@chris fullmer said:

I think its valid to lighten the red hydrant up if it is brighter than it would be in real life. Great tip.

But why woud someone want to highlite the architecture and not the landscape?

Chris - Landscape Architect (student)

hey man, LA power all the way! (Im a UF grad and now work at a firm in Tampa) All Im saying is you can strengthen what it is that your trying to present but reducing everything else. When I do renderings for architects I try to make sure that the landscape doesn't detract from the building.... vise versa when I present a landscape plan. Of course in real life they should be designed equally together so they look great together. Have you had a chance to visit Peters' office right above you there? I got to see some of conceptual models for the trade center before they went public!

I made them at 800 pixels and it still wouldn't let me upload them, saying they had to be less than 256k... so I reduced them to 400 pix wide instead. Could it have to do with the jpeg compression that you choose when you export from photoshop?

hey yall', tell me what you think of these. I did them all in sketchup (shadows/fog) and added a couple things with photoshop. I just found out that the majority of stuff in this forum is rendered with vray or something, so I don't feel so bad right now doing this with only sketchup. I know the colors are a little oversaturated but that is something the client requested.... tell me what you think!

select the hydrant with the lasso in photoshop and image-adjustment-hue/saturation---desaturate it about 50%, that should help. Saturated colors often don't stand out that much in real life due to material properties like texture and the reflection of the immediate area on it.... I get away with setting the opacity back a bit to avoid putting shadows on photoshopped trees. The transparency "tricks" the mind to not pay as much attention to the plant material- thats the goal if you want to empahasize the architecture, not the landscape... looks really good though!

Hey guys, thanks for all the help so far! Ive been having a problem with layers. Lets say you have a model with a bunch of layers (like every time you bring in a component with many parts that register on different layers). First of all I select all the layers in the layer menu and move them to default layer (as suggested in a tutorial Ive seen before). Then I create a new layer that I want, lets say a house on. I select (with on screen rectangle selecter) everything that I want to be on that layer - then go to layer properties and put them all on the "house" layer. When I turn this layer off in the layer manager, 99% of the house dissapears but there are several visible edges floating around that are part of the house. When I select one of these pieces the properties menu says that they are indeed on the turned off "house" layer, but they are still visible and get in the way while doing other stuff. I think I saw a ruby script somewhere that may help with this but Im not sure. I figure that there is something fundamentally wrong that I need to figure out!

Im a L.A. and I need tree graphics all the time. Check out http://www.vyonyx.com for some really good free high res things... look under the download section... they recently added a bunch of new trees and they measure around 10" by 10" at 300dpi, pretty dam good!!!! Keep in mind you owe me for telling you my "secret" site!!!

Being faster is better in the profession, we should start a list of the top ruby's that made your life easier. Start off by explaining how they made your life better.... ie a real world modeling experience (I took 20 hours to do this vs. 4 hrs with a script). If anybody knows how to make a survey that adds everyones votes that would be great! If I am repeating a previous discussion feel free to drop, drape, and kick my asss!

cool cabin... bling that wood with some serious clear coat to compliment the contemporary design... I like it!!

50$ a billable hour? of course exponentially get quicker at making models so lump sum? I would say 1500$

Here is a stormwater healing garden that I made for a proposal at University of Florida.... I use sketchup then export a jpg into photo shop and add a couple props..... enjoy - 1 of 8

@steelers05 said:

Im actually not quite sure what it is. I just saw it on http://www.archive3d.net/ and decided to render it and try to get better using HDR and Depth of Field with vray. But thanks guys for the feedback.

hold on hold on.... this is with sketch up? not 3d max? What is HDR and vray if you dont mind me asking.... I though I pushed SU to its limits with the built in stuff. I know there are several "rendering engines" availible but you have to apply the materials in thier programs which seems like a pain in the asss. let me know what is going on here!

Thanks guys... I feel like a tard when I can't find it in the search engine!

hey guys.... I got a good question for you. I create a lanscape model by "pancaking" layers together. First I trace the jpg base, copy the faces then move that up a little and pushpull. Then I create a tin and move that up a little. I then copy the jpg on the z axis above the tin so I can put all the plant material on the 2d basemap. I want to drop all the plant material at the same time straight down and have each plant land perfectly on the tin. I can't get the drape or the stamp tool to do this. Is there any way to do this easily?

@anssi said:

I don't know if this helps, but you might get a cleaner result by feeding only the upper contour edges to the Sandbox tool. It does not like the vertical steps much. So if you intend to use the Sandbox to make your TIN, you can just move your empty contours to the right elevations, creating the stepped-type model first is unnecessary.

Anssi

Ive tried that but I get the same results. Its seems that it only recognizes the highest points, so if there is a duplicate contour line directly underneath the other one on the z axis it doesn't matter.

anybody out there?

@unknownuser said:

Following Tom's (always great) advise you are best to build a new component without the shiny surface, copy/multiply the appropriate number of times. You will be left with open ends....right click the end components and make them unique....ad the face and texture again to the end pieces.

What is a shiny surface? Do you mean it's where 2 faces, (and edges)-from copying a component in sequence, butt up against eachother? Thanks, I have this problem sometimes..

When I make a triangulated irregular network from push/pulled contours I sometimes get some weird areas that look like overlapping co-planer faces.... Sometimes you can explode the TIN and select the individual line segments and delete them until you clean up the area - this is often like a puzzle, you must delete them in a certain order just to be able to select each sequential line segment. Sometimes you can't even find a place to begin (a selectable/deletable line). Does anybody know why it does this? Also, why cant you truly explode a TIN to manipulate every line/vertice/face in it? Here are some pics of a problem area, Ill attach the model if you want me to. Since these areas allways are the reverse face color, and co-planer lines cross over eachother that you could select-intersect with selected-and modify but it wont let you do that. It has to be something fundamentally simple... right?