Posts made by dsarchs

Also, if nothing is selected, activate the move tool and you can pick and move vertices. So if you draw a line too far just grab the end vertice and move it back to where you want.

Some time ago I had seen an amazing model someone did in sketchup. It had been based on another model done in 3dsmax or something and had intricate cobble stones, roof tiles, lanterns, a canal -- or something...
Does anyone remember this model? It had been done with a lot of the new rubys [subdivision, etc.]
I remember this as being a really inspiring model and would love to see it again if anyone can find a link to it.

Thanks.

That card would've been before the ATI/AMD merger, I think. I've heard that they're graphic line is much better since the merger.

I'm not such a fan of AMD but I imagine I'll be buying a system sometime in the next year and have been starting to look around to see what's out there.

Personally I think that CUDA looks amazing... I really hope that pick's up in the very near future. Intel's philosophy of continually adding more and more cores seems ridiculous -- much too brute force -- while GPU [through CUDA] seems a very elegant use of hardware we already have [to a much larger result that merely CPU].

I was wondering why everyone only talks about Nvidia cards? Surely, they are great cards, but AMD seems to have some very competitive cards out right now. They big draw to Nvidia for me, right now, is the prospect of CUDA, but as that hasn't come out yet I think I could wait and in a year or so, buy a budget Nvidia card that would be easily comparable to their current high-end.
The problem with AMD seems to be that the cards run really hot. Still, at such a price difference you could afford a better cooling system and/or ventilated case.

Is there a real problem with SU using AMD cards? That would be hard to believe considering the amount of people using their cards. Does anyone here use a current-gen AMD card?

Here is an article [ http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4870,1964.html ] reviewing the 4870 by tomshardware.com -- a very reputable online tech source. Also, notice the 4850 [which can be found for $150 or less] which is not much behind the more expensive 4870/GTX 260... I would imagine a crossfire 4850 setup [~$300] could be pretty sweet -- again, if you could keep it cool.

I would love to hear people's thoughts on this.

[Here's a section from the conclusion on this review]

@unknownuser said:

**For once, our assessment of this Radeon HD 4870 will be simple: It’s an excellent high-end graphics card! With the same architecture and most of the strong points of the Radeon HD 4850, it’s in a higher category performance- and price-wise. The bottom line: Though it’s faster by an average of 6% (and in the majority of our tests) than the GeForce GTX 260, it sells for $299 – $150 less than the competing Nvidia card! Even the top-end card from Nvidia, the GeForce GTX 280 – souped up with more transistors, twice as much memory and higher clock speeds – is not that far ahead. It showed only 13% better performance than the Radeon HD 4870, though it costs twice as much.

A few points enter into the picture to make it bit less idyllic, however. First, the Radeon HD 4870 suffers slightly from the competition with its own stable mate, the HD 4850, since the smaller card has a better performance/price ratio (only 23% less performance at a price that is 60% lower). And, AMD has totally reversed its strong and weak points compared to the preceding generation, and in particular to the Radeon HD 3870 — The Radeon HD 4870’s performance is good with antialiasing enabled (despite having only 512 MB of memory), but it consumes a lot more power at idle and also under load (and more than the GeForce GTX 260). And it’s not exactly a model of silent performance, though it’s still a lot quieter than the GeForce GTX 260, and without heating up the inside of your case.**

[rant]

The problem with looking at new rendering engines [and I have to admit, I've been pretty impressed by Fry render, so far] is that the examples are almost always these amazing scenes, full of modeled detail.
Pretty much any rendering engine could produce amazing results based on the models. In these cases its the large amount of detail, and not the rendering quality that's on display.

The best way to judge the merits of various rendering engines is to do a side-by-side comparison of the exact same scene rendered by different engines for a set length of time. This can become complicated somewhat by time differences between biased and un-biased methods [maxwell or vray, for example].

Beyond this, its the features each engine supports [displacement, instancing] and the ease with which that engine can be used and learned.

[/rant]

I have to agree with Remus -- that would be the easiest way to approach this.
The only problem would be getting a smooth and accurate curve. I would either use control points that you snap to or, from an orthographic view, scale until it matches an image behind.

I have found Sharkyextreme ( http://www.sharkyextreme.com/guides/MVGSBG/article.php/3747766 ) to be a good source for what to buy if you plan on building the machine yourself -- always a good way to go.

A few times a year they update three different levels of computers [$1000, $2500 and $5000, if I remember correctly) and try to come up with the fastest computer available at that price. That includes keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc... so if you already have those it'd be a little less.
These guides are geared for building a 'gaming' computer, but that would coincide pretty well how sketchup works.

It's worth a look, at least.

Kwistenbiebel --

I've been looking into 64-bit architecture lately to see if it's worth it or not.
Are you saying that if you are using 64-bit OS emulating a 32-bit software application [SU] that even though you are limited to ~3.5 GB RAM that this is only for each program?
For example, each active program could use up to ~3.5 GB RAM? If so this would make it useful to have very large amounts of RAM [for multi-tasking] even if the software individually does not support more.

It kind of defeats the purpose of relating to the 'context' if you just import some random, generic street corner...

You should make your own in SU -- it would take about five minutes. Just import an aerial photo [google earth] into SU and push/pull the general shape of the buildings up. If you have site photos just paste these onto the generic shapes you've just created.

For rendering I prefer KT, but Indigo might give you better results without having to mess with anything. Just download the latest version of skindigo and indigo.
The materials shouldn't matter.

I might have misunderstood your request, but couldn't you just use 2 section cuts to get that look?

Solo,

do you mean that you split the model into 3 pieces and each have a different projection or is there a way to have multiple projections somehow apply to the same group?

I've been curious about the best way to apply textures to rounded/irregularly-shaped objects for a while and I'd be curious to see your approach. I apologize if this should have been addressed in a different thread.

@unknownuser said:

..and, guess what the top feature highlights will be:

1. some greatly improved features for google warehouse and google earth!!!

2. many new and ultra cool styles!!!!!

I have to agree with numerobis; I kind of think google will focus on unimportant aspects like these -- things that fit into the larger 'google' world, but have little value for SU as an individual program. SU 6, for example, was a letdown. I don't care for layout and the line types are a waste of time. What else did it add? They talked a lot about improved ruby support, or something, but I haven't seen the improvements they said would happen because of that [Can any of you programmer-types comment on this at all?]

SU is an amazing program for what it is and they should highlight that. While a very basic rendering engine for quick light studies would be nice, it would be a waste of time to include anything more than that, as there are so many great choices out there [free and otherwise].

The silly line types they've added feels to me just like a tacky photoshop edit -- hopefully they won't waste development time adding to that.

This is what I would love to see:

multi-core support
better efficiency at handling large models
a 'loft' feature
the shadow glitch to be fixed

These, I think, would fundamentally improve SU and its usability.
While there are other things that I feel would be important to add, most of these can be found in the great rubys that have been coming out lately [think bevel, subdivision, ffd, etc.] If anything it would be nice for google to incorporate some of these plugins and clean them up a little.