What bug crawled up this OP's a** ?

In fact, this issue is not one of customer service but that of a disgruntled customer
who is trying to shake the tree as hard as he can to see if any fruits will drop.

If i were Adam i would say piss off. But he wont, his a good lad.

@thomthom said:

@fuzzion said:

@ Tom , re. HDRI visualisation plugin for Vray. If you convert it to a texture, can SU handle my 14000x7000 HDRI skies ? I was always told that the limit on SU is something really small?

SketchUp can load large textures, but it won't display them in their full size. Think it due to OpenGL. Textures will be sampled down to max 1024px. (or 2048 if you enable large textures)
But in the scenario I talked about where you converted an HDRI to a format SU could read - you would also sample it down. After all, it's just a quick preview to orient the environment map.

@fuzzion said:

@Ruby plugin makers. Can plugins on SU run on multi cores?

The Ruby in SketchUp can't run multiple threads very well. Full of issues. Though, one could make a C Extension, but it's much more complicated writing in C.

Regardless...

@fuzzion said:

And if so, what is stopping so many of our plugins from doing so?

Because most operations can't be split into multiple cores. This applies to most software. Adding more cores isn't a magic bullet. Running on multiple cores means splitting up the operation and that is something that often (most the times) can't be done because the computation needs to be done in a linear fashion.
Same as with the whole 64bit discussion, it's not a holy grale that's going to make everything awesome. Multi-core and 64bit are buzzwords which users of software have picked up on. When I heard people ask for this I read it as a request for better performance. Though it would be better if users simply said that, and left the technical solution to the developers who knows what is possible and feasible for the given task. It will vary from software to software. Speed improvements comes in many shapes - it can be a new improved algorithm, or simply doing the work in a different way.

Thank you Tom for clarifying this up

*By the way, I was having Tea with some mates and one of them just flew in from Iran for holiday. She, an Architect in Iran said that SU is very popular over there.

@richard said:

Ok I cant find where I posted the first idea for this but have worked out a simple workaround for locating HDRI offsets in SU for exporting to render apps. I took out the previous process of needing to develop the sun / grid map together externally.

Not nailed yet but in general:

ROTATORS:

1. Sphere mapped with a Grid (PNG) - the grid would suit the offset parameters of the render app!
2. Sphere mapped with a JPG representation of the HDRI - this is UV mapped with the map relaced on use with that selected (via material edit).
3. A sun that is rotated around the orgin to match the sun location on the above HDRI map.

USE: (DO ALL ROTATES WITH MOVE TOOL)

1. Drag in component and explode
2. Replace HDRI with selected
3. Rotate sun (X/Y) to main light sorce on the HDRI sphere
4. Group GRID, HDRI and SUN - "Locator Group"
5. Turn off perspective and orbit scene until objects in scene trace ground shadows as seen from the camera
6. Rotate "Locator Group" until sun covers its own shadow cast.

DONE read off the Offset Setting from the grid at the red indicator!

ThomThom mentioned this as maybe being a godsent for other apps such as VRAY where the HDRI results cant be previewed.

I hope that this might also be developed beyond my limits as a dynamic or ruby assisted process, would be cool. I can imagine once the sun is manually positioned to the HDRI sun all after could be "hit button, choose render app and bang offsets listed, or made available for the exporter plugin to read.

[attachment=0:21jniyfw]<!-- ia0 -->globe2.jpg<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:21jniyfw]

@unknownuser said:

@unknownuser said:

Rich, you should be able to disable splash screen even for the free Training Edition of Tgi3D SU Amorph and the 30-Day Trial Edition of Tgi3D SU PhotoScan. Could you please try one more time and bring the splash screen from “Help --> About Tgi3D” and click the “Do not show this screen on start up” check box?

That did the trick

But the initial splashscreen was unclickable and it appeared 50% off screen on my PC. This occurred after trying to click on start-up.

---

I do like tgi3d's abilities. For me the cross-section tool is unbelievable. Nearly on par with Blender's 'Seam' function to a certain extent. And the $149 price isn't that bad considering the toolset on offer. I haven't tried the Photoscan feature as i didn't register for the 30 day trial. But I'll definitely try it out.

What i would like to draw members attention to is that the $999 plugin includes all the features of TGI3d Amorph along with the Photoscan ability.

A unique feature of TGI3d in my opinion is the upsample and create mesh from any closed loop by selecting a loop and clicking
the make mesh function. With upsample i can get ultra high polygon models for free by going to SU warehouse and downloading what i want. Then click upsample 2 to 3 times and model looks like you got it from a professional model shop. 149 isnt that expensive if u include the lifetime of free upgrades one can get and how brain dead easy it is to use

@ Tom , re. HDRI visualisation plugin for Vray. If you convert it to a texture, can SU handle my 14000x7000 HDRI skies ? I was always told that the limit on SU is something really small? And if it cant, then the work around would be to create a sphere stitched together from multiple small textures that were broken up from the large HDRI by the plugin and placed upon the sphere as one final image. Its almost 1am and im tired so really sorry if i dont make sense.

@Ruby plugin makers. Can plugins on SU run on multi cores? And if so, what is stopping so many of our plugins from doing so?

@thomthom said:

V-Ray for SketchUp adds greatly to loading time. I turn it off under extensions and use my V-Ray Toys plugin to load it on demand.

Master ruby plugin maker Tom Do you think its possible to make some sort of Vray HDRI visualisation tool plug-in? I would forever and ever be eternally grateful !

PS. Love your camera sync tool for vray

TGI3d takes so long to load that sometimes I wish I brought camping gear

PS. Does anyone know why its the longest loading plugin and why it uses both my CPU cores when I Up-sample geometry? To clarify, the CPU indicator on task mamanager goes from the usual 50% to 80% and sometimes 90+%

@rattusnor said:

@frederik said:

Any news about the price for this plug-in...??

i would also like to know that. It looks like a powerful tool.

His already talking about SDS3 so SDS might become a yearly release. If that becomes the case, I would say a range from 19 to 39 with previous
versions going for free or dirt cheap prices.

SDS2 must be the most highly anticipated SU plugin release of 2011. If any had to hap hazard a guess, how many SDS1 were sold?

PS. Check out his Fb page for more info

EDIT : Here is the webpage http://www.facebook.com/whaatsup

@gaieus said:

I really do not like to chime in discussions like this for several reasons:

• I do not feel I am at least a little bit of master of any of the apps

• I have not tried enough of them - r at least have not tried them in depth enough

• I am a moderator/admin here so I should really not be biased...
  ...so my suggestion would be to try as many of these products as you can. Most of them have some kind of trial version. Ask yourself questions like what is more important for you

• complete integration into SU or a standalone renderer where you need to export your model (and if this latter one, how easy it is to update it once you already started to tweak it there)

• price (of course)

• ease of use / steepness of learning curve (like "integrated" renderers tend to be easier to get used to while sandalone studios may need some more time)

• speed (multicore and even render farming will also belong here - by the way, fuzzion, most of the "serious" renderers out there are multiocre - even the free Kerkythea 2008 which can even run on several machines at the same time in network rendering)

• support / community (you will always have questions...)

• ease of creating custom content (your own materials, components etc.)

• what you want to use it for - like exterior architecture, landscape, interior architecture, product design etc...

• maybe support for animation (once you find it useful) both as walkthrough or even object animation
  After you can answer these (and possibly other) questions, we may give more useful answers than just our biased ones. BTW I would not classify renderes as "for professionals" and "for amateaurs".

PS. Arent we all a little biased? We are human after all

@tim danaher said:

Nice stuff, fuzzion... what plug-ins did you use (if any) to get the beveled cut-outs on the red waste bin?

As for the job, yes, it's great fun, but it's only two hours a week (due to some bullshit German employment law). Also, it's definitely for beginners.. I can't confuse them with plugins... the basic toolset seems to be confusing them enough...

Mein naam is Yoshua (That’s all I know hahaha)
It was made with Round Corner by our whiz kid fredo

• I had to limit the number of sides on the chamber because once I tried having 40 sides on an edge that was 5mm in breadth, the mesh edge formed minor deformities.

I think the most important tool for product design is SDS by Whaat. The entire Chrio chair was made by SDS . In fact, if SU got rid of all the plugins except for the ability to draw straight lines, I reckon I could still make almost anything. And at $22usd with the current exchange rates, it is a steal!

I really think you would find it hard to compose industrial designs without SDS since subdivision is bread and butter of the automotive industry and perhaps many others.

*Yes im salivating at the new SDS2...Two words for it - Holy Cow !

Like i have always said, vray is easy to learn hard to master. IMO Vray suits the perfectionist Do not also forget the price difference between expensive Vray and affordable twilight. Each also servers different markets.

VRAY for SU or VFSU now has a billion materials you can now download for free(you are encouraged to donate, so do the civic thing) http://luzindirecta.luxisessentia.com/

For those that use SU as a hobby, go Twilight.
For those that intend on going pro, go Vray.
For those that intend on becoming masters of the pro, go Thea.

*My biggest regret was fidling around with various renders, becoming averagely
good with each. Tip is to demo 2 or 3 within 1 month. Give your self no longer than 2 months
to make a decision. Try to see if you can make a simple push bike in a garage look sexy and real.

*Check their galleries and be wary of post processed images that can skew your comparisons. Look to see if you can get materials easily as well at the beginning. Once you get itchy, you start customising them to your taste and needs. Heck you might
even buy a $2k camera and make your own bitmaps and textures to impress clients/friends! Like here http://www.photosculpt.net/

*Most casual users will take about 3-6 months to completely understand Vray. If you are hardcore and have a high end PC to render fast images in Vray, maybe 1-2 months.

*A new Manual is in the works for the newest Vray. VFSU is developing a lot
Faster now than it did 2 years ago.

*Vray upgrades aren’t free but there are student rates.

*Vray is used in hollywood

*Vray works on multi cores

Re-post

Clients like nice renders. Something to tickle their senses

I would suggest Vray. Why? Because it renders quick, looks hot and is used by top Arch firms.

These are my nooby examples

(C)2011

[attachment=0:fza0ujl0]<!-- ia0 -->SUPERSLIDE1.jpg<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:fza0ujl0]

@tim danaher said:

Hey, thanks for all the replies, guys.. nagyon köszönöm szépen! I'll have a closer look tommorrow...

The 'Follow Me' approach sounds intriguing, I have to say...

Fuzzion---nothing wrong with curiosity: where would we be without it? It's a course on 'SketchUp' for Product Design' that I'm giving at Cologne International School of Design. Trouble is, I'm an architect...

In sounds possible in theory since the distance between both planes are equal. In theory of course

What your job entails must be so much more uplifting than my extortionist job that seeks to do justice for the highest bidder just
because I know how to draft a writ.

With product designing on SU you will surely need a multitude of plugins. Dont get me wrong. You could make anything with the basic SU Tools,
but frustration would kick in fast ! With Architecture on SU, its lovely. Push pull, sheer,intersect,etc are all wonderfully sufficient.

Here are just 5 of my product designs/concepts done on SU with common popular plugins rendered in Vray with zero post processes. Im still admittedly a novice
All copyrights belong to the owner.

@hellnbak said:

@anssi said:

Nvidia (just like ATI, too)licenses it's products for different manufacturers - apart from the brand name there should be no difference whatsoever between the ones with the same chipset (VRAM amount, perhaps).Anssi

Yes, I know that many manufacturers use the same Nvidia chipset. When I asked for more specifics, I was asking which particular model he was referring to, and the reason I asked that is, for example, on TigerDirect, where I get most of my hardware, there are about 50 different Geoforce GTX 460 graphics cards, varying in price from about 150 to 300 dollars. Underneath the meaningless "gee whiz" physical appearance they are not just carbon copies of one model, each maker uses tweaks and tricks to try to make their model stand out from the crowd, and while these differences are all built around the same Nvidia chipset, they could have an impact on how well it plays with SU. That was the reason for my original post, I wanted to know which particular cards SU users have had good luck with, or have had problems with.
While I have been building my own computers for a long time, I know that you don't have to be a computer genius to build one, and I don't want to come across like I know all the internal workings of each component. I'm far from that . I'm just trying to maximize my chances of choosing a card that I can live with. If you say that I can choose from any of these cards and get the same results, I guess I'll just roll the dice and hope for the best.
I really appreciate your help and advice.

Some succinct points. Someone high up from the google team needs to email Tom's Hardware to get them to make a special SU only benchmark with a very wide test-range of cards.

Edit : Some of their benchmarks do include Blender, so why not SU?

@chris fullmer said:

What are we talking about here? Just using SU on a 3d screen? I've seen Google Earth on a 3d TV with 3d goggles. It was pretty cool. I have not seen SU work though.

Yeah SU on a 3d screen. And since SU is 'what you see is what you get', the potential for such would be astronomical.

@mitcorb said:

OpenGL would have to be configured to construct parallactic(?) views. Your processor would need to be up to it. You'd have to wear a spacesuit.

SO in other words no?

Dammit

@unknownuser said:

3d in 3d, is that 6d or 9d? Ez 2 c?

It would be pure 3d space. Unless you want to start discussing super string theory with me

Is it possible and if yes, how was the experience?

Get a voodoo extreme card

Seriously, get the newest Nvidia card for PC gaming without SLI and check for opengl 4
support to cover future upgrades. Dont waste your money on a workstation graphic card
unless you use additional tools like 3dsmax/blender.

In addition, the rumour mill states that SU may soon take advantage of newer hardware...When
I say newer, I refer to 2008 tech and not the current tech which runs rather well on Pentium 2 , 2gb of ram and Geforce 1

And if you are using Vray, get as many cpu cores as you can. Or just build your own
home render farm by purchasing second parts

According to his blog and FB page, SDS2 will transform the landscape of organic modelling within SU. Incorporating features from Zbrush and Blender, im really excited.