23 years ago i studied this building at university, these images are a personal homage, return with me to Lake Shore Drive.....

Mies van der Rohe Society

Mies van der Rohe Society (www.miessociety.org)

(everything except trees & cars was modeled in sketchup)

Looks great !

Looks good Tom is the building & site fictional ? Only because i think these idyllic forest/garden scenes are a little misleading sometimes.

I like the images, especially the way the project addresses the street. However the 2 different styles of front and back do not seem to match and seem like different buildings.

Of course not homes were picked from a catalogue and scattered by a developer for maximum profit. Architecture has no place in this scenario.

Heiru you are right about the furniture did you know in show homes they use custom scaled down furniture ? I've seen this many a time, people move in and find it difficult to even get the furniture in through the maze of corridors and stairs. They think to themselves but everything was in the show home, ah yes but it was scaled down stunt furniture suckers ! lol

The most important thing is the site, did your UNI give you nothing ? If so find your own site and then you have something to respond to.

Google for sure have a different ethos to @last, the free version will fill all their GE needs, they can then open another avenue to add to their empire. I suppose to the google overlords sketch up is almost irrelevant it's a shame really because i'd like to see the roots driven love in the app.

Thanks for the links sketch.de, they make interesting reading. I think the high poly, import and exploding problems have all been accelerated as sketch up has evolved. The render engines have opened up sketch up and have produced some spectacular results, people enjoy using sketch up and want to add all that detail that makes a good image. Also i think because of the huge user base a lot of people have grown inside sketch up, because it's so fast to model surely it was inevitable they need higher poly support. Perhaps 64 bit or multiple processor support is not easy or ideal, but at some point the application needs to respond to modern hardware. Other apps manage fine, so i believe it must be possible. perhaps inference and the other cpu hungry processes can be toggled off. I am becoming increasingly frustrated in the amount of crashes and lost modeling time, the worst thing is even with a lot of research sketch up is pretty much irreplaceable.
It seems that google are being tight lipped understandably but that could be a good thing, at least it seems like a sign that something is coming. Because of the huge range of users and the large free user base i think the answer lies in making the pro & free version more different. I expect most pro users would pay more for extra features i know i would. I have been with sketch up since v4.0.

chedda

system preferences-general-un check restore windows when quitting & re opening apps (down the bottom)

I couldn't open the styles file. I think i know whats best from research already, no shadows, no profiles basically nothing. Your right imports take forever, then another eon if you need to explode or group. It's these extended periods when i feel sketch up could use all my cores. Even saving files takes forever, pfft. 3ds is definitely faster than .obj and you get groups. Your right i think the importers could be a lot more robust, is it just that the .skp format is so different from anything else mainstream ?

Beschleunigt, Jason is right MOI is an excellent tool. Go get it while it's free and in beta. I am using it for converting rhino format files into sketch up models.I have started using the ghost comp ruby it makes a simple block object of your high poly component. It looks handy but takes a while to create the ghost component.I have created objects in sketch up that are so big 9/10 times sketch up crashes opening them ! I am wondering is it the viewport that makes sketch up slow or the application itself ?

a bit more background on MOI can be found here:

http://blog.novedge.com/2008/07/an-interview-wi.html

for other mac users Architosh is a good source.

I am still enjoying the repeat copy plugin ! However if i select instances and then try replace component it is greyed out. Can anyone else confirm this ? Is this because of the plugin ? PS the bird is from turbo squid.Hussel Hann this is a great example of what a plugin can do of course it could be done without it, but i don't think anyone fancies rotating and scaling all that seed & birds ! Sometimes these plugins get included in the next release if we are lucky.

Chedda

Thanks John.

Hey Richard, when i downloaded the textures originally i had the grass image and a 2nd alpha image i combined them in PS i noticed the alpha did not match the specular, it produced a similar random effect though. Intersting about tiff's i used a PNg i think. I assumed bump would slow me down but your right the clumping is an issue.

It's a simple flat textured component with a PNG applied to both sides. The real trick is using Chris Fulmers repeat copy plugin. First make about 20 dense & random copies, then make that a component and spray it about.I found the textures over at flying architecture (great source) here:

301 Moved Permanently

(www.flyingarchitecture.com)

plugin here:

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=26117 ($8 dollars well spent)

The beauty of the plugin is it lets you scale and rotate randomly. Previously i had used a grid of these planes but always suffered from repeating patterns, moire ? I made the scale between 90-110%, the random effect is excellent.

This plugin is a real beauty, my dreams of creating high poly forested hills are getting closer when maxwell adds proxies.

If anyone has some meadow plant PNG textures with alpha please share !

I have attached the .skp file below. The trick when you make the larger component is to move the axis to the middle again so you can paint it easier.

Grass Object.skp

I've learned a lot here it's good to finally contribute.

Ps i'm not sure i mapped the alpha correctly to the texture perhaps a photoshop guru can refine it ?

For a while i have been trying to nail realistic grass in sketch up & maxwell here is my latest effort (i think i am getting there)

Nice & clean Richard, also intriguing i'd like to see more.

Looks great although i think the viewpoint is too low. I can see what you did though in trying to frame as much as possible while keeping verticals.