Hi Cadfather, this would be a good feature. The best I can do is tell you how I work, and I like it a lot.

I set the spacebar to be my shortcut for 'hide rest of model'... so when I enter a group, I can hit the spacebar to toggle quickly all other geometry off and on. I set the "`" key for "hide other component instances", so that I can do the same with them.

This way the orbit focuses only on the geometry close to me (unless it's a very large group)

As soon as I show this to intermediate SU users in our office, they love it, use it, and never look back.

Also, selecting an object in your view may help you get the orbit to 'keep it's focus' a bit... but I'm sure you knew all that... just added it for the benefit of a user who may not.

Hi Regis,

You may also want to try the Wireframe procedural.

Also, you will learn a lot from the Materials Manual... which explains very simply how to use the wireframe procedural.

Great start on this plane.

yes... there's a ruby out there somewhere... sorry I cannot recall the name... check Didier's ruby depot.

Can't wait to play with this, Chris, thank you from the bottom of my heart... been wishing for this for a loooong time.

@unknownuser said:

don't really know what to do with Kt

Hi Jon!
Have you seen the tutorials?
There's even a special SketchUp tutorial starter kit. And the getting started manual is still useful, only a little outdated

guess Sintra didn't want you to see the big image for some reason...

Hey Folks!

Some of the latest news about Kerkythea and it's content...

People have been posting some very impressive stuff lately in the Wip and Finished Projects categories. Please come and join us! We'd love to see your work. Since no one makes a dollar or euro from Kerkythea, seeing your work is our only reward.

1
Please download the latest update for KT 2008 which fixes a few things... some AA things for models miles from origin, and some multi-threading issues.

2
We have been trying to update the KT Wiki lately. It is not a fun job.
Mostly we have focused on the tutorials section, so browse thru there, if you want to see some tutorials for Kerkythea, but have not found them yet.

3
There are some new model libraries of Trees and flowers for you to use with KT 2008 Echo. They will only work with KT 2008 Echo, no other version. They work great with the instancing brush.
-To install them, simply unzip them into Kerkythea's program's model folder.
-To insert them into a model go to the model Insert pulldown.

4
There are finally many great new procedural materials created for KT.
Download them from the plugins section.
Video Tutorial for installing them here. (sorry, but until we find a geek who owns a mac willing to learn how to create these for Mac, they are only available for PC... anyone out there?!)

5
There are some great new hi-res materials provided for Kerkythea users. "Material library containing 4 wooden floors from Lis textures. These textures have kindly been provided to the KT community and with credits to Andrzei Gasior"

See Materials to download here.

Monster, I showed your vid to another more advanced user at work and we were both like 'wow, amazing'... I never thought of modeling a character like that.

I was thinking, while watching it, the same thing Coen has mentioned, I would align my view looking 'down the barrel of the tube of faces' and use the crossing window to select all the unwanted planes at once, then just 'g' quick key on my computer to group them, and hit 'delete' key. but other than that I learned a lot from your vid and really like your work/style. appreciate your sharing it with us!

Coen, that's a great model too... thanks for sharing it again... would love to render it.

killer batrike, Ivica,... kinda tiny render

Hi, thanks Guite!
Nick! Madison? Bro! I'm over there 1-2x /mth working on projects. I have a project in Stoughton AND Mt.Horeb... believe that?!

umm... the alpha mask technique- I did the .pdf tutorial on KT's site available for d/l here.

for putting an .hdr image in the sky...
just d/l the image I linked above,
run KT,
Scene>Sun&Sky wizard> Sun - hit "SKIP, SUN ALREADY EXISTS" (Because the HDR IS your sun AND indirect light),
then in the next window, choose the "Spherical Sky" choice in the pull-down menu.
Now click on the black colored box that will let you >"Browse" to find the .hdr you downloaded (from my link above).
Load it, then choose it, then hit 'OK'
perfect sky done... just be sure to render with any preset BUT NOT RAYTRACE (as it does not account for indirect lighting)

If you watch the video tuts for the new SU2KT3.0, I also explain how to adjust it in the advanced menu or in the Sun&Sky wizard.

it takes about 10 seconds to do, but longer just to read it.

well, KT's so easy, Vue, even after I've had hundreds of hours experience in Vue, I still use KT for stills... no use going to Vue for stills IMHO.

I used this HDR probe and used the alpha mask from KT to pop in my building onto my background.
I love photomatch/KT alpha mask technique... works well for me. very fast. In KT you can render the alpha mask of any selection w/out actually rendering the image... so you can render the alpha at very hi-res in only a few seconds.

You've heard of the largest render in Croatia... so here's the tiniest render in Haiti!
(modeled all in SU of course)

I am working on a project, an orphanage in Haiti (tight budget, so please be kind). A team of us went as volunteers this summer and visited some incredible people doing an amazing work in a horrible situation. They have a vision for a safe and healthy place for these kids to grow and learn... so here was the vision I've been working on so far to help them fulfill it. This has obviously got a long way to go, and has a lot one could nit-pick about the render, but hey, they were happy. Very Happy

This is a panoramic photo I took of the site one day when we were there. I photomatched it in SU and it worked out ok. I rendered just the building with an HDR probe, and masked it into the original photo of the site. This is very accurate to how it would look... theoretically. But I may move the building

It's a tiny bit wider than 800 px, so I will just have to give the link... sorry
http://www.kerkythea.net/phpBB2/files/gla_webprogress_101.jpg

You can [url=http://www.kerkythea.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3429:1rw2gysz]read the full thread here[/url:1rw2gysz].

[url=http://www.glahaiti.org/orphanage_building_plans/:1rw2gysz]Here's their website[/url:1rw2gysz] where they've posted the image.

We've actually found that SU is a deeply powerful tool for doing this sort of design-on-the-fly work. I was able to build the model in a week while we were there, give plans, elevations, and animated fly-around and fly-thru. They were blown away. The model I rendered here was built later after Design Development.

wowwwww Whaat... you are incredible!

can it reduce the polygon count of a hi-poly mesh (work in reverse) too?

This is really great... will be following this development closely. The only bummer is that you cant 'watch' the deformation live, nor can you apparently inference the deformation to other objects in the scene. This is the major power, IMHO, of the current Scale Tool... that you can 'squish' the object down or up to align with adjacent model geometry. For instance scale-align the width of a wall to an adjacent object... but still it's very powerful and just plain fun.

thanks guys...
ok, I am maybe using the wrong script, because it's not working as described.
I downloaded and used the projection_extension.rb. I followed the tutorial .pdf provided (Great work, Didier!)... but it does not do this... see attached image. for simple example

correct Remus, I'm looking for something that works exactly like the followme tool... the part where you select the lines to follow first, then click the followme tool... then the face follows those lines you had selected previously... I'd like to do that, but just with a couple lines instead of having to close the face, then followme, then erase the thousand unwanted faces (if we are talking about following many many lines in one shot)

glad I could help!
now go to Model>Insert>Infinite Plane

apply a black material to it, and re-render. You will like it instantly better I think

Or even better download the sketchup object lighting studio from this thread.

or see also this thread

Hi Tom,
You can modify any of the settings in KT to the most deep and advanced degree.
I don't like to do this because I'm lazy and in a hurry. So I go for the presets as Giannis has optimized them beautifully.

But to reduce the refractions and speed up render times (two glass surfaces close together will bounce light back and forth until the cows come home) try this:

Render>Setup> now lower your tracing depth on the bottom of the Global Illumination tab... to 3 or something...

Also, now when you run the render, be sure to choose 'custom settings'.

For better lighting, choose a high-res global sky Clipi made... this will give you instantaneous lighting for your scene, nothing to set up. or download an HDR light probe and load it in the spherical sky slot of the sun and sky wizard. no sweat.

ps - when rendering with only one light source, such as this scene, you will find Progressive Path Tracing render method very fast, and as it's unbiased you will see a great preview in only a minute, and in an hour or so a very clear render (depending on many things, but for your scene at 800x600 I guaratee it.)

SU2KT already works on a Mac... it's just that KT did not.

Vray and MentalRay are also, under normal circumstances and use, 'biased'. But I do not expect them to result in lower quality than other more popular 'unbiased' engines.

In fact, Mray and Vray are so popular in the industry because of their amazing speed and quality... kinda why I like them and KT too.

'Unbiased' does not mean 'better' it means 'unbiased'. In fact, Giannis (developer of Kerkythea) stated
@unknownuser said:

here's a small lesson about unbiased rendering:

• Unbiased rendering was first introduced back in 1986. Yes!
  It was not introduced by a commercial renderer. Just marketed
  nicely (but this is just my opinion).

• Writing an unbiased renderer is simpler than writing a biased
  one! Yes! Developing a path tracer or even Kelemen's MLT is easier
  than writing photon mapping.

• There are many more unbiased renderers that you can think off!
  Virtually all ray tracers can turn to unbiased rendering relatively
  easily. Sunflow for example can operate in path tracing mode.

Overall! I see users reproducing the same information found in
commercial leaflets but never digging a bit more in theory or.. history! Wink

best regards.

The idea of a 'biased' render is that it makes some assumptions, and tries to give you what it thinks you want... it's, you know, biased... in a good way.

The idea of an 'un-biased' render is that it calculates bounces of light until they stop boucing... so if you have bad materials, this will 'bias' an 'unbiased' render engine in a bad way... but with a 'biased' render like KT's PM+FG it will be more 'forgiving'... especially with the higher quality presets. This is because Giannis and the team have put a lot of work in getting them to give a less-render-experienced user quick and easy presets.

The presets are not, of course, meant to be a silver bullet, but they are meant for you to load and learn from. Nor are the lower or medium settings meant for client presentation (though I do it all the time because, as Dave pointed out, they don't know or probably even care about the difference because KT's PM+FG is an amazing machine).

BiPT and MLT and MLT/BiPT and PTP are meant for a scene with less direct light...

MLT cranks very well on scenes lit completely by indirect light... but of course, so does PM+FG.. and with the right tonemapping, well... it's great...(Vray and Mray, as far as I can tell, have the right tonemapping, etc. already built in and transparent... KT is working on this...)

BiPT handles caustics (like sparkles onto a wall from an adjacent water surface) well, depending on the light source, in my experience, and PTP is much faster with exteriors lit with only sun and sky... so each have their advantages.

You can't expect to learn a sophisticated program like this in a day or even a year. You can get great results in a day, and better in a year... but I still learn new things all the time. that's part of the fun.

May want to read more at comparison thread between many engines...