@unknownuser said:

I'm using a mac wireless keyboard, bluetooth mouse and a 22" external monitor. I want to use the MacBook Pro as a cpu only, close the lid and tuck it away.

So you are tucking away your macbook pro screen, and then want to hook up two external screens? Just out of interest, why not just use the laptop screen vs. hauling 2 extra screen around. Plenty big for pallets.

If you want to get complicated keep your mac screen active but close it, then maybe can use another computer (any computer sharing network connection, and use screen sharing), I have fond there isn't much lag on local network.

Or wait to weeks and get tablet mac? Then you can have pretty screen without the keyboard, Maybe?

I believe you can also export the section cut directly.

(file/export/sectionslice) Under options like you can do it orthographically or as screen projection

While we are on the subject, how about orthographic rendering. KT does, but not sure about others. Along the same lines, any rendering apps play well with sections. Using KT I have to physically slice the model. But then shadows and lighting are based on cut model. What I'd like for example is the ability to do in room lighting of interior plan. (Backed on textures in SU would accomplish this.

Just to check, do you know if your trial version time has expired. If so SketchUp could have defaulted back to free version where Layout wont' work.

If that is not the case, what happens if you just try and launch Layout manually. I'm assuming before Layout was launching through SketchUp?

Image distortion exist to varying degrees in most photos. If you don't need to be accurate may not be issue, but if you do need to be accurate, doesn't mean you can't use that photo, just have to correct or minimize the distortion in third party app like Photoshop ahead of time. There are a number of plugins that read exif data and reference camera databases to help automate the process. I expect in a year or two typical workflow will either adjust in camera, or there will be good workflows to tag correction settings to photo when its brought into computer (mostly missing right now in Aperture and LIghtroom)

Well that is a little more comlex than I thought. I was jsut thinking straig jpg export from rotatig camera.

I had seen the information from the other post. Very cool technology. I used to work in interactive panoramic photogarphy and saw this demooned two years ago. Its going to be some pretty amazing stuff, on the fly 3d modeling as you capture video. I'm sure Google is cooking up something as well, ieally using Google Earth as an interface for all of this content.

Here are some old panos I did linked to Google Earth. Of course now you can do panoramics directly in Google Earth.
http://www.fullscreenpanos.com/sphpblog/index.php?d=24&m=07&y=15&category=18

So things brings up another "protected" option for interior spaces. QTVR Pano (vs. object) export. In this you can spin and zoom but can't move camera position With the Ojbect it is just the opposite. Camera can move but target is stationary. I've already menteiond soemwere that this would be nice feature to add on to GE export in SketchUp. Low poly exterior model, but within that are links to panos from inside the building.

Any kind of protection will only work so well. There are applications that can grab data coming through the 3d graphics card and save it as 3d model.

Poorman's approach could be to take a copy, explode everything and flatten it one layer. Another option woudl be to exprot a QTVR or flash object. Basically stills where the user can spin around the model and see it as 3d objet. Clearly secures the model, but downside is they can only spin around, can't freely navigate through the model.

Yes on a mac if you export to PNG and dont' have sky or ground turned on then the background is transparent.

Here is something you may try on PC. On mac if I drop model into Layot witout sky or ground and export as a PDF (which I then open in Photoshop) I get the same results. May be worth a test. Don't see any reason why that won't work on PC. Someone should give it a try.

To be honest even as slow as Layout is in its current state, I use it for my exports to save time (since i often need multiple exports at same time) and to make keep consistant regardles of who is working with the files (export aspect ratio not dependedn upon screen/window aspect ratio)

If you don't want to use jpg export then dwg/dxf export is an excellent idea. Can open in Illustrator and alter lineweights, styles colors, etc.

I remember at some point needed higher resolution images so I just tiled my image and imported it in pieces. You shoudl be able to slice up an image using Photoshop or other apps that slice for websites. Then you can add back into SketchUp.

Thought of an interesting idea for how to animate objects?

I can have one camera path for stationary objects, and would make this like a normal movie.

Then I could animate objects that move one at a time (or at least ones that share same movement). For this to work the camera path needs to be adapted not just to follow the original camera path but to compensative for the movement of the object. (Maybe new flightpath version?) So at least on the mac PNG is option for image export. I could layer my base animation, and then a layer for each object animation path. And I would be done. OK, little glitch here, though, if my animated objects won't go behind model objects with this setup. OH, well.

By the way, I do agree, for me to use advanced animation inside of SketchUp I really do need shadows to work in one form vs. another (eg. baked)

Yep, your test files have same results on my mac.

I've had similar issues to this where scene is fine in SketchUp, but that scene placed in Layout exhibits odd shadow behavior.

26 steps does seem like a lot, and the note at the bottom really needs to be the first thing, and also really isn't accurate; no reason to move or rotate your model, that can create all kinds of headaches with other scenes you have or if used as a component elsewhere, not to mention shadows).

Here is my short version:
step 1: set the origin in your model at the same point that you plan to use as the origin in the photo. Blue will be up, but make a note of which axis is red and which is green (although you can fix this later if you get it wrong).
step 2: setup MatchPhoto scene like you always do.
step 3: one extra calibration setup is to adjust the scale to match your pre-existing model. I like to have the model transparent to do this.

Notes
1: (watermark note) if your background photo doesn't have any good reference geometry for MatchPhoto then watermark is a good option. Something to be careful about with watermarks (when stretched to fill window) is that you want to keep the aspect ratio of the source image more narrow than what you will ever use for your SketchUp window or exported image. The watermark will keep aspect ratio and scale based on sides or top and bottom (whichever it is snapped to based on aspect ratio). The model however will only scale based on the vertical size of your window. This means if you don't see your a gutter at the sides then your model will move in relation to your watermark. I have attached a quick demo of this. When you have gutter on sides circle fits in square, when you have gutter on top and bottom edge the the circle (which is modeled object) get bigger relative to the blue square on white background (which is jpg screen capture)

2: (my cool post on how to un-crop a photo even if you don't know how it was cropped) I thought this was cool, but didn't get much interest. I'm hoping SU programers are adding this ability to SU7 as we speak
http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=10895

watermarkdemo.skp

When you delete the layer, normally if there are objects on it, SketchUp will warn you about this and ask what you want to have happen to these objects. If component definition is hiding in model, it would lose that information as well, but one would hope you get a warning. I suppose you could also just re-import from component library. Or don't delete the layers

Ken, at least on my computer when I add a component, or go to file import, the layers contained in the component are added to my model, and shows and hides as you are trying to do. Do you find this is not the case?

Also if you want to have same and complex versions of same component and swap them out, that is easy to do. Just right click the component in place in the model and save-as. I keep a folder next to my sketchup file called "saved components" for things such as this. Then to switch between versions just right click the component in place in the model and choose "reload", and pick the file you want.

I don't want to see Layout Dropped, it could be real time saver if it can be made to run smoothy/quickly.

By the way; what is wrong with location of SketchUp shadows. I know all about the camera/shadow bug, but I'm not aware of the locations of the shadows being wrong. This is of course important for doing some shading studies. I'm aware that it doesn't adjust for day light savings time, but that is easy enough to do on my own. Is something else wrong?

Certainly someone can generate a rubyscript that takes current shadow conditions for the current geometry and projects them on the surface as a texture. Then you can have shadows off and navigate around the model, export stills, and animations.

Not most direct solution, but would seem easy to author. Of course Once you change your geometry or sun conditions you have to re extract the textures. This is how I thought some of the integrated lighting within SketchUp applications would work, but doesn't seem like they work this way.

Since I've been using Kerkythea, I started using it for most of my animations.

If you have Adobe Illustrator it has some a great (live trace tool) to vectorize raster images. You could start your workflow there and dump it to dwg file to SketchUp.

Its very easy with QuickTime to put hyperlinks within a movie. Clicking the hyperlink could trigger another movie to start in place of current one or could open file webpage etc.

You could have the movie pause at the decision point, or if its something where a non-decision is an option (e.g. keep doing same treatment) the movie can keep playing and if hyperlink isn't clicked then the current movie keeps playing vs an alternate one. Like choose your own adventure books. In QuickTime if you have an object moving across the screen, that can be a dynamic hyperlink. it has been a long time since I used this, but if I remember right, its just another trick within the video that defines the hyperlinks (or in QT lingo hotspots) frame by frame. By the way you can link to a specific time within a move, vs. just the start of it.

What could be nice about this is that you could mockup your movie with simple model, and the if you want to make it really fancy, just swap out the movie files.

You could record every possible decision step as short animation, and use Quicktime, flash or html to be able to trigger decision be clicking on part of the model. Don't know if this is most efficient way. There are some pretty good flowcharting applications out there that might make things easier, although maybe not in 3d.

I haven't read all the posts in the other thread, but I'd recommend the component approach.

Just break your model into components and then save each component out to its own file. Then you can work on the individual files, and update them back into main model later on. This also allows for alternative versions of specific elements since you can have multiple files for any component.

Then on top of this if smaller files are slow follow guidelines by others about having shadows off, not show textures, outliner closed, etc.