By the way boys and girls. . . look where he got some of his basic models for those that had any doubts SU could cut the mustard.

.

@stevebo said:

If someone could render that well on Sketchup...

The modeling is obtainable with SU. It's the rendering and post production work that is killer difficult.

Check out this incredible undertaking by Alex Roman

If any of you guys are really interested in 4D understanding and illustration, I strongly recommend you watch these set of videos.

The torrent downloaded (legal, offered at his site) videos are incredibly crisp and fluid.

Truly mind bending.

http://www.dimensions-math.org/Dim_reg_E.htm

http://www.dimensions-math.org/Dim_download2_E.htm

Good beginning.

Those are some serious trucks you have there.

My only crit is cutting is going to be intense with that little clearance between the board and wheels. It looks like it needs about a 1/4" medium-hard riser.

@troyhome said:

nobody human at least. you are human, aren't you?!

Hehe, Yes I would love to see a real-time YouTube of that.

Looks pretty good.

My only other comment is I see some moiré in the furniture and some repeating in the countertop pattern seen on that shallow angle in pic 2 and 3.

Hey, just to break in for a sec.

Do any of you guys use one of these? And if so, what do you think about them over a mouse?

Very cool and interesting!

I think of alien civilizations.

And yes, I agree with kwistenbiebel, the background structure is very similar to the Centre Culturel Tjibaou.

Also, if you're working on a very complex model, in a specific area, get in the habit of making a 'scene' of that situation.

If you get even slightly disoriented, you can pop to a well known orientation to get your bearings.

Very nice Tig.

Works great in SU7. However, doesn't work SU6, at least for me.

Hi,

Thought I'd throw my 2 cents in.

I use plug-ins sparingly. At least for me, plug-ins can be a sweet and sour experience in that a specific plug-in may be too much trouble to learn well for the little gain in time. But many are well worth the effort. Much of the time I'll be so involved in something that I tend to forget about a plug-in that applies, unless the problem is too big I 'must' reach for the plug-in solution.

Like 'apps' on an iPhone, it's now getting harder and harder wading through nonsense to find really useful stuff.

As to 'gurus', I've found one should be VERY careful using that label or anything similar, in ANY endeavor, most especially for themselves. It can be quite embarrassing boasting about a skill-set level then come across someone that is a magnitude better.

Looking good Jeff.

So far, I'd say yours has the best 'feel'

Thanks very much again everyone.

Brodie - No, this was just something to explore. I do a lot of drudgery SketchUp at work. I wanted to try and do some organic shapes and see if I could manage it. It can really get complicated trying to move, rotate and basically stay oriented with a myriad of obscure surfaces from every perspective when in close.

Also - wow! thanks EarthMover for the extra nice compliment and taking the image and giving it another artistic angle.

I have more normal or realistic wings that I may work into the model. When experimenting with the wings, I really liked the semi-transparent 'black onyx' surface and went with it. I DO realize it shifts the insect more into the fantasy realm.

Here's another detail.

This close in you can begin to see the facets of the compound eyes are not small enough and not rounded hexigonal
I did try for the correct shape and size of the cells or facets, but again, it brings my hardware and/or the software to its knees and locks up during rendering.

Very nice. And great attention to the lighting.

I was hungry for much more res using the zoom though.

I'm late to the party on this one, but was fracking awesome !

Also, the music was a perfect choice.

Thanks for that site Simon.

I think I have most of that information, but it's across a dozen sites.

It's kinda cool to find it all collected in one place.

Thank You -!-

Here is a detail.

I really wanted to go much deeper with surface resolution, with the eyes, surface hair, appendage interfaces, etc. in an attempt to achieve surface texture and detail like the two electron scans below, but my PC simply can't model at that detail over the entire insect. I think I've taken SU and Indigo to the ragged edge, at least in respect to fully modeled organic surfaces.

Hi everyone,

Here's a few dragonfly constructions I've been working on. I have maybe ten cumulative hours on the modeling and another 2-4 on the lighting, staging and touch-ups.

Rendered with SU6 Pro and Indigo v1.0.9_3 with some minor tweaks and the frame with Paint.net. I really wanted to incorporate more than one complex model in a scene, but my PC and/or Indigo can't cut it.

'Surface Tension' is full diffused light, to attempt to bring out as much detail as possible in the wings and body hair.

In the below night scenes, I just couldn't rid myself of that last bit of noise, so I decided to work with it, and added small 4 point pyramid emitters as 'pixie dust' coming off the firefly's tail.

All the renders were given about 6 hours.

Here's the 'wires' as some like to see them.

Awesome.

Looks very accurate.

The only thing that hints of render is the slightly stretched bathing suit models.