Hi Tinanne,
Lovely!

SIMPLE FIXES TO THE GUI DESPERATELY NEEDED FOR SU7:

ability to resize the %$#@ scene dialog. If you have more than 7 scenes, EVERY TIME you change a name of a scene in the dialog as it is now, when you hit <enter> it jumps back up to the top of the list. Some animations I have more like 40 scenes! Now I have to manually scroll all the way back down the list...

Keep my focus on the model window PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE. It drives me absolutely in%$#@sane that every time I go to paint a material the focus of my keyboard input jumps to my materials pallette. So after choosing the paintbucket, if I hit any of my 100 shortcuts it actually starts changing the name of the material or the size of the .jpg of the material or some $#@% thing in the material editor.

I have a quad core Boxx and a $900 top of the line Vid. card. When I go to save a .jpg w/AA at 2800px with Shadows on, and all sorts of geometry, textures, etc... it can take up to 2mins to export the .jpg So I echo all other comments on multi-core processing support for rendering animations and stills...

sorry for the anger... I've just finally had enough today... some days I can spend more than 12hrs/day on SU for many days in a row... so these things are very important little things that really kill an experience.

Bok, Didier, Hvala! (Croatian for "Bon Jour, Didier, Merci")
I will check out your script... and I look forward to seeing yours, Rick, I just looked and it's not there yet.

I usually have camera scenes, and then scenes that save something else, different section cuts for instance. Different phases on diff. layers, or whatever... so in one cam. I can show 3 diff. phases, 3 diff. section cuts, then move to the next view, and do it all again...very powerful w/ clients and bosses.

OK Azuby... Ich spreche kein Deutsch... ok I can't even spell it.

Thanks for your efforts - this is a good first step

Now I only need a program that will allow me to easily convert my Excel spreadsheet (it's an office standard format around the world) into the csv... or .txt file... because if I were to do it by hand, I could more quickly build the building in SketchUp myself!

I need a tool that, perhaps, is HTML dialog based for SU... but it needs to be something very simple for any architect to use (this will make it popular and perhaps its creator $ome money)

If it were written in a simple-to-use way... an "SpreadsheetFile-link" ruby, say,
%(#0000FF)[1-"Load/Link Spreadsheet" button,
2-then the ruby analyzes the info
3-then lets the person specify rows or colums to the various attributes of the spaces to be generated, or vice-versa,
4-then the ruby would have a default height, but something one could perhaps specify if they want to change that (could be handy)...
5-then it would build the space:
A) Coloring them differently by category (Naming the colors after the Category!)
B) Naming Each component the correct name (and perhaps even putting some easy-to-read text in it with the name so one doesn't have a hundred useless colored Jell-o cube blocks and no idea which space is which)
6- and ideally, if one were to change the Building's program spreadsheet info(add more spaces, delete spaces, renames spaces or categories, move one space from one category to the next, change the size of a space) in the Excel file, the ruby would be able have an 'update/relink' function to go update names and/or re-size those spaces it created!!! (ok, that may be stretching my idea beyond ruby, I don't know.)]

I will be deeply astounded if anyone actually read all that.

Thanks Azuby and Rick!
I will give it a shot, Azuby, hope you gave good instructions in that zip 'cause I'm kinda slow sometimes...

and I will reply to your email, Rick.

ok... so it's possible... now I just need to find someone willing to do it.

I'm sure many many architects would be willing to pay$$$ for this tool... (my firm included )

I am not a programmer, and have no time, but I figured after looking at how the cloud tool worked this tool would be fairly easy to create.

Didier, where can I get the linetool.rb? I d/l'd the parking.rb ruby from your site yesterday, but cannot locate this one. thx.

Hey folks... perhaps I need to request this from the Smustard boys?

I am often given an Excel spreadsheet with a program showing spaces and their areas.
I usually draw rectangles in ACAD, with the names of the spaces and their square footages, then bring them into SU and pop them up in 3D... but this could easily be automated...

I am wondering if a tool exists already, or if I need to request it that would read the excel spreadsheet and create schematic design cubes or blocks or whatever you want to call them that I can use in a SketchUp puzzle-piece way?

I have ideas for how this should specifically work, but I'm wondering if something's already been started I'm completely unaware of. I'm sure this is able to be done w/ ruby.

sorry in advance if this has been discussed at length and I'm just a million miles behind the ball...

Hi Rick, just checking to see if this one has slipped thru the perverbial 'cracks'?!

well, you rock, as always. I'll keep my ears/eyes open... thx.

Hi Rick, Todd, all the crew!

We were trying to export a boat from SU to Acad format to eventually render it in VIZ.

in VIZ (in case you don't use it) you apply mats to your .dwg file using layers. So each seperate material has a corresponding layer you draw that object on in ACAD. Great.

in SU (as you are clearly well aware) you just apply materials... doesn't matter what layer is what.

SU exports it's layers to ACAD layers fine, but not textures.

you created "group by texture", you created "group by layer", can you help me create "groups on layer by texture?"

It would:
--create a set of layers named for the materials used in the scene (I believe they can't have spaces in them?! dots and underscores are fine)
--Then it would group all objects by material, (this step may not be necessary, but could be handy in some situations...)
--then place each group on the proper corresponding layer.

I opened up all your "group by" scripts + the "put on layer" script thinking to myself... "come on Fletch, you can figure this one out"... then realized it's like reading Croatian... and for me, that means I recognize one word every 4 or 5 lines.

I need this for when I take a component someone has kindly shared (like that big fancy boat someone shared a while back) and I want to bring it into VIZ... any help w/ this would be appreciated. You'd probably be able to do this in about 5 minutes... I'd be working on it for about 5 years...

Right now of course the work around is group by texture, then create my own layers and pop the groups on the correct layers... but couldn't this be easily automated?

thanks a million for thinking it over, Rick.

hey squidgy, post the skippy and I can look at the mat for ya.

you can d/l the normal map plugin for Gimp or Pshop here:
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/nv_texture_tools.html

this will sound condescending in this post, but please understand it's not meant to sound this way at all -
if you are a genius, why don't you look up "Normal Map" in Wikipedia or google, and read up on it yourself? takes like 60 seconds, and this is what I did to learn about it. same way I learned what in the world an "ambient occlusion" render was. we all gotta learn someplace.

and a clip map is a mask. like a halloween mask... the holes in the mask let you see the eyes of the person behind it. Anything black is the mask and hides your picture. anything white lets you see thru the mask and reveals your picture. So, if you d/l the alpha mask tutorial I made at KT.net, you will understand better about masking (alpha map, clip map, alpha mask, clip mask, all the same thing.)

Also, there are some chain link fence materials to be had on the web. But isn't there one automatically w/ google SU free? could've sworn there was...

so open the png in Pshop or Gimp, and select the pixels w/out transparency (in Pshop this means to CTRL-click the thumbnail icon of the layer, it will select on the pixels on the layer for you. then create a new layer, fill the selection with white. now in pshop go to Selection>invert, and now fill that area with black. Flatten and save the .jpg as a new file called 'mask' or 'alpha' or 'clip' whatever you wanna call it. Insert that in the clip map slot of your KT mat, and away ya go!... incidentally sometimes you won't have to do this, you can just insert the image used in the diffuse slot into the clip map slot, and play with the slider that chooses which pixels to clip. Anything to the left of the slider in the image's value histogram (which you cant see, but can imagine) will be considered as black in the clip map, anything to the right of the slider will be considered white in the clip map.

also, if you use gray in a clip map, it will show semi-transparently in proportion to the % of gray you use... so 50% gray will be 50% transparent, 2% grey will be 2% transparent.

KT does support normal mapping or bump mapping, and there are tutorials out there for creating good bump and normal maps... but you will need to study about this, sometimes you can get away with just using the image used in the diffuse slot, but many times this will not do if you want a true bump map.

KT does not support micro or macro displacement... yet.

I can ask Clipi and Tomasz what they think. Perhaps Giannis will take a peek, it would be good to get confirmation.

I've only used KT since last October. It doesn't take long to become proficient, but then I had several years rendering experience before that (like 10yrs) and I took to KT like a duck in gold water. Try HDR lighting, it's instantaneous, and you'll like it. Check my latest WIP on the KT forum. to see a building with HDR lighting on it. Then I just mask render in the background (there's a tut. for d/l on the KT home page download sections if you don't know how this is done.)

keep up the great work!

in addition, the 'smoothing' of KT only applies to 3ds and .obj models... not models exported with SU2KT... they will use the smoothing from SU2KT's action from SU. If smoothing an object from SU in KT with the r-click-smooth option, results will vary from bad to not-so-good.

I have concluded that it's the shape. Unless you can build it in blender, render it, and get it to look any different. I re-built the object myself at large size (50'radius) and very high poly 100 segments per curve, and smoothed in SU)

My tests all show the 'line' you are seeing. If you notice, it's not only on the inside but also around the outside of the shape it is where the normal of the face is no longer coplaner to the inside or outside 'flat' face of the donut. I think that if you were to create this form in real life there would possibly be something similar in it's reflections as well, but perhaps I am mistaken. it probably would be there, but just not as pronounced as in the SU model rendered here. I do not believe this is a KT issue, but perhaps it is, I have been wrong before. I think it's possibly a SU2KT issue, if my theory about the fact the shape is going to reflect light like it is because that's the shape it is.

I lit this in 1 second using an HDRI, I rendered this with MLT preset 7 passes, in less than 4 mins.

I applied a material in SU, then set it to be the diffuse color of the object, set the reflectivity to be 1.0 The material here was not physically accurate, but was to test if UV mapping the object would help. Because the object now had UV coords from SU I was able in KT to go to Window>BitmapCoordinates and change the UV style to Spherical. Later I changed the .jpg map in the diffuse to power of .05, set the reflectivity to .95 (.95+.05=1.0=physically accurate material, properly built for KT) and it rendered like the last picture here. the 'line' you see is still there... but again, I think it's because it's physically accurate to how this object would actually reflect light.

ok RJ, I d/l'd your model, and had a theory it was a SU UV mapping thing... will try some things and let you know. initial tests were inconclusive but not heartening.

render times - well, it depends from render to render. I have a quad core too.

it is very comparable to other high quality render engines... and the new KT beta I'm testing is much faster than the current official release, but I'm not at liberty to say more right now

on interiors I get great results using the KT preset 'Photon Map Medium +AA' this will generally get me something very nice at 2800px wide in about 30mins. for exteriors I us an unbiased render method called Path Tracing Progressive - this takes some time to clear up, but gives me nearly instantaneous 'preview' renders. So it's great for both uses. Since I'm on a quad, in less than 30 mins I will have great exteriors (assuming lit only with Sun and Physical Sky) Sometimes if the scene is extremely reflection and poly-heavy I can wait up to an hour or two for large px renders. For interiors of extreme high lighting quality and more than 2000px wide on unbiased render preset such as Metropolis Light Transport you can wait up to 12-13 hrs (I start it, go home, come back to finished render the next morning) This is similar to high qual + high res Vray or Maxwell renders.

I used Viz (Max's little architectural brother) for 2 yrs, and was just about to purchase V-ray because I tired of the plain (flat) old Viz renders. I started using Mental Ray and got good results on exteriors, but was worried about going to interiors when I found Kerkythea. ... after 2 years in VIZ I was considered better than most at my work in VIZ (but it's like giving a haircut to someone one-hair-at-a-time-painful-to-use), I was very ready to find something simple- can't I just get a good render engine for SketchUP w/out the hassle?!

I would say that Kerkythea is not your average 'cheap or free' program. It integrates more easily with SketchUp than Max, and you light it up inside of SketchUp... add materials in SU, etc... but then you have choice of ray tracer (which is VIZ scanline render - but KT renders faster than VIZ in that mode) or you have automatic wonderful preset Radiosity settings (PM+FG in KT-speak), plus you have unbiased methods (MLT+BiPT very similar to Maxwell) and for exteriors I use Progressive Path Tracing (similar to Vray, as I understand) No other program, free or pay can offer you that.

My gallery is here and it has side-by-side comparison with Viz, Viz+M-ray, and Kerkythea.

I'd say if you want something more advanced than Podium, and just about as easy to use, but with as many or few advanced options as anyone could want, then Kerkythea is the way to go. SketchUp is free, Kerkythea is free. AutoCAD-$4000, VIZ-$4000, V-ray $1000. hmmm... I did the math, the work, and compared. I decided.

congrats on the grandfather thing! my fourth child is due in less than a month.

Here's a very nice render of a drumset, didn't know if you saw it, with your photostudio setup, but using the model (I gave the link to in my previous post)