done and done. We'll see how it likes being left alone all weekend. Maybe I'll even unplug it from the internet so it can't go browsing on newegg.

-Brodie

That seems to have the same issue as the solution I was trying. Even though I pick the SU7 exe file it still opens files w/ SU6.

-Brodie

Actually I think you want the texture to NOT be projected. What you're getting is exactly what happens w/ a projected texture. It looks correct on one plane (determined by the first plane you apply the material to typically, say a plane at 90 degrees like your couch), but then on a plane at any other angle it takes the pixels and bleeds them through, which is what you're seeing on the top of your couch (say, 0 degrees) and the curved part.

If you do a nonprojected material you won't get that "bleed" affect. Each time you apply the material it's smart enough to know that it needs to reorient itself.

-Brodie

At the moment I have SU6 and SU7 loaded. I've been working in 7 for the most part but I save down to 6 before doing a Maxwell render. I can't seem to figure out how to tell Windows to automatically open up in SU7 unless told otherwise.

Even if I right click the SKP file and browse to the SU7 exe file it still tries to open it up in 6. I'm guessing it has to do w/ the fact that the exe's have the same name (incidently I wish the icons were different between 6&7). Basically I have to open up SU7 and then tell SU which file to open. Sort of annoying.

Anyone know of a fix to this?

Thanks,

-Brodie

It's basically the new(ish) SketchUp Web Exporter. You can find it under the plugins list. Pretty nifty tool depending on what you're modeling. If you want to show someone a bookcase, it could be very handy. If you're showing them a 2 story house w/ site it's probably not very handy because you can't really do much w/ how it wants to rotate around the model.

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1

(sketchup.google.com)

Gotcha. Well, I'm sure DC's should help you out then. A couple other things that come to mind. Make sure your textures aren't too large. The wood textures for the cabinets, for example. As of SU 6 the max you could display was 1024x1024. SU 7 has some sort of high res option in preferences which I'm guessing ups that, though. Anyway, SU will save a copy of the image you use as a texture. So the worst thing you could do is use a 4000x4000 pixel image as a wood texture because you won't see it to the full resolution for one thing, and for another SU will save that whole huge file.

Specifics for components...

Components could actually help you out quite a bit unless you get into custom stuff a lot w/ your kitchen cabinets. I use to do kitchen design at Menards (like Lowes or Home Depot but only in the Midwest). We had a program where you'd basically pull off specific cabinets and place them in. That could easily be done in SU by just making a library of your standard base and wall cabinet sizes, then just pull them off of your components pull down.

I'm getting all sorts of DC ideas too, although I haven't gotten into DC creation yet. You could almost just have a half dozen DC's (base cabinet, wall, drawer base, sink base, tall utility, etc.) that you could stretch and snap to your typical sizes (12, 15, 18, 21, 24...). And then you could use the interact tool to cycle between different knob and door styles and even finishes. Heck you could even use it to toggle the doors open and closed!

Lots of possibilities, but now I've gotten way past file size. Basically the benefit would be that all of your doors (of like size) would be the same component, your hinges would be the same component, knobs, drawers, etc.

-Brodie

Little hard to explain in text how to do the roof/columns. Especially since there are tons of ways to do it. Maybe someone has the time to post a tutorial? I'd recommend looking through the Google video tutorials though, I think there's one that deals w/ roofs that should help you out.

There is a handy little trick I can share to equally space things though. It uses the move tool.

Select your object
select the move tool
hold control (this turns the move tool into a copy tool)
select the point you want to copy FROM
select the point you want to copy TO
then before you do any more clicking type *3 or /3

*3 will make 3 more copies at equal distances apart. /3 will make 3 more copies in between the 2 objects you now have at equal distances.

The even cooler part of this function is that if you actually wanted 5, say, instead of 3 you don't have to redo everything. You can keep typing in commands and it will undo the last one and input the new one.

So if you type *3 and it's not enough just then type *5...too many? Hit *4, etc.

Hope that makes sense.

-Brodie

I might have to play devil's advocate w/ the podium crowd. Maybe it's just my workflow but I find having to assign each object (rather than material) a reflectivity to be pretty cumbersome. This wouldn't be so bad if I could just use Select Similar Material to select all my glass, for example, but if you work w/ a lot of groups/components you have have to go inside of those groups/components to select the faces you want to assign reflectivity to.

W/ Maxwell, which I'm using currently I can just tell SU that all the glass should be rendered w/ the Billy Bob's Glass material when Maxwell renders it. I can assign all of my materials to sync up w/ Maxwell materials in about 5 minutes and know that exactly what the material will look like once it's rendered.

Where Podium beats everyone, hands down, I'd say is w/ learning curve. Who can't understand a reflectivity slider? And you can, in fact, get some very good renders from it. But what benefit it has w/ regards to initial learning curve I think is hurt by the fact that there's still a learning curve to figuring out what sort of reflectivity each of your materials should have and what they'll look like when rendered.

I gave up on Indigo since you seem to have to learn everything from forums. Kerky was nice to use. Unfortunately the only rendering I tried crashed and I got Maxwell before I was able to test it out more but I'm sure it's a good program.

-Brodie

Is there anything special w/ HD other than resolution?

If not, then I don't see any reason you can't do a great HD animation w/ SU. I'd agree w/ all the tips given here so far. I've used Adobe Premiere to compile a series of png's from SU and have been very happy with it.

I cracked open the software just now and it even has a preset you save your image as a 1080i movie and burn it directly to DVD or Blue-Ray. Cool stuff.

Here's the best SU animation tutorial I know of. It's pretty much the method I've went by in my use.

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-Brodie

Just noticed this, really nice feature.

Didn't someone here suggest that awhile back? I was thinking Plot since he's always inventing cool stuff for Google to work on but he didn't take credit so maybe I made the whole thing up?

-Brodie

What kind of modeling do you do? Architecture? Mechanical? Cars?

The first thing anyone will tell you is to make sure that if you are working w/ objects that repeat w/in a model, make sure they're components. It won't make the orbiting and panning faster, but when you save the file, your file size will be smaller. Note that this is only true of components (not groups).

That said, I haven't noticed increasing file sizes from 6 to 7. Unless you're already getting into dynamic components which could carry a lot of info, I can't think of any reason the files should be larger.

-Brodie

Digging this post up from days gone past...

Richard,

I'm just getting into using Maxwell to render my SU models so I'm going through a couple of your old threads to try and learn your process because I really like the images you post. Anyway, I'm running into the same issue you have w/ huge problems with either displacement or clip maps to render grass. Unluckily, the buildings I do are hospitals so I can't afford the extra render time for all of the grass around a massive building. But luckily, my views are normally such that a flat rendered plane of grass doesn't look to bad w/ some post-processing.

But I'm really intrigued by this idea of 2 planes of grass. How has this worked out for you? Do you have any renderings you can post where you've used this effect? Could you post the maps so I can get a better idea of what you're talking about? In particular, I'm interested in what that top layer clip map would look like. Inverse of the bump map perhaps?

Thanks,

-Brodie

I'd have to agree w/ Alan. JPP seemed like a miracle worker at first but what I used it for was for windows. I find that it is great if you have a bit of patience and can select a whole region of stuff. However I found myself having to single click all of the faces to JPP them and then I realized that I could just double click each of them and forgoe JPP altogether. The other half of that is that I don't have the patience to wait for JPP to do it's thing. I get trigger happy during the process wondering if it's working or why it's going so slow or whatever and end up splatting bugs.

-Brodie

yup.

301 Moved Permanently

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I've used Adobe Premier Elements with good success. I considered PRO (work was paying for it either way) but went w/ Elements because it is more user friendly and I didn't need the extra bells and whistles. All I really used it for was to compile a ton of png.'s and add some music which it did very well w/o much learning curve. I haven't used the other programs though so I can't compare. I've heard a lot of good things about Virtual Dub which was already mentioned though if you go the free route. Adobe was like $99 which isn't bad at all.

-Brodie

'fraid not. Still on XP at the moment. I'm going to be working on the problem today. I'll try and report back if/when I find the issue. What frustration I'm having w/ Maxwell early on is that the error messages are pretty unsatisfactory. Might as well be "Render Failed: Guess again"

-Brodie

Yeah, I kind of tried that (although not w/ too great intensity) and didn't see the same issue. I tried posting but it said something about having to be an uber cool member or some such thing before you could start a thread. Any idea how I attain such a lofty status?

-Brodie

I just started using maxwell and am using the maxwell exporter (current versions in both cases and SU 6) and am having a weird bug, I think.

The problem is with the Maxwell Material Panel within SU. The first time I used it, it seemed to work great I picked my SU material, reassigned it a maxwell material, could edit it, etc. Now when I go back to the SU model the first material I click on pops up the Material Panel and shows that I reassigned it to such and such maxwell material, I can edit it, etc. as normal.

However, then when I click another SU material the Panel stays open but it doesn't show that I reassigned it to a maxwell material. I thought it lost my info but if I then close the panel, enable it again and pick that material again (which was just blank), it'll show the appropriate reassigned material information which I can edit and such.

Anyone else have this issue? I'm just getting into Maxwell and the exporter so maybe I'm missing something?

Thanks,

-Brodie

Ditto to that. I have been through the same problem several times (and haven't found any good solutions either). I just finished a site plan where I went through the process in CAD of making everything a closed polyline (all the buildings, sidewalks, roads, grass, etc. each had their individual closed p-lines) w/ all lines on the same plane in hopes that this would solve my problem once I got to SU to no avail.

I'm not really frustrated when I find little gaps that I missed, it's when I keep subdividing where the faces should be into smaller and smaller triangles until it's all filled and then delete all the lines I just made and I'm fine. I still don't know why it works, or rather why SU didn't just recognize it as a face to start w/.

It seems like there should be some sort of tolerance adjustment that you should be able to control or something. Hopefully SU 7 can do something about this.

-Brodie

You could do your animation in SU but instead of exporting it as an .avi you can export it as a series of images and then use another program that will compile those images and turn them into an animation in wmv format.

I use Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 which can do this w/o too much of a learning curve. I think it cost $99 when I bought it about a year ago. There may be some free programs that do the same thing.

-Brodie