in to sketchup that works well the first time based on skp sun and is easy to set the lighting levels? To me this would make skp a viable industry tool, now when I present a skp graphic the client, etc just isn't as impressed as I know they could be.

Apart from Al's iRender, there are 2 other applications that run inside SketchUp, IDX Renditioner and Podium.

Although I'm biased, I think Podium produces the best results.

Also don't forget LightUp, which isn't quite photorealistic, but if you have really good textures and enough detail, it can produce some great images.

[Edit: solo is quite right about hypershot. Great for shiny things, awful for buildings. Have a look at the architectural images in their gallery. Generally the purpose of a gallery is to showcase the product. If that's as good as they can get, I would keep your credit card in your pocket.]

@mpowell1234567890 said:

Jesus saves.. God is real.. We have all sinned and deserve God's judgment. God, the Father, sent His only Son to satisfy that judgment for those who believe in Him. Jesus, the creator and eternal Son of God, who lived a sinless life, loves us so much that He died for our sins, taking the punishment that we deserve, was buried, and rose from the dead according to the Bible. If you truly believe and trust this in your heart, receiving Jesus alone as your Savior, declaring, "Jesus is Lord," you will be saved from judgment and spend eternity with God in heaven.

Oh no - please guys, let's NOT have religious arguments here. The original comments were meant to be light hearted and were from (AFAIK) atheists. We are all here to chat about SketchUp and have a laugh.

Yes we digress from time to time, but in my experience, debates about god lead nowhere. Sadly it seems to me that most Christians who post about religion on forums don't tend to have much of a sense of humour and take things far too seriously. This isn't intended to be a criticism, most that I have met are lovely people, but utterly incapable of having a light-hearted discussion about religion, so I think it's better if we just don't go there.