Not sure how to restore all drive letters specifically, but here is how to change them if you know what they were -

To change an existing drive letter on a drive, on a partition, or on a volume, follow these steps:

1. Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.
2. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Performance and Maintenance.
3. Click Administrative Tools, double-click Computer Management, and then click Disk Management in the left pane.
4. Right-click the drive, the partition, the logical drive, or the volume that you want to assign a drive letter to, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
5. Click Change.
6. Click Assign the following drive letter if it is not already selected, click the drive letter that you want to use, and then click OK.
7. Click Yes when you are prompted to confirm the drive letter change.

The drive letter of the drive, the partition, or the volume that you specified is changed, and the new drive letter appears in the appropriate drive, partition, or volume in the Disk Management tool.

Since you are doing a tensile / membrane structure, you could try Ferrari Sketch - http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=32380&hilit=ferrari+sketch

Or also Soap Skin & Bubble - http://www.tensile-structures.de/sb_software.html, which are both designed for modeling these types of structures.

I looked at the model too. Your Vray memory errors are most likely from having to process the entire scene for each render. You are better off putting on a separate layer all that is not in the camera view of each render and trying to see if that helps.

@bjornkn said:

Great work
If you're going for full photo realism you'd need to add some subtle bump/normal/spec/dirt maps to those aluminium panels though.

It's funny how photo editors spend a lot of time trying to remove the dirt and scratches while 3D artist spend time putting them in.

Amazing work Pete. I would love a six month road trip in that thing!

What a gnarly sycamore tree tangled in wires! Must have been a pain to cutout. Love seeing Philly streets. Brings back memories. Nice to see the old buildings being renovated, too. To add realism, you need at least one cutout of a guy pushing a shopping cart full of scrap metal!

I think it looks great for what it is. I'm sure the client isn't worried about the added people being a fraction of an inch too big or small.

[flash=800,600:2nhaifg8]http://www.youtube.com/v/5s8WUJbOWIE[/flash:2nhaifg8]

Very cool. This should be very handy for presentation work.

The new one is awesome. Great work. Especially on the roof. My critique would be the crop on the image is a little tight. Open up the view of the patio a little to add more of a "welcome to my backyard" feel.

You could always try this - http://www.3dconnexion.com/

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=32043&hilit=shortcut

As far as navigation, I like to keep my left hand free to select tools for drawing and modeling and use my right hand primarily for navigation with my pinky on the SHIFT key for pan and release. Seems faster than trying to switch between tools and then execute them as the mouse is all in one motion. On the other hand, I don't play video games, so I don't have that type of muscle memory established.

I think he means the actual light fixtures. Most biased renderers have a pre-built spot, omni, ies or plane light, while most unbiased render engines use a material as an emitter, which the user applies to self made geometry. Personally I don't think having pre-made fixtures would be a deciding factor on purchasing a render engine. There are enough free fixtures around which alternative light sources could be added to.

Point being...all render engines suck in the wrong hands.

It's probably hiding somewhere due to the dual monitor switch. Sometimes windows get stuck in limbo between the two monitors when you restore to one. Can you find it by using Alt+Tab? If so, tab until you highlight the Vray Options window and once it's the active window (even if you can't see it) try pressing Alt+Spacebar (brings up the window options) you can then hit the "m" key and use the mouse or arrow keys to move the hidden window into view. Might not be the case, but it's worth a shot.

(Try it also with a visible window first to see exactly what the shortcut keys are doing)

@unknownuser said:

Dear Mr.K

If you have a C/C++ library containing Surface Nurbs functionality, I am interested to have a look and possibly build the SU GUI around it.

Thanks

Fredo

Morphed table leg?

Yeah, hundreds of 2D plants equals only a quarter of the polygon strain of one evermotion plant. You also have the issue of conversion. If you buy the collection, they come as .max files or .obj. (Download the sample file and check) I just tried to bring the .obj sample file into sketchup with TIG's .obj importer and after 5 minutes, it's still calculating. Perhaps something like mootools or deep exploration could do the conversion and poly reduction in order to get it into sketchup, but the load on the program would be intense. Xfrog has a 3D groundcover collection that is a little lower on the polygon count side, but should still be used in a limited fashion in sketchup. - http://xfrog.com/product/X-09.html

And apologies to Nacho for taking his thread off topic. Beautiful works as always.

@unknownuser said:

For example, you've got a component named Maple Tree and within that component are 3 components all on different layers (let's call them: Top, CAD, and Standard). The component on the Top layer might be a 3d maple tree or a 2d top view image of a maple. On the CAD layer you might have some simple linework, whatever you'd usually use in CAD to represent a maple. And on the Standard layer you'd have your usual 2.5d component. Then you just turn on whichever layer you need for what you're doing. Just make sure as you'd create this overall components that you save them to a component library where you can easily access them again for the next project

-Brodie

Something like this. It's a Japanese Maple component I made, which has two layers inside it, one for perspective and one for top. Switch to top layer when doing birds eye view. The attached .skp has the component in it and is set up with two scenes set up for each view. The file size is large because of the detailed cutout of the plant for better shadowing. I vectorized the .png and brought it into sketchup as a .dxf, then ran simplify curves on it before adding the plant image. It's not necessary, but again, just makes better shadows.

Japanese Maple_Combo.skp

@mitcorb said:

Another comment on the practical side. Since you said this is a real project, ground water in the soil above the patio elevation will introduce hydrostatic pressure to some degree against the retaining walls. You could conceivably have seepage through any joints both in the walls and in the patio deck, unless you relieve that pressure in some way.

I would be more concerned with getting the water out of the patio. A simple wrapped drainfield behind the wall with an perforated pipe exiting to daylight will create enough of a void to keep the hyrdrostatic load off of the wall. Especially if the surface grade is pitching away from the wall as well. The patio itself will need some type of surface drainage. Either pitched to a central drain tile or to a periphery slot drain of some kind piped under the wall and to daylight.

Nice renders also.

Patrick the plants are most likely a mix of Evermotion - http://www.evermotion.org/modelshop/show_product/archmodels-vol-61/48/0/0/ and Artlantis. They are very high poly and wouldn't work in sketchup without some serious polyreduction. They are most likely placed in Artlantis Studio. Some prior renders contain plants that come with Lumion.

Patrick, also check out the TIG's roof.rb script. For everyday gable and hip roofs, it's a breeze. http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=3470

Have you downloaded the bonus packs yet? http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/download/bonuspacks6.html

There are a lot of premade doors and windows that are set up to cut through a single plane.

A lot of time though I have projects with custom doors and windows which I just draw myself and make into cutable components. Most times it's quicker to just draw something than to go and search for it.

If you build your walls with thickness, you will need to look into a hole punching script to get the window to punch through both the inner and outer wall. TIG's is a good one - http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=30846

Hi Jet,

You're example worked fine for me. Perhaps try keeping your camera in perspective mode instead of parallel projection. It's easier to see where your control lines are positioned.

Some other things to consider with Shape Bender -

1. Make sure the control line is not touching the geometry to be bent.

2. The position of the control line to the geometry is relative to the position of the bent shape to the curve. (if your control line is 5mm from the geometry to be bent, the final bent geometry will be 5mm from the curve.)

3. The segments in the curve will be relative to how many slices the plugin uses to bend the geometry. More segments in the curve will result in a smoother bent geometry, but will process slower.

4. The plugin recognizes the direction which the control line is drawn. Using the down arrow will reverse the direction of the control line and flip the start end points and the resulting alignment.

5 The up arrow will toggle which side of the curve the bent shape adheres to.

6. Be mindful when bending shapes with curves or extra verticies in them that the plugin will have to add triangles to your bent mesh to stitch those faces together. The results can often mess up the shading. Always clean your mesh well (ThomThom's Cleanup script) before processing and make sure your segment count of each curve is reasonable.

7. The bent shape is also relative to the axis. More predictable results occur when you keep things on the zero Z plane. Not raised into the air.