Does anyone know which one of the other instancing renderer is fasster? Has anyone test the them before?

Would this work with Vray?

Very nice!

Over here in the UK Architectural Profession Sketcup is making inways to mainstream acceptance more and more. You see a lot of respectable offices pulishing their work in sketchup without rendering in industry magazines like BD. I was suprised at first myself but its now pretty much accepted.

So... Do we have any initial results from the survey at all?

Sounds incredably useful! Thanks Rick!

Can anyone give me an English break down of what's been discussed. I'll get out my French dictionary next time Honest!

Juju

Thanks for the prompt reply! You are right that if I use other application then Quadro FX seems likely to be a more rounded option. How ever FX 3700 cost a few hundres pounds more than a GTX! I find it a pain to commit my self if the difference isn't going to be substantial. I am look at benchmarking websites like Tom's hardware but they have the major softwares (3DMAX, Maya etc.) listed but none of the sofware I plan to use including Rhino and Modo or Silo not to mention Sketchup... Does anyone know any benchmark website that tests more than just industry standard? Or is there a good way to find out reliable information regarding Pro card vs Game card performance in the aforementioned softwares?

Remember creative universities are looking for students with creative potential and an open mind not students that are skilled but already set in their ways. Your porfolio should avoid mimicking the 'professional look'! Be free and experiment! Try things out that you are genuinely interested in and don't worry about if there is a going to be an employer at the end of the day. Since you are going to develop a set of technical skill while you are in Uni anyway. You only need to show what your best work however don't shy away from less polished work if they are tied to your own interests in any way. Show enthusiasm in your portfolio and think about whats important to you. Don't go chronological unless needed. If you have anything that is genuinely developed over a period of time and the process is deemed interesting then present the finished work FIRST, and work backwards. This makes your process more interesting and relavent in light of the final product. Anything that showcase your observational skills is also crucial!

btw I was at the Bartlett then UEL.

My 2 cents

Thank you! That is very generous of you. I don't have anything half-way as nice to reciprocate .

Has anyone been working with really small buttons? I mean when you untick the View - Toolbars - Large Button? I haven't had problems with unsticking icons since i started using small (tiny) buttons which admittedly is a bit of a strain on one's eyes.

Juju

The 8000 architecture is apparently a far cry from the 7000 architecture. It would be more useful if someone can compare FX 3700 (or FX 1700) with 8800 GTX.

If the GTX comes on top then I will save myself tons of cash .

my 2 cents

OMG! you work tirelessly to make Sketchup the tool that it is today! Hail!

Surely you can make a script where recording of position (with Navigator) can be turn on and off. So you can turn to line view and start record camera position and fly around with smooth movement then stop. Since the path is only for the camera you can at a later time turn full texture on and export? That would be truly amazing and would make purchasing Space Navigators a must! Maybe someone can get sponsored by them to write the script .

@plot-paris said:

this is true, after the discovery of this very useful command (Test.time_display) we dont need to have big models anymore. it is rather helpful to play with different style settings to find out how they influence the performance.
of course it still makes sense to have some scenes with different poly counts to check if the performance speed decreases proportional to the model complexity or if there are differences in hardware (for example that one crafic card is exactly the same speed as others with low poly but is much faster with hight poly)

anyway, my test results wit the city model:
(Core2Duo 3.00 GHz, 2 GB Ram, nVidia Quadro FX 1700)
(Hardware Acceleration, Fast Feedback, Anti Aliasing 4x)

Scene 1: 30.9 fps

Scene 7: 0.4 fps

and in Jackson's Cube model:

(17.1; 16.8) 16.8 fps

ps: nevertheless we should design a beautyful model that makes the whole process fun to watch. I think we first have to set up such a file, where we mind every factor that is important to know (textures, styles (like profiles), transparency (faster, nicer), low-/high-poly count, beauty ,...) and then we have to ask a ruby coder to write an automated script that runs the "Test.time_display" command, saves the result, proceeds to the next scene... finally displays all the gathered info in a window (like it does now after every test).
oh yes, is it possible to read out the hardware settings with ruby (or even the hardware components of the computer?)

Its slightly worrying to know that in the cube test the FX1700 only managed around 2 fps over my lowly (cheap) Geforce 8600M GT (14.5 fps with 4x AA)! I was just thinking of forking out £300 for for the FX. Now I am not so sure anymore. Does anyone have a FX3700 or a FX570 to compare?

Just Did the Cube test

Results (Average over 5 tries with no shadow, no profiles and no AA):
14.6 frames/sec

Computer (laptop)

CPU: Intel Core2 Duo T9500 @ 2.6GHz
Ram: 4Gb @ 667 Mhz
GPU: Nvidia Geforce 8600M GT 512 MB

Wow this is fantastic! Will some one be able to compile the results? I would love to but unfortunately I have a deadline at my office until the 18th so i can't. I understand that GPU is making the main differences so maybe just compile a GPU table?

my 2 cents

I personally would kill to find out if the Nvidia Quadro FX card does perform better than the equivalent Geforce cards.

The people are a bit noticeably fake. Maybe photoshop them in after the render? My 2 cents.

Slightly verging on anti-social.

Beautiful sunset Richard! two thumbs up.

That happened to me. I managed to fix it by tweaking the Nvidia display driver settings. Change anti-aliasing to programe controlled and don't use any anti-aliasing in sketup (under preference menu). That should get rid of your problem.