@kwistenbiebel said:

He he , you have us all fooled with this one haven't you.
Good one!

Did I miss a joke?

I made a diamond a while back, copied the cut from a jeweler's website. I think it was a "brilliant cut". Instead of tweaking yours, I'll just mention that I didn't facet the edge, and clipped the point at the bottom. About 1/4" in size, rendered in Kerkythea, here it is:

diamond.skp

Neat FF plugin rclub24, I'll give it a try too.

Sorry Gaieus, I haven't tried any of those. I pretty muck stick with SU, GIMP and Inkscape.

EDIT: Gave the plugin a try - the ratings are a bit arbitrary for my tastes. Uninstalled.

I would be skeptical at best, that site and the pricing is not believable, IMO. A quick look at the FAQ also makes me question it's legitimacy:

@unknownuser said:

You can take the software for downloading only! You don't have to pay for frilly package, license and printing user manual, which altogether makes up the majority of the total value. But, unfortunately, in this case you cannot get a technical support and different additional discounts from the producer. Also you can take updates which are available for the majority of our products. Finally, you will not pay for the delivery.

Really? The manual costs that much?

@unknownuser said:

Do you send the CD with software?
It is impossible; we will not delivery software on a disk.

I'm suspicious of sites that do not use proper grammar (if the whole thing is sending the wrong signals to begin with). The FAQ alone is full of errors. I suspect that this site sells warez, may I suggest you not give them any money. If I thought that this site was real and legit, I'd be all over it.

@unknownuser said:

Do your offer the latest releases?
Not all versions of the software that we sell are the latest releases. To clarify this issue, you need to contact the manufacturer.

And what version will you be getting if you do take a chance an buy?

If it looks too good to be true, it likely is.

Looks great! neat to see the model move from the LCD to real life. I'm agree with you about the flames, an off-center stripe would look much better.

Oh that is awesome. I've been wishing for a "reference" model function for SU since I started modeling higher poly stuff; I know this isn't exactly a reference-type system, but close enough for me!. I can hardly wait.

Please see this thread here:

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=20076&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=test

There are several different processors and GPU configurations. While core speed will help, the trend is towards multi-core processors with minimal speed increases overall and sketchup currently does not take advantage of multiple-cores. Some of the best scores on that link were with current nVidia gaming cards at 21 FPS (9600, 9800GTX), I didn't see any current ATI gaming cards so I can't say if they're good or bad. My current thinking is that ATI still has a lot of driver issues, so for stability IMO nVidia is better.

The question then is, what will you be doing with your computer when not using SU? If you game a lot, then go for the gaming cards. If you plan on using it mostly for work, then a better processor and a Quadro card may serve better.

JMO.

I'm not sure, but it sounds like you're asking for a material to use in SU in order to produce the same results you'd get in 3DS Max. If that's what you're asking, it isn't possible; SU does not produce photorealistic renders. You'll need external rendering software and create/find materials that work with it.

I can't tell is that is a steampunk style mash up of odd parts or a working camera actually designed to look that way. The article attached doesn't really make it clear.

I'd lean towards the mash up, that would be a difficult camera to use if real.

Wow. Great price!

Looks great. I read through it briefly and see that they are created with reeds or flexible branches, but I wonder what is planted on them that grows? Also, one would think that the structure would collapse after a while simply due to age and rot. Ah well, probably just part of the plan for the life cycle of the art.

A slightly different explanation:

Render a fully textured and lighted scene or model. The shadows and shading created by the lighting are then added to the scene textures permanently so that they do not need to be rendered again. This is popular in games where it would consume too much GPU processing power to have to create light and shadows for every single frame and viewing angle, by baking the textures when the game (map, level, scene, etc...)is initially created by the developer the game engine only needs to work with moving objects such as characters in the game when played by the user.

In other words, think of a lamp post's shadow being cast on a wall. Without baking, the rendering engine has to re-calculate that shadow every single time the scene is rendered. Once baked, even if you removed the lamp post, the "shadow" would still be on the wall - it was baked onto the (.gif, .jpg or whatever) and is now part of the texture.

Several 3d software modelers support baking textures - 3D Studio Max is probably one one the most popular.

Neat.

For those of us (like me) who have no idea what Bullwer-Lytton is: http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/

This song comes to mind:

Don't you forget about me

What a bunch of great films Hughes made with the brat-pack that really are time capsules of the 80s. They are the classics of that generation.

FWIW, if you don't have a plethora of apps to take advantage of this powerful card: Wait.

No sense in having this expensive monster that you aren't in a position to utilize. If you wait a bit, the price will come down and hopefully software will catch up.

Angkor wat?

@chango70 said:

The original images have been deleted by photobucket.

Bandwidth Exceeded.

Most birdstrikes do minimal to no damage. I've hit 5 seagulls that unfortunately picked the final approach path in the late evening to have a gathering. Couldn't see them until they were lit up by the landing lights, by then it was too late. They met the aircraft at about 150 Kts as we were slowing down to approach speed. All but one left messy smears on the airframe. The one that did do some damage hit the main strut for the gear so precisely that it ripped a stainless steel hydraulic line free of it's mount and left it whistling in the breeze. Luckily, there was no loss of system integrity and the line was held in place by the remaining fixtures.

We have a few birdstrikes a month company-wide, I've never heard of one doing serious damage.

Interesting, I didn't know that. I'd be surprised if that was the cause; I almost always run SU all by itself, occasionally with Firefox. I've started it a couple of times all by itself to see if the menu item reappears, but no luck... I figure it's a conflict, but to go through and remove plugins one at a time to find the conflicting one is going to be a PITA.