Yeehah! Can't wait to get home and try this. Thanks.

Is it possible to have the cut opening feature work through a 'thick' wall (more than a single surface or plane)? I have attached a window showing what I am trying. I can cut all the openings but would be useful to know if I don't have to.

window.skp

I'll look into these. I will eventually share the model - right now I want to try to reduce it myself as this is a useful skill for me to learn. It will also help me decide how to build better - for example I know there are some things that have more detail than is needed. Thanks Rich.

Not sure if this is something I overlooked but is there a way to to see statistical information by component/group? My computer is already bogging down with a model and it seems relatively small to my noob eye - about 36000 edges / 15000 faces / 290 component instances. I figure it is a good chance to learn optimization and would like to see if possible to identify the worst culprits from a list

ie

Door 1 1500 edges 230 faces
Window 4000 edges 200 faces
etc

I will try - thank you.

When zooming in close to clean up with the eraser, panning with the hand tool takes longer. Rather than zoom in and then zoom out, then drag with the hand, then zoom in again etc it might be nice if you had an option -like in Photoshop- where holding down the shift key, while using the hand tool, increases the distance covered while dragging.

Hope this is clear.

That is really amazing work.

Thanks very much!

As I copied the candle by itself into a new file I found the problem. I had tested a translucent material before this. Somehow some faces seemed to retain this material. I noticed that there were two materials in the wax candle even though should only have been one. When I deleted it gave me the "Materal is in use - Are you sure?" message and deleting it removed those phantom triangles.

Thanks for pushing me in the right direction.

candle.skp

Thanks for that will try - though now I am not 100% sure the triangles are missing. I had a material set too 95% opacity. When I set it to 100% the triangles go away. Will take scale and check as you suggest.

I was trying to create candles and I see some empty triangles. Is there any easy way to fix these? I was zooming way in with hidden lines and trying but seems difficult. Wasn't sure if I should post a file or this is a common problem.

@designerstuart - thanks.

Here is my current wip. I wanted to try something a bit larger so opted for a 'medieval-ish' store (the rare times I play a game I favor RPG's with medieval or apocalyptic settings for some reason).

It's mostly square boxes so far but I hope to fill it up with items and texture it so should be a good learning experience.

You might also like to take a look at this plugin (won't help with the rendering) which allows you to create and swap less heavy models while you are working.

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=21469

In addition to the link Jim points out http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=250026 you might also find the Visual Index link interesting as it has animations of some popular plugins http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=16909

This is awesome work. You may have answered this before but I'm new - so what game is this in?

I have a suggestion for this great plugin (if still in development).

Would it be possible to export multiple layers as a series of png's? I see that ImageReady CS2 has an option to import a series of images to layers, which can then be saved out as a psd file. This would make SketchUp great for blocking in some layers -say foreground/midground/background elements and individual objects, then opening in Photoshop to do paintovers with the objects seperated by layer.

Wow, amazing.

Maybe in the future we will have live tracking of ships via GPS so we can watch your ship models moving on Google Earth.

That's really interesting - I would never have guessed but makes sense.

There are some trees and plants on sharecg.com - I haven't tried them in SketchUp but did in Photoshop in the past.

[url]http://www.sharecg.com/b/6/Textures/?keywords=tree&s=dd&member_type[All]=on&attribute[2006][2070]=1&attribute[2006][2069]=1&attribute[2006][2073]=1&pn=1[/url]

EDIT: Forum doesn't like the brackets in the url I guess. Here is a short url: http://bit.ly/f3pwKV

Here is a comp with them in Photoshop

From this thread http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=173014&page=1 which is what actually made me download SketchUp.