Amazing.

Just wondering... Why do you prefer TIG's obj-out instead of Collada? I see Blender can now import Collada.

Please put this in the appropriate thread is this is a duplicate.

The UK government wants to know who calls/writes/texts/tweets with who, and how frequently. The reason given is "to catch terrorists".

I heard about this in "The News Quiz", a comedy radio show from BBC Radio 4. Host Sandi Toksvig said jokingly: "If you want to let the government know how you feel about this, write an email to... well, anybody!"

What do you think of this? Is your country doing something similar?

Right now, in Ecuador, the government is forcing everyone to link their cell phone numbers to their personal information (ID number, full name), or else you won't be able to make calls. I thought that was a terrible invasion to privacy, but seeing what the UK government is planning to do, now it looks like nothing.

?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK7HAgONdaU

I use it for quick exteriors and exterior animations for these reasons:

Instant feedback.
Decent object library.
Ability to model terrain.

I don't use it for interior animations (I use LightUp for those) or stills with realistic illumination & reflections (I use Twilight for that). I'm always looking for the next best thing when it comes to rendering, so I'm open to newcomers.

I wondered the same thing, but it was explained to me that the bridge is only for posing for photos.

Yeah, I've been playing around with it. In Lumion you have to place water a few centimeters from the surface for it to be visible. Maybe later I'll also curve the waterfall plane a little bit on the sides so it looks less 2D.

They come with Lumion. I think I saw a guy with a guitar in the library.

Long time no gallery post...
This was a small favor for a friend. I made it today. The bridge is from the Google 3D Warehouse. Rendered with Lumion 1. No post-pro, except native Lumion post-pro.

@jason_maranto said:

Getting too upset over the results when it represents roughly 0.1% of the membership of this forum is pretty strange if you ask me

I always find it funny how some people believe their native language is the "most expressive and complete one", or how their particular dialect or accent is "the only neutral one in the language", or how their national food is the "best in the world". Most of my friends are like this, with the big exception being one who has mastered Chinese and English besides her native Spanish, befriending native speakers in the process.

Truth is, you only realize the shortcomings of your own language/dialect/cuisine/favorite software/etc when you truly learn and appreciate another.

People in different countries tend to like different software, and it's always interesting for me to see such differences.
It would be really cool to have a much bigger sample (say, 10K votes), and also the country of each vote. But for so many people to vote, you would probably have to offer something in return, say, entering every voter into a sweepstake for an iPad.

Most interesting poll. Here in Latin America Artlantis is still very popular, and so is V-ray. Thea is unheard of here, but it looks like it's the favorite of SUC members.

I'd suggest splitting the poll in two:

-Favorite for still images
-Favorite for animation

Some of us work almost exclusively with animations.

On a more positive note:

Apple deserves an applause. A few weeks ago they managed to get most mainstream movies and music available to my country via iTunes. I hope Amazon will follow suit with DRM-free downloads available here, as I don't like my stuff being attached to one particular brand of devices. Until that happens, I'm collecting Blu-rays bought on Amazon and on the only chain store that carries legal, original Blu-rays in this city.

NetFlix also started operations in Latin America back in September, but they still have mostly indie movies, with few mainstream ones.

Returning to topic:

When you guys call your congressmen, make sure to say you're against piracy and in favor of artists being paid for their work. Tell them that you have a better idea to generate more money for artists: Stop geographic restrictions for selling music and movie downloads. Law-abiding citizens everywhere in the world will have no excuse to resort to piracy. Everybody wins.

They complain that overseas sites are selling/giving away pirate downloads, yet the US entertainment industry is reluctant to offer legal ways to download their stuff overseas.

It just doesn't make sense. I want to give them my money, but they refuse it!
Brain... exploding...

If it's really a matter of stop losing money and protecting "workers' pension and healthcare plans, and healthy local economies and tax revenues", they would be going out of their way to find ways to sell their stuff in every market and medium possible.

SketchUcation, with its thousands of users, would raise awareness about SOPA if it placed an explanatory sign about what SOPA is about in the front page for 24 hours... even without shutting down.

Currently using Backblaze. $50/year per machine, unlimited space, continuous backup, no problems. It backups all user data by default, but you can select folders/drives you want it NOT to backup.

You can think of it not only as a backup service, but also as some sort of "cloud USB drive"... I was recently on vacation in Chile and needed some SketchUp files from home. I just logged in to Backblaze and downloaded them.

@unknownuser said:

Both are quite capable of producing goodlooking results.

Yup, this is what I meant. If the result looks good, it doesn't matter how it was produced... it doesn't even matter if it's physically accurate at all.
All real photographs you see in glossy magazines are photo-shopped. This means real-life accuracy is not necessarily a good thing... We love to enhance real life, to bring it closer to art. So what really matters is your artistic skills, no matter if you work with biased, unbiased or real life photography. Just find something that works well with you and your workflow.

If you can't tell the difference, then both have fulfilled their purpose.

Compress it with Handbrake (free, easy to use) before uploading it to YouTube so we can give it a look.
Here's Handbrake. Just stick to default settings:
http://handbrake.fr/downloads.php

Steve's Digicams has reviews complete with sample pictures:

http://www.steves-digicams.com