Beautiful Pibuz.

I had a go with your scene using Vue 7's Radiosity engine. Quad core Q6700 - 50 mintues on Ultra with quality boost set to 2.5.

I think both renders would serve well with a touch of caustics reflection on the ground as the light passes through the water in the bulb.

What a fun little project....it's great to see all the different results. Perhaps we should all go back and edit our posts to make sure they reflect machine size and render times, for comparison purposes. I think today I'll give the scene a go using Modo.

It would be nice try a similar thing with a shared exterior scene. Anyone got one?

• Awesome video Kwist!

Thanks Fred, I will try and angle the compass a little more. Thanks for liking my compass model also. Here is the model if you would like to examine closer how I made it.

Compass Model.skp

Holy Sh!t! Just what I was thinking of asking for the other day. I love the taper. Reminds me of the Falloff function in Modo. Thanks Fredo!

Here's a simple drafting compass I modeled in SU as part of a WIP design logo I am working on for my landscape design company. Looking for some feedback on the logo as well.

Tina,

I always find everything you do very inspirational, and this one is no exception. I can't tell you how often I visit your site to study your use of color. You have a such a wonderful eye and the outcropping plants are a great touch.

Would you mind sharing what program you do your post processing in, as I often wonder?

@thomthom said:

Why not use a texture?

Texturized lines are not read by most styles, nor picked up by programs like Piranesi. I for one use things like Jim's Protrude Ruby to represent patterned flagstone, and have no problems with bog down. It's a shame that we limit ourselves and our tools because of some slower computers out there. Just by running a program like Subdivide and Smooth, you create way more lines than would be created by a Hatch tool. I don't follow the reasoning. I think most of us have a real underlying desire to replace the need for outside CAD programs all together, but I doubt SU will ever fill that void.

Lately, I've been using Hot Door Cad tools for Adobe illustrator and importing my sketchup stuff in there for adding line weights, call outs and swatches. It's a great a little add on for illustrator.

PDC - Neat idea. Increase the number of bounces to get rid of some of the artifacts you see.

Gus,

I'm curious about how you managed to work the transitions on the neck. You've achieved such great flow from the tuning head into the neck. Did you do this with one solid mesh, or was there a lot of stitching involved?

Flippin amazing Gus! This may be the best Sketchup work I've ever seen. I may be a little partial to the subject...... That's what I call photoreal. I think it deserves a spot in the next Catchup Newsletter.

As far as vertex manipulation, you can do it if you use the move tool with nothing selected. You can also snap to endpoints, so I never understood why you couldn't select vertices.

Adding a bigger arsenal of selection tools is a must for organic modeling. Soft selection is great, but there are other selection tools that would be more useful, more often. Thomas has started to make this happen with his select loop plugin that I use every day in my work.

Thomas, would it be possible to create a "Paint select faces" function to your toolset as well? Similar to TIG's ruby that allows you to hold shift and drag over lines to select them, could something similar be made for just selecting faces? I think this would help out in organic modeling.

Also a circle select, similar to Modo and Lightwave would be great. It would be nice to toggle between being able to group select by either having to circle around a whole face to select it, or just having to draw around a partial face to select it. This would aid in selecting harder areas withing organic modeling.

Sorry to hijack with my own requests, I just think these are necessary as well for quick organic modeling. I love the subdivide, unsubdivide option. I like how Hexagon just gives you numbered iterations that you can click on for subdivision levels. You can go all they up to 6 and then back to 0 to return to the unsubdivided mesh.

Thanks Gus. Here's another set I was playing with.

Podium Render with slight PP

Photoshop in DWC style

Tried my hand at another NPR render using a different angle of the same project. This time I used a quick Podium output with some water reflection as my base and did a bunch of hand work and layer masking in photoshop. I wanted the final result to be legible, but dirty at the same time. Any thoughts....advice?

Raw Podium output



Watercolor render

A script that would drop vectorized hatches onto faces would be beneficial to me. A lot can be done with textures, but if you want to change to a sketchy style, you lose any definition in the texture. I would pay for a script that would allow me to create or import a repeatable .dwg hatch pattern from cad and apply it to a face within sketchup, having it tile out to the end of the face and stoping. Ideally the pattern would be grouped so it doesn't stick to the surrounding geometry. From there you could open the group and select all and run the delete faces script and just leave the hatch lines. This would allow you to also have the hatch pattern atop a texture. This would be great for brick, tile and roofing patterns. It would bring SU one step closer to completely eliminating the need to own a CAD program.

Thanks Remus. Good advice....I'll try and lighten the lines a bit.

Thanks Gus. I agree with everything you said. Not sure what's doing with the reflections. They all have the same material applied.

Sepo - water is done with this software - http://www.nufsoft.com/naturestudio.php Took 5 minutes including .gif export

The client wanted to see some NPR WC styles, so this is what I came up with. Straight SU outputs and PS layering. Any opinions on these?

Toned down the glow and added a water effect.

Thanks guys. Exactly the kind of advice I was looking for.

Here's a deck and pool design that I rendered in Vue 7, with some post process work in PS. Design was done in autocad by a colleague, I just did part of the SU modeling and the render work. Looking for some comments and critiques as I think I've been looking at it too long!