Again, I'm thrilled with 7.1 - I'm on a laptop w/ junk graphics card and SU7.1 enables me to work in any model I have tried - impressive! (so I will never go back)

but (there's always a 'but') one issue I have is pretty major for me in disrupting workflow... the Alt-Bucket sampler eye dropper. It USED to work fine. But NOW in 7.1 it seems to sample the edges or something. Who in the world ever wanted to sample the material applied to an edge? (Why can we even apply a mat to an edge anyway - that doesn't make sense to me either.)

So, I know that when using Select Tool you want the 'dominant' choice to be an edge... very nice.
But when using the Material Bucket Alt-click Eye Dropper tool... this should NEVER notice an edge... it forces me to zoom waayyyyyy in on materials on a face (like trying to sample the mat on a soffit, for example) much more than I had to in the past, I don't remember ever needing to zoom in at all in the past. This wouldn't be a major prob, but often you are in a particular camera position you don't want to get out of just to sample a nearby material... so this is one major wish of mine for next SU update... 7.1.1?

edit
also, is it just me, or does the 7.1 distance sometimes come out funky? I mean, I used the move command and it said it was moving it 60 feet, but it actually was about 20feet... or I used the Extrude Line ruby and typed (1") but it extruded it about 10 inches... it's happened to me enough now that I'm actually getting a bit worried about it.

sandbox tools work on closed curves.

I just have to say that the more I use this plugin, the more amazing it becomes, it's simply one of my favorite plugins ever written for SketchUp.

My favorite part is the little toolbar that pops up with buttons and options on it, and that I can save 2 presets that I commonly use.

Great work, Matteo, I think the music really "sells" the animation... congrats on a job well-done.

Thanks Jim,
That's a good place to start (either animating something, or trying to code a fix for it.)

---executive summary---
I show them pure SketchUP first, then move on to photo-artistic when I think they are ready for it.
I show them digital water colors if they prefer/ask for it.
---end executive summary----

As an Architect/Designer I have discovered my clients don't want "Photo Realistic"... they want to see something "pretty" (attractive) .

I guess the "pretty" is the "art" part.

Renderings for me serve generally 2 purposes:
1- I'm communicating an idea to a client to get approval or consensus on an idea, or
2- My client will use a rendering to communicate the idea to a potential customer or client. (hotel, church, condo, all same goal basically.)

"Art" is not an "end" in either of these goals... but it is a POWERFUL TOOL.

I use any communication tool for my purposes that I think will be most effective in reaching my goal in the most cost-effective way for either myself or my client. Some clients specifically want my 'digital watercolors' and some want my 'mind-blowing photorealistic' interior shot.

In either of those, I need to employ "art" and I do so in a way that will please them and reach the end goal: approval/attraction of a client, or approval and attraction of the client's customers.

In my experience I avoid confusion and get consensus from my clients most quickly with Photorealistic renderings. In my experience clients have no problemtelling me when they don't like something or want it changed in the photo-artistic (that's what I call them, literally.) renderings... in fact, they comment more intelligently and most often on photoartistic renderings than with the digital water colors. Many like the straight SU output... and I in fact usually give this to a client first, as I discovered that once they see the photo-artistic rendering, they have a brain-freeze and can not make any decision any more until they see it rendered photo-artistically.

If I were using SU for another purpose, 'just for fun/art'... then my approach would be different... and likely a combination of both techniques.

I noticed the little selection square for the Eraser tool has not changed graphically, but seams to have "grown" so that it is not as accurate as it used to be... perhaps this is related to graphics card as mentioned. I find when I erase an edge that is near another edge but I don't actually touch the 'other edge'... both get erased anyway. I'm learning to overcompensate by zooming in to places to erase when I would not have had to zoom in previous version... small price to pay for much faster video performance

Also, sometimes I notice the problem of drawing a line or copying something, it will look like it's locked onto the right point, say an endpoint... but will 'jump to some endpoint in the "background" instead of where it's showing locked onto in the preview of the point... so the line or object is not ending up being drawn in the right place. So, again, I'm just overcompensating by being 'extra' careful and 'taking no chances' when drawing, but again, a small price to pay for faster vid. performance.

@mac1 -
I use scale at -1 depending on the situation... usually if the object is not on the standard axis, but when you highlight the object and the box is orienting to itself correctly... that method works fine... I think.

Gaieus,
I did not use a dynamic component... built it completely from scratch, just a window. well, a fancy window with lots of tinier components even a "rivet" on the wrought iron metal hinges, etc. Even every Rivet component was renamed to #x after the name... so I literally had hundreds and hundreds of tiny consecutively numbered rivet components.

Ps -
I've tried to repeat the freaky behavior by repeating my steps above, and it doesn't do it... just works fine. I have no idea why.

@durant hapke said:

I don't get the entire tessellation deal, I hate that action as well,

not sure if this is what you're talking about, but... I figure you know, but maybe just to check:
when you click the circle or arc tool in SU before starting to draw the arc or circle type 48 and hit enter for circles, it's default is 12 segments. 48 will give much smoother circles for renderings. Arcs look better at 24 than default 12... even better at 36. Don't go too crazy typing in all higher numbers in there because it will seriously add to the size of the model.

I think this can be changed to become the default behavior somewhere in SU's preferences.

awesome, Tomasz, you should have posted a link to it here.
Is it updated herenow? Or on KT's downloads page?

I am using SU7.1 now on Win XP Pro. Laptop
Am I the only one with this problem?

It's happened to me twice now. But it's a VERY serious problem.

1. I make a component,
2. name it "MyCompHalf" (half of a window, half of a dormer),
3. mirror it (Ctrl+M).. not really sure which mirror ruby it's using, will have to check that.)
4. Group the 2 halves into a "whole"
5. Select Grouped "whole" and context-click "make component" (just hit my shortcut key for this actually, but whatever)
6. Now I have a randomly named component that is called something like "Group#1)
7. Not having paid attention to what SketchUp has named this component, I am just in the groove of modeling, I'll just name it later.
8. I select my shiny new window and choose the move tool, I click the CTRL button once to get my + sign.
9. I move the copy of my component over 8', and voila. I have a copy of my component... or at least I THINK I do. (It's worked for the past several years I've built with SketchUp why should it be any diff. today?)
10. So I do the same thing many times and copy my window or dormer around my model.

Let's say it's a window, and I'm on a building with a lot of these windows.
I'm working along.... hour or two later... notice something wrong with the original half of the window.

1. I open the component and drill down to the original "half" of a window, and add the handle, or whatever.
2. I exit the half of a window component and back out to see my model.
3. None of the others have updated.
4. Not only that, it appears that EVERY INSTANCE of "MyCompHalf" has been automatically renamed by SketchUp to be something like "MyCompHalf#1, #2.... #67...#845" throughout the model.
5. But that's not ALL! It has also renamed each of the "whole" components from Group#1, to Group#2, #3...#16...#24) etc.
6. It is at this moment that I fight back panic and rage all at the same moment.

So, now, once-bitten, twice-shy. I have to double check EVERY TIME I copy a component... as I find SketchUp unpredictably renames them all to be UNIQUE DUPLICATES of the original component. And my file is bloating by the second.

So, am I the only one with this problem? Is is something to do with the mirror command? Is SketchUp handling components different in Version 7 compared to 6? I've only experienced this happening since an update to SU I think in July or Aug.

I'm attaching a screenshot of the "Edit>Item>Mirror Selection" that I'm shortcutting to... not sure which ruby it is, cause I have 2 mirror rubies.

My guess is that it's something to do with the way one of them is handling the mirror command with components and it's trickling down into the entire model as I copy that bad egg.

PS - the animation by Mover.rb renders great with Twilight Render. I've rendered an animation of a door opening and some sunshade (brise soleil) louvers closing. Great plugin!

What is missing from the plugin:
1)
Pick a "base point" for a group or component about which the animation should happen (a door swinging on a hinge, etc.) It does a pretty good job, so far but it's a little quirky... the door sort of slides a bit into the wall, just like the prob. with Proper_Animation.rb ... but this one doesn't seem to do as bad a job with rotating door-type swings.

If you animate a door component rotating open.
Scene1-closed
Scene2-open

Then you hit the Scene2 button, then the door is open, then you open the component to edit the door, as you work, you think, hmm... I want that camera angle from Scene1, and hit that scene tab, now the door's parts will do some unpredictable movements, and may disappear completely from your scene... so sure, you can avoid touching scene tabs when editing animated components... but ...

It would be great if it would read the animation of nested components. I had to cut the door panel component away from the frame inside of the "door+frame" door component, and paste that into the base model in order to animate it. This would also avoid having to animate by hand 40 louver blades 1by1... you could animate the object inside the louver component, and copy the component around to still get the same animation results. ... or is there something I'm not doing right here? Is there a trick I'm missing here? What if you animate the door panel, then put it back inside the component, will it keep it's animation after pasting it back into the "door+frame" component?

How can you reset an object's animation to "null" without losing your scene? You have to copy the scene tab, delete the scene and rename it to the correct name, as near as I can tell... and that's very tedious in larger projects like the airport scene shown in the demo vid. But even then, the other scenes are still remembering that object's movement. There needs to be a "reset animation for selected object".

If you animate the object with the model's scene animation settings at 2 second transition and then change that to be 4 seconds it seems that the animation still happens in 2 seconds of the 4 second transition. In my case, when I did this, it sort of "flung" the door open quickly instead of gently swinging it open.

Fascinating... thanks for the replies, I 'get' it now.

I see it's on the rt-click context menu, but what exactly does this "Be sure to "scale definition" to correct the problem." mean? what is it SketchUp is doingwhen you apply that?

lighting looks like it could be much improved Lighting is very very important to get high quality fast renderings especially with metals, reflections, and product shots like this.

You can download a .skp format studio stage lighting or 2 here You will need to replace the pointlights with Twilight Pointlights and you will be good to go. Read the entire thread there, there's lots of good info.

we are aboutto post a SketchUp format Twilight Lighting Studio that would be good to try... or you can use a studio HDR in the spherical sky slot (from here or here.)

use a fake emitter on the surface of the light ball with a pointlight inside and render with Easy "low" or "Medium" (do test on prelim for practicing with rendering animations)

you can of course render it other ways, even make the sphere a light emitter (as I assume you've done here), but that will render much longer... try it with the progressive animation render settings.

making the sphere an SSS wax material with a pointlight inside could also be interesting. when rendering SSS materials with non-progressive render methods, use one with a "+", so Medium+ would be a good one in that case.

look up the SP animation threads on TWL's forum

Thank you, Cyberdactyl, for that great link! Wish I had found it long ago.

cmeed - great stuff! It is the closest I've ever seen to Croatian Naive Painting in rendering...

and have wanted to create some 3D Naive for a long time.

Keep up the great work... the hand of an artist will create art.

(I was in several meetings with an architect who would paint using his coffee. )

The building part of the render looks great.

I would try to use the Random Scale and Rotate tool on the plants.
The postpro? for grass... needs the edges roughened up a bit...
Trees are repetitive as well.

I was searching a looong time ago for how I could model a lens accurately in SU, care to share your secret on that?! I couldn't even find an accurate mathematical/visual description... and since I'm just a humble architect, not an optics geek, I had to give up the quest... and here it is... I was looking to create a working microscope and telescope in Kerkythea.