I hope Apple buys Lytro.

@yeahright said:

with all of the 'pro' (e.g. Blender, Maya etc.) software out there, what made you stick with Sketchup? What does it offer you that the others don't?

A lot of us are architects. SketchUp is almost perfect for us: Way more freedom than ArchiCAD, but not as intrincate as Maya or Max.

Well, they replied today and said they would forward my case to someone else. Fortunately, I still have days left in my 30-day trial.

No prob, Csaba. I liked Corel the best of the ones I tried, but online purchases do not always go as smoothly as one would wish.

Seriously, I think you would look ridiculous carrying around that. And try to fit that into a manila envelope!

Is there a way to export these animations as FBX?

So, has anyone learned to use it?

Second? Who's the unluckiest member?

And I haven't told you about the time when I ordered Lumion... The $1K+ charge appeared dozens of times in my PayPal account and my bank kept calling me about those charges. The whole thing took a while to clear up. And to make things worse, the local customs said I had to pay $380 for the import of the #@&! USB dongle. I complained to the Lumion guys so much about the dongle thing that they now use online activation.

Now returning to the Corel case: I got tired of waiting on the phone, but I found a way to send them a message using the form found here:
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Content/1284151700373

Update:

So I ended up deciding for Corel. I ordered the thing, the charge is already in my Paypal account, but all I got from the Corel online Store was an error message.

Now trying to contact them...
Grr.... They have no online chat. Time to dust my spoken English skills and call them.

I was just wondering if this is in the plans for SketchyPhysics. For example, I could an animation of the London Eye, export just the frames needed for an animation loop, and render it with Lumion now that it can import animations via Collada (and soon via FBX).

Ok, I'll tell you what has worked so far:

Sending e-mails with your latest cool perspective/animation to former clients. They will NOT contact you immediately to hire you, and might not even reply to the email, but a month, two months later you receive a call from them to offer work, and they say "Hey, I saw that image/video you did. I need something similar for a new project." This has happened to me three times in the last seven days. Let's see how many result in actual work.

Also, having a locally popular video in YouTube helps. Someone from a government office saw my Samanes Park video and was able to call me after finding my contact info somewhere else in YouTube. (Note to self: Place contact info in final credits.)

Having my videos always ready on my iPod is priceless as sometimes a potential client is waiting for you in a room without a computer (this happened last saturday). However, an iPad would be even better. (Note to self: Buy one.)

I was talking with two colleagues about this.

They agree that if you lower your price in front of the client without rationalizing why you lower it, the client can assume you were going to earn that extra money "for free". So we agreed that we should only lower a price in exchange for something, for example, getting more credit for the work done, or doing less work.

I have just found a few gems on the web on this subject:

"How Professionals Negotiate Price"
http://www.functionfox.com/articles/article17.aspx

"Negotiating With Clients 101"
http://freelancefolder.com/negotiations-101-for-freelancers/

"Charge More, You're worth it"
http://www.businesspundit.com/charge-more-you%E2%80%99re-worth-it/

And a final one in a more comedic tone:
"Why I Charge More: A Designer's Open Letter to His Future Clients"
http://www.winwithoutpitching.com/why-i-charge-more

@dbalex said:

it's strange to not release a demo of the soft to try before buying

It's even stranger being completely unable to see the forum before buying.

@adamb said:

realtime raycast reflections

Thank you! I really need this for my house videos. So, does this mean the end of the irrcaches? Or will the new reflections only work with planar surfaces?

Thanks, I was able to download & install it after disabling ESET.

Do you plan to add DWG support?

Check my previous post. I changed the video link.

About your second problem, try this free plugin:
http://www.smustard.com/script/MakeFaces

Group it.
Open the group.
Take a measure with the measuring tape tool.
Type how much this measure should be. Hit Enter.
That's it.

This video will clarify the procedure:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv7fw2lHkMQ
EDIT: Video changed.

ESET says there's a trojan in this file:

http://www.mootools.com/plugins/download2/3DPhotoBrowser.exe

Looks like a much better value than "Mystic Thumbs". I'll download the demo and keep you posted.