Uber Fantastic! Thanks very very much!

i suspect it was something like a cube on a flat surface, where the bottom face of the cube was a shared face with the surface under it, therefore it couldn't move up. 😉 when you group it it separates the geometry from anything else.

chris, these are a few rendering applications that I'm aware of, and what are to me their major pro's and cons.
Artlantis - (seperate application) really easy to use. comes with a material library. also, the studio version offers good animation options. reasonable quality, but not physically accurate, and has some quirks with its radiosity.
V-Ray - (plugin) very good quality. physically accurate lighting. option to light with hdri-maps. option for toon-materials. but way more complex to use.
POV-Ray - (seperate application) free. also physically reasonably accurate, but very slow if you want good quality. an exporter was made for SU6, but works with SU7 as well.
Podium - (plugin) rather cheap, very easy to use, but too few controls for my taste.

Now there are a lot more around that I haven't tried out myself, this is just what I think about the ones that I have. I must say my personal favourite is V-Ray, but Artlantis is a good second, especially when there are plants involved - because of a library that my boss has bought...

good luck choosing...

Hi Chris,

Although I don't mind you posting your question here at the SCF, I do suggest that you make a search at the KT Forum, where I'm sure you can easily find answers to most (if not all) of your questions... 😉

There was a post a few weeks ago, where someone had developed some posing models for sketchup. It was like he had rigged some mannequins with operable joints. I believe there was both female and male, like base models. The male was a bit buff, and he was talking like he was going to do one a little less brawny.

On another front, perhaps Sketchyphysics can do what you are seeking. Search this forum.

Chris, The attached is a example of a "just in time" render for a client meeting. The house was designed and modeled by my production cad system, ported into SU for materials, then IDX for a preview render. The time spent in SU, and IDX was under 30 minuets. The render is not great, but good enough for that meeting. The status of the project that the render represents is the second schematic design meeting.

Render Makai 02.jpg

Sorry to keep posting. One question does normal maps get used by VRay at all?

Another tip about model organization and performance:

Avoid overorganizing your model. By overorganising I mean too deep nesting of groups or components. It may help to keep file size down, but it has been demonstrated to slow down the program. For instance, in addition to a large polycount, some 3D plants have their contents organized as nested components like leaf>twig>branch>trunk etc. It is better to let the filesize grow somewhat by decreasing the levels of nested objects.

Anssi

@unknownuser said:

Couldn't get it into SketchUp, though

Why not?
Proper animation by Morisdov can do it! 😉
Or Sketchyphysics2 😉