That's how I would go about it as well. JD has done a great job of matching the SU viewport with the Maxwell output so exporting an image with SU linework and overlaying it in photoshop is a pretty straightforward process. It's a nice trick to have under the belt, I've used it once before. But I can't see Maxwell incorporating something like this as their aim is for photorealism and that's more of a NPR trick.

-Brodie

As a Christian I appreciate the message he's trying to get across. The dichotomy between the sort of works based system of the world and relationship based system of God. However, I would tend to side with the atheists on this one in saying that this sort of popular movement to suggest Christianity isn't a religion is simply well intentioned equivocation. I hope atheists don't miss the point that's being raised here, but I think it's clear that Christianity fits any normal definition of the word "religion" and to suggest otherwise is just a sort of rhetorical dishonesty.

-Brodie

I use a quadro at work. It's nice but I'm not sure there's really much advantage to it. If I were spending my own money I'd go with the Geforce.

-Brodie

I'm not familiar with twilight but maybe there are a few setting changes that can make the render faster but typically those come at the cost of quality which in tern will probably mean more post work. My point is simply that in general, if speed is your thing focus less on making the render look perfect and more on spending time in Photoshop with it.

Personally, that's not my thing. I don't care for the highly stylized look and favor more photorealism so I don't do tons of PS work. But my ways aren't the ways of most of the big companies out there cranking out tons of work and there's a reason for that.

-Brodie

The biggest problem, I think, are the save/load times associated with SU and large files. They become unbearable for me long before I have any major crashing issues. 3ds Max has comparably incredibly fast save times, I suspect Rhino is similar.

-Brodie

If that's the look you're trying to achieve I think it would be quite difficult to get without a fair amount of post work. And to the extent that you COULD get it to look that way straight from a render engine, it would likely take much longer than your current setup. Many of the best archviz companies out there start with a horrid looking render and make it look great it post so it's a perfectly valid method. For the most part folks who want to get it 99% right in the raw render are going for photorealism which by in large is nigh impossible to achieve in post if you start with a substandard render. But if you like the stylized look, I'd question your original assumptions and ask, why you want to do less in post. If it's a time issue, you'll find the original assumption is false. If it's something else, then what?

-Brodie

Thanks Plasson, that is, indeed, the video I was referring to.

Harnstein,

That does seem odd that it would be coming out differently for 2 objects with the same features other than length. Perhaps you could post a sketchup file widdled down to just a couple boards or something so I can have a look at it?

-Brodie

@unknownuser said:

The strange thing (for me) now is, that i import a model with some objects and convert them to polys-
and than i get this strange, unreproducable result that some simple objects are triangulated, some are not..

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your issue. Can you provide a screenshot or something perhaps?

-Brodie

Here's the model and a screenshot of the settings below.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/384281/Laser%20Printer.skp

The number and location of faces which are deleted seems to have a certain random nature to it. Running the script, undoing the results, and running the script again a few times resulting in different results each time

-Brodie

Edit: the original model is from here and is free http://archive3d.net/?a=download&id=3dfc187e

An issue I've had with the past couple version is with the plugin deleting faces. I don't recall having this issue with the first version. Do I have an incorrect setting checked or something?

-Brodie

You can see a description of my process of exporting here

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=41942

There are a couple polygon reducer scripts but I've never used them. You could try Whaat's script for starters

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=9789

I'm not sure i understand the question regarding smoothing. I'd just using the normal Soften Edges tool and maybe try turning on Profiles in the Styles dialogue with a value of 1 or 2 to outline the edges for organic shapes.

SU can handle quite a few polygons without getting terribly large file sizes. But make sure you use texture files with a small footprint (a 20mb .png file will increase your sketchup file by 20mb).

-Brodie

I saw a video awhile back on how to deal with this but can't find it now. The jist of it is that you have to model in SU as you would in 3ds max in order to preserve quads. It involved a lot of creating a plane and intersecting it with your geometry to create "loops." It seemed like a terribly tedious process and one which stripped SU of all of it's advantages of speed and ease of use. I came away with the distinct impression that the guy would have been far better of modeling in Max than modeling in SU as if he were modeling in Max. Actually come to think of it he was transitioning to Modo, but same idea.

-Brodie

@unknownuser said:

Who had a form of faith, but fell, and never returned, fits into these two possibilities:

1. He just had the impression of being ‘born again’ and had no from where to fall, because he actually trusted in himself, in his merits. He knew something ABOUT God, but did not KNOW HIM, closely, intimate…, even if he attended any church for decades.

You presume much in suggesting that someone whom you don't at all know 'trusted in himself, in his merits.' I would presume no such thing. If some day, some tragedy befell you - you lost a child, you suffered abuse from the church, etc. and you turned your back on God it wouldn't change all of the years of your past which were spent trusting in him and knowing him.

@unknownuser said:

2. He sinned again, in any way, and believes that there is no more salvation for him, because he does not know how God resolve it...

I couldn't quite make out what you were trying to get at with this second point. I think you said you were from Canada earlier. Are you a native english speaker? Much of your sentence structure is difficult for me to decipher.

-Brodie

Aw, I see. Interestingly, the concentration of detail in the center of the image is actually one of the things I least liked about the original image. This was the driving force behind most of my changes, not least of which was to zoom in the camera a bit, effectively eliminating much of the negative space around the border in order to fill up the frame more with the more interesting bits.

I may have been a bit biased when it comes to the tones. This images sister (the exterior image below) was very difficult in terms of tones and had an aggressive tendency to go from cool to cold as I tweaked it. The warmer overall hues of this image may have been a reaction to this.

Bah, just went back and I was mistaken. Apparently your eye is better than my memory It is indeed lit by skydome. As I recall I tried HDRI first but didn't like the color cast I was getting and didn't find any noticeable difference when switching to skydome other than the fact that I could choose a white light so my final render was already 'white balanced' - a feature I wish I had control over within Maxwell. Both provided the same even light and very soft shadows.

-Brodie

@speaker said:

Brodie, if you compare your render to the reference, then you could see that your interior space is over exposed. In the reference- not even the brightest hot spot is brighter then the exterior space. A good rule of thumb is to keep the interior darker. It looks like you used a sky dome for lighting but for such an open space a physical sky or a HDRI would have been the better choice, because your render looks a bit flat, as if a sepia filter would have been applied, but the reference shows a nice contrast between the blue color that comes from the sky and the warm bounce-light from the sun. The over saturated stairs are also more of a distraction. The background buildings could be left at that exposure but the water is too light so the water line is lost and the reflections in the water are too distinctive.

I'm not sure I see the differences you're referring to. To my eye the exposure values are pretty comparable. Doing a few spot checks in photoshop it looks like the lightness values are within about 5 one way or the other. Blurring the images significantly to sort of equalize and average out the image to a unified value produces a similar effect with an overall lightness value difference of 1. The most significant difference, to my eye, is simply the warmer tones in my image which were intentional. The two bright spots in both images seem to be the exterior and the upper left where sun is coming through the skylight. When you say the water is 'too light' I'm not sure what the reference is. It seems to me that the water in my image is pretty comparable, again, to the source image in terms of exposure. Had I darkened it but left the buildings over exposed I'm not sure that would provide a realistic looking effect.

I can understand what you're saying with regards to the stairs. I did have my reasons, but I might agree with you on that one that I should have toned them down a bit. My thinking was to try and balance out an essentially white image with a few stronger colors to provide more visual interest - the intense greens and blues on the left, the orange flowers and books left of center, the stairs leading the eyes through what is essentially a long tunnel of a space, the pink flowers right of center and then the bright exterior on the right.

There are 3 lights in the scene. The primary light is, in fact, an HDRI and the other two are inconsequential. There's a large line plane behind and to the left of the camera to light up that area between the couch and fireplace EVER so slightly (turning it up too much destroyed the shadows on the pillows). And the last light is actually the background for which I used an .hdr emitter so I could control the exposure value in MXI(doing so in PS would have been terribly difficult with the translucent curtains).

-Brodie

Boofredlay, I can't claim the same track record with church but your description, I think, touches on much of what I think God envisions his church to be like and the knowledge that those sorts of places are out there continue to give me hope.

From a Christian perspective, Pete's experience certainly speaks to how important it is that we Christians are careful to live out the gospel and that our churches look more like your description, not to mention that we're interpreting scripture correctly, and being intellectually honest.

-Brodie

Thanks for sharing your story Pete. You certainly have an interesting perspective on the matter having been devout on both sides of the issue. I can certainly appreciate the relationship aspect you're referring to and how that would make your decision very difficult - which means your reasons for becoming an atheist must have been very strong. I continue to find intriguing parallels in our stories.

Can you talk a bit more about your transition not just from ICOC to another church or from Christianity to some other religion, but from theism to atheism? Many people, I think, have faced some of those same catalysts which you did but the result is switching churches or coming to a different understanding of scripture. How, for you, did the road go far beyond that and into atheism?

-Brodie

Jason, perhaps. I certainly consternated over it to be sure. I suppose it's kind of a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' situation. In the end I decided to go for the option that I felt I could at least defend as 'photorealistic.' Given more time, perhaps I could have found a 3rd option. Maybe something more like what you're suggesting but with a different image in the background that, indeed, could have blended better into the image.

-Brodie

@chedda said:

Hey Brodie i entered the competition as well ! It's the champagne glasses & bottle (Simon Edwards) Good luck buddy ! I didn't use any post processing so i hope i have a good chance.

Your entry looks quite good chedda. The materials are quite good with the possible exception of the champagne foil but I think that would be really difficult to get right, particularly in SU.

I did very little post processing as well. Here are a couple quick screen grabs (cropped down) from the MXI. The first shows the image w/o any post work. The second shows what it would have looked like had I not over exposed the background as I think Pete had suggested before.

-Brodie