Thomas,

Have you tested this code out? Does it work? (fingers crossed.....)

It would be nice if you could buy Vue Pro Studio and just add on the Eco painter. This feature to me is worth the extra money as you can paint in trees effortlessly.

On another note - Modo 302 just drop their price down to $695. http://www.luxology.com/ A little over your budget, but I really think you'd find it pretty intuitive. The sketchup importer should be out any day now for it. It's an amazing price for such a great program. Check out a few of these vids - http://www.luxology.com/event/2008/SIGGRAPH/index.aspx Note the little section at the bottom of the page....1.1 trillion poly's rendered in 6 minutes! The Modo community is really something special. There is constant communication between developers and users and they are always giving previews of the new things they are working on. There's a real sense of family in that community......what I'd imagine SU used to be like in the days before Google.

Here's a good comparison of 3D apps. http://wiki.cgsociety.org/index.php/Comparison_of_3d_tools

Some big name left off of the list....but I thought it was an interesting breakdown.

I would go with Vue 7 Complete. It's $599 and will give you the poly support you are looking for, but it's not much of a modeler.

Beautiful render and I love your website also. What program do you use for rendering?

@pbacot said:

Thank you Adam!

Your video is very good at demonstrating use of various rubies, which beginners like myself have not used much, if at all, as well as dealing with common problems as they occur. Also shows how fast modeling is done. I've seen some of the techniques described but not as clearly and you added in a lot of extra tips. I think you should make more videos.

Peter

You're very welcome Peter. I'm hosting some sketchup classes over the winter for people in the landscape field. I plan on making several more screen grab tutorials and I'll be sure to post them here. (Hopefully with audio)

Look here - http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=12464

Here's a tutorial I put together on how to build wing walls for entrance ways. In the tutorial, I use Joint Push Pull, Tools on Surface & Round Edges. (Building a wall like this would be next to impossible without JPP and TOS) I also show how to correct texture tiling on a curved face. Total time is a little over 12 minutes. I hope some find it useful.

PS - I put this together for some relatively new sketchup users on another forum.....hence why I go over some of the basics.

[flash=640,480:1w55z5um]http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2380303&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="889" height="670"></embed></object><br /><a href="http://vimeo.com/2380303">Google Sketchup Tutorial - Building Wing Walls</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user792528">EarthMover</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.[/flash:1w55z5um]

No, I hadn't seen that. Thanks Ilay!

Jeff,

Make sure your lines are welded together and try making a component instead of a group. This way you can set your gluing axis.

I doesn't work for me on my vista x64. Says there is no version of Hypershot installed. When I installed it on my XP x32 it installed with no problem....even with SU7.

Thanks Jakob!

I really like the way you have so much control over the Vray sun in Max. It's easy to invoke a nice warm feeling.

Jeff,

When adding displacement to a face in Vray, try grouping the face and bounding edges before you render. If that doesn't work, then you need to subdivide the face until there is enough geometry for displacement to start working.

Also, be careful of using displacement where using bump would be more effective. Displacement will bog down render times, and it's not always even noticeable except in close up shots.

Pete,

Take a look at this - http://3dats.com/Images/Tutorials/Critical_VRay_Settings_Part_I.pdf It's based on Vray for Max, but the principals apply across the board. It should help explain the critical settings in Vray. With so many different setting combinations, it's always a matter of speed vs. quality. This always comes down to the number of samples & subdivisions. In Vray, both the AA and the GI engines have min/max rates. Tweaking these can take a render from 2 minutes to 2 hours. I think most of us who use Vray stick to using GI with Irradience Map as the Primary engine and Light Cache as the secondary, with Deterministic Monte Carlo as the AA. I usually keep my min/max for IM around -3,-2 and LC subdivision around 600. I also keep my Hsph Subdivisions between 30 & 50, as this will boost render times, without killing you on quality.

Had another go at this one. Tweaked some settings and gave it a more tropical feel.

My attempt at some flowering Crape Myrtles. I photoshopped flowers in with some leaves. Worked out okay. As far as the Podium shadows....worked good for me. Took some playing with the Dark and Light sliders.....believe it or not, I got the best results from having the light slider set down to 10 and the dark slider up to 35 with "use sun for shading" checked. With the sliders the other way, I found the shadows too faint to really see. (using 1.6)

This is just a practice scene that I setup in Sketchup and rendered in Vray for 3DS Max. This is my first attempt at rendering a sketchup model in Max. The wood is a little grainy and flat for my taste, but I learned a lot from this little project overall.

This is exciting! The idea of changing seasons is great. What if there were some magical way to tie a dynamic component into sketchup's shadow date control, then hypothetically you could animate the changing of the seasons!

Also, I'm still curious about flowering.......is it possible to add a feature for this?

Prior to rendering in Vray, I had to explode the Faceme component twice, then return it to a faceme component. I had to generate a transparency/alpha/clipmap (I use Deep Exploration)to plug into the transparency slot in Vray. This worked fine and the trees rendered well. The process is a bit of a pain, but who can complain about such nice trees for free!

It would be nice to see an option added to put in a flower map. This would open up the possibility of doing and assortment of flowering shrubs and trees.

@gaieus said:

Try again, Adam; it should work.

Working now. Thanks Gaieus! Man, everyday is like Xmas around here!

Al, thanks for sharing......this really made my morning. It's like Onyx for Sketchup! Amazing stuff! I'll see if I can do some testing as well.

EDIT - Al, when I download from the link you provided on the renderplus forum, I get a .zip file that is empty (0 bytes)......any ideas?