That's good news and less time than I would have thought. If I can be comfortable and with a functional workflow after a week with Blender, then I would be very happy. If I could actually be producing useful output after a day or two, then hallelujah!

Using Bender (at least initially) primarily as a rendering pipeline seems like a relatively painless intro to the program, and once acclimated then I'll likely start playing more with other aspects of the platform. I also see it as a good hedge against SU Pro's increasingly uncertain and opaque future.

Looking forward to trying out your course(s) sometime in the next few weeks, and will let you know how it goes. Cheers!

Looks really cool Chipp. It's a great idea to have such a useful and comprehensive set of render-ready textures without the hassle.

I haven't had much of a chance to explore Blender 2.8 yet, but once I've familiarized myself with the UI and basic functions I'm planning on buying your course. I would continue to (mostly) model in SU and then port to Blender for EEVEE rendering as you have advocated. Under that scenario, the need for a decent material set becomes obvious.

What do you think would be a reasonable timeframe to allocate for mastering the basics of Blender and your SU to Blender workflow? (from pretty much a standing start)

It looks like I'll have some time later this spring to finally dive into Blender and I'm curious as to how much time I'll need to invest to ramp up.

I made the modifications and produced 'Rotate____view' for the various views. Saved me a lot of trouble of rotating viewports in LayOut for a bunch of parts on a material list. So thanks for the directions — it was even simpler than I thought.

But it did make me think: wouldn't it be possible to make a single plugin "RotateCurrentView"?

If there a way to auto-poll for the current view, then wouldn't it be relatively simple to use a CASE statement to assign the correct axes relative to the current view?

The produced versions do the trick fine, but it would be cool to consolidate multiple plugins (and their corresponding menu items) into a single one.

Thanks TIG for taking the time to describe the proper approach. Sounds fairly straightforward, so I'll give it a try this weekend.

A very useful little plugin.

@TIG: Is it possible to provide the same capability for the other ortho views? I'd like to be able to rotate front and side views in the same way.

I searched for another extension that could do it, but didn't locate one.

OK, thanks Chipp. I'll check it out.

Chipp — does Kit Ops work on MacOS as well, or is it Windows only?

Also, I've ben trying to find the recommended min. system requirements for EEVEE — do you have any insight from your experience?

Insanely impressive!

@tig said:

The latest version of Ruby now shipped with v2019 is more unforgiving of simple syntax errors - previously this was just ignored !

TIG - will this required syntax discipline actually reduce certain types of issues with plugins, or is it simply an added annoyance for extension developers?

I'm Blender-curious as well, but I've been waiting until the stable 2.8 release to dive in.

Chipp's advocation for a SU Model / EVEE render workflow makes a lot of sense to me, and with the 2.8 UI changes it provides a productive way of dipping our toes into Blender.

My only question is what are the min. system requirements for Blender 2.8 / EVEE? Anyone know? (I briefly tried looking on the Blender site a while back, but didn't come up with anything. Maybe I missed it, or maybe they hadn't posted yet)

I'm on a 2014 13" Macbook Pro with IRIS 5100 integrated graphics, so I doubt I'll be able to run it under my current setup. I have been considering buying a gaming PC with a fast Nvidia card (at least a Geforce 1070) as a rendering machine ...so this might be the impetus to bite the bullet and go for it!

@fredo6 said:

Could you make sure you use the latest version of LibFredo6 (v8.7f), as I fixed some bugs related to dialog boxes on Mac.

Just updated and it seems to have done the trick. Thanks!

I did as you asked, and no error message on the Ruby console. The window flashes open when I hit the toolbar button, but disappears immediately after. (it's visible for a fraction of a second)

Hi Fredo —

I'm having a problem with the plugin under SU Pro 2015: It works fine in 2018, but now doesn't work properly in 2015.

Specifically, I can't pull up the configuration window, either from the menu or by clicking the toolbar button.

Everything worked fine in 2015 up until either my installation of 2018, or the last SUClock update (both were around the same time).

Any thoughts on what's going on and how to fix it? Love the plugin and depend on it for my project time-tracking.

Thanks.

Beautiful work Dave.

And really fun to see the realized project alongside the original design. Kudos!

Just an insane amount of work, beautifully realized. (Reminds me of the Viking '75 Mars Lander reconstruction project of TDahl in terms of depth, commitment and ambition)

Have you attempted to create a master model to replicate the map seen at 1:23, or is the model weight just too great to manage? It would be really interesting to see all of the structures in context in a fly-over (or around) animation.

Congratulations on seeing it all the way to the end and brilliantly so!

@rv1974 said:

check Jim's 'Add hidden layer'.
Additionally, there was something like 'scene\layer matrix' -I don't remember exact name. The plugin in form of table to control layers visibility through all your scenes.

It's called VisMap2 by Martin Rinehart. It was updated for 2015 by Jim Foltz, but haven't tried it yet in 2018. It's a very useful extension, and I would love to see someone create a new version of it.

I also use Jim's Add Hidden Layer plugin regularly and recommend it.

I find it tough to choose between them! The one you chose looks really nice — and much easier to exit from — but I also love the lines of the more classic Adirondack style (which evokes a certain nostalgia from my younger Muskoka days).

Great collection Dave!
Is there one in particular that's a favourite?

@chippwalters said:

BTW, are these videos of value? I was planning on creating a whole series based on SketchUp's current interface and how it maps to Blenders. If they are offending anyone, then I can just post them on YouTube and not here.

Definitely of value. I had downloaded Blender a couple of versions back and started playing with it, then got busy and dropped it. A big part of the learning curve is knowing what applies from what you already know and what doesn't –– kind of like switching from Windows to MacOS or vice versa.

I'd love to finally learn Blender — not as a replacement for SU (at least, not yet) — but as a complement — and your videos help map a simpler path to proficiency for current SU users. I can't imagine why anyone would be offended by you posting them here, but if they are then I'll follow you to YouTube.

Nice! Brings back memories of similar nights...