I am experiencing bad levels of camera clipping in skp 8 when compared to skp 7...

Does anyone else think that its worse than before?

Things are particularly bad when items are grouped or are components and I need to zoom in close or get inside a car component (for example) to project a view out... In some instances I have opened up an older v7 file which had views set up looking out from inside components and now I get clipping in v8...

Any help would be much appreciated.

Ps: I know that it helps to switch to parallel view sometimes when you need to get really close. This seems to be an issue with the perspective camera...

Thanks in advance.

Dave

I am trying to do some solar analysis animations on a building and have set up a view with a series of dates and times during the year.
I now want to change the view in question but keep all the settings for dates and times but can't...

I would thus like to see a function where one might be able to:

1.Overide/update all scenes with current viewpoint (thus keeping date and time info as already set)
2.Overide / update all date and time info for project scenes / views with a single set of settings so as to avoid having to switch through each one and update manually...

If there is a way of doing the above.... please someone enlighten me.

Thanks

Dave

At this stage i am not too concerned with not being able to do it without exploding as you suggest (although this would be irritating with a lot of still scenes in one file)... and also because I have been surviving all these years without actually noticing anyway...

I'm just wondering what it is that causes this to happen and if its something that Google could solve easily...
It also happens on the 3d objects (see images i provided) and if say you wanted a 3d object to face the camera for an animation, (for whatever reason) you currently wouldn't get any shadow at all..

In my mind, some representation of shadow be it on a 3d or 2d object is better than none at all...

Otherwise thanks for all your comments.

Anyone from Google out there???...

Dave

Not wanting to discourage the development of great tools such as this, I can't help wonder why, so far down the line in sketchup development, you can't have one preference for modelling units and a different one for the value readout of say... areas, dimensions etc etc... CAD software has been doing this since day one...

At the moment I model in millimeters and require dimensions and areas in meters... I've used this tool since it pretty much came but why don't the skp developers integrate this into the preferences / model info units interface...???

Either way thanks for a great tool!

Dave

Fantastic! That seems to have sorted it...

I am still getting some mumble in the ruby console... This is a near to fresh install of SKP 8 so I don't have many plugins installed...

Hang on... I've got Vray for sketchup and its mentioning syncing of materials so maybe Vray is trying to catch up with the image swaps that your process is doing... If you're creating temp files whilst it happens, Vray might be looking for those when they've been deleted.... hmmm... for now its working just fine for what I need... and vray renders them out just fine too...

I will let you know if I discover anything else.

Thanks again for you help in resolving this.

Dave

Aha... So thats why the ruby console sometimes took a bit longer to display the progress of the process than other times
I did get it working on ocassion but could quite pinpoint the cause when it failed. When it worked the ruby console was quick to report... when it didn't, the console seemed a bit sluggish.

Great TIG... so i guess you have figured it out (hopefully)...
I'll wait for the update before trying again.

Thanks

Dave

OK... so if its not the image itself then what about your external image editor...?

Which one do you have listed in your sketchup preferences? TIG mentioned his was Gimp... but I am using a Corel app...

Don't know if it will make any difference.

Hi again TIG

Just tried again with ruby console open... 3 seperate images... no success.
This was the message:

quietly_force_sync_mats_cb just calledquietly_force_sync_mats_cb just calledquietly_force_sync_mats_cb just calledquietly_force_sync_mats_cb just calledquietly_force_sync_mats_cb just calledquietly_force_sync_mats_cb just calledERROR: skpHelperClasses.rb:updateSkpMaterial, unable to find a material called: kid041
quietly_force_sync_mats_cb just calledERROR: skpHelperClasses.rb:updateSkpMaterial, unable to find a material called: kid041
ERROR: skpHelperClasses.rb:updateSkpMaterial, unable to find a material called: kid041

with regard to the error about not being able to find the material kid041... there is no material or texture by this name....??

it then gets into a loop and keeps posting this...

I'm sure it means more to you than to me...

Cheers
Dave

Here is a typical file that doesn't work on my side...
I suspect it is going to be something with the way it has been saved as a transparent png.
I am on PC.

Thanks

Dave

Yeah... In particular with the 2d people...
You only have to look at the second image on my original post to see how weird it looks if you output native sketchup 'renders'...

This was discovered whilst trial running TIG's image trimmer. I first noticed that shadows would not be cast on transparent png files that were used as textures on a surface (sketches of people on a 2d sihlouette) and then discovered that even if the maps were jpgs / flattened pngs the shadow would still not be cast if the component was set to face the camera, which when you're using 2d people you generally do to avoid picking up the very fact that they are 2d...

But then I'm thinking... If you had 2d trees facing the camera as well a building in the foreground would never cast a shadow onto them... so the issue has widespread potential consequences...

I'll wait and see if someone come up with anything...

Dave

Here we go see for yourselves
All entities are set to receive shadows....

I'm stumped.

Dave

added still image of skp file scene...

shadow anomaly.skp

Gaieus

I didn't save the scene that generated those sample images but will whip one up quickly... since its easy to reproduce the issue.

Standby...

Dave

Can someone please explain why this is so?

I have been using sketchup for years but only recently noticed that 'face camera' components cannot receive shadows from either: non camera facing components, other face camera components or even basic sketchup surfaces / objects.

The Receive shadow tick box under entity info has no effect on this.

Please see attached image for a demo of what i am talking about.
I have tested this in both sketchup 7 and 8 and so it must be a inherent built in lack of functionality.

I just can't seem to understand why they shouldn't be able to do so and furthermore, this can result in an 'unrealistic' image exported in native skectchup format as elements of the scene in shadow but not representing this will 'pop' out.

This has come to light using people components in a scene some inside a space (in shadow)...some outside... but all appearing equally as bright. (see shadow issue2.jpg)

Sketchup developers... thanks for fixing the shadow bug... but could you please fix this too!

If i am otherwise having a DOH! moment, please... a solution would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Dave

Hi TIG

Sorry for the delay in feedback...chaos at work so I didn't have time to 'experiment'.... Anyway... here's what's happening now...

If I choose the flatten image option, it does flatten it (evident by a flattened image in the trimmed files folder) but does not substitute the texture in the sketchup material for me. I have to sample the material and reselect the flattened image file manually via the material pallette. This is fine if you are opting to keep a copy of the trimmed files but is not if you choose to delete them...

I'm sure you were intending for this to happen automatically... ?

Otherwise despite this apparent hiccup, this plugin is fantastic!

Looking forward to the next version.

Cheers
Dave

Hi TIG

I have just noticed that the components created using the image trimmer cannot receive shadows even if the option to do so is checked under entity info....

This seems to happen when a png is applied to the surface unlike say a jpg which does receive them... i've tried this with material texures and people.

Any ideas?

Also I have just noticed that a component set to always face the camera cannot receive shadows either??? this happens in skp 7 & 8... i have just never noticed till now... could this be a bug or is there some reason why this is the case...

I'm trying to build up a library of people and realised this when they wouldn't cast shadows on each other...
This can make some exported images look a bit strange especially when you expect to see something in shadow and it kind of pops out at you.

I appreciate any pearls of wisdom you might be able to offer on this.

Thanks

Dave

TIG

I have tested the new version on the previous 'trouble' file and its working just fine now...

Thanks... you've just saved me a heap of time.

Will let you know if any other issue pop up.

Thanks

Dave

TIG

Some observations.
I am trying to use this to 'cut out' some people and so far the image trimmer is working just fine on my png's.
When using the simplifier however, it seems that when I have a group of people in one png file and they are seperated by clear space, running the sinplifier on the component, causes them to disappear!

Attached are example files... couple1a causes a disappearance whilst couple2a works fine.

I don't really want to seperate out all the individuals so I'm hoping you can help.

I assume that this is a bug and this would also happen when tracing a tree shape which has some leaves that are seperated from the branches in the alpha map / png??

Thanks

Dave

Sketchup will string together scenes / saved views in a straight line.
If an animation is producing an undesireable path (i.e. the camera goes under the model as you describe) you can insert additional scenes at key points to 'force' sketchup to transition between two views in a particular way...

Rendering out the animation will take more time as sketchup will have to process more intermeadiate frames. You could counter this by changing the transition time between frames and thus the number of camera steps.

A bit of trial and error will be needed.

Hope this helps.

Dave

Its simple for me....

incorporate some of the wonderful plugins developed in this forum as 'standard'... then pay those developers a huge lump of cash or perhaps give them some google shares for making sketchup better... and thats it.

There are so many good ideas floating around here that I often wonder why the 'collective' of plugin writers haven't got together to develop their own system/software... it could be good.

Dave

I have had reasonable success using what i call a 'pointy elipsoid' modelled at an angle using the follow me tool.

The angle can be generated by creating an axis between the centre of the circular base and the desired end point (your deviation from the longitudinal axis).

What you do next (with hidden lines showing) is select the circular base and bring it back towards horizontal by half the angle of the axis using the centre of the circle as the point of rotation. Following on from this you select both the base circle and next line of hidden edges defining the original curvature and bring it back another half the angle of the original axis thereby returning the original base back to horzontal... This time the point of rotation should be on 'bottom' most vertex of the second row of edges. (sorry if thats a bit confusing)

No perfect but good enough and I think it could be inproved with a higher resolution to the original curves and some more steps in 'micro rotation'. Also if the deviation isn't as severe as in my mock up you should get no 'pinching' of geometry...

Sure its a manual way... but it is cheaper (Sorry Thomthom ) and doesn't take too long...
If you want a dome on the end... just delete the last bit of geometry and create a dome on it using the follow me tool. Because things are still circular, this should be easy...

give it a go!