Hi unclebim,

@unclebim said:

I also have some component related items graying out like Explode, which happens with Tgi3D loaded. I have to cleanup the pligins obviously.

Could you please give us more details about the problem you mention when Tgi3D is loaded? You can also write to our Support team from our website.

We have not observed such behaviour ourselves. Could you please uninstall Tgi3D only and see if the problem goes away? We would appreciate your feedback so that we can resolve the issue, if any, quickly.

Hi misterdemo,

I am not sure I understood your problem exactly, but I have a feeling that the "upsample" feature in Tgi3D SU Amorph may help with what you are after. You simply select the region you want to subdivide and click "upsample". Upsample increases the resolution of the selected surface, while preserving hard curved and linear edges, and smoothness of the interpolated surface.

Take a look at the video below, see if it helps.
[flash=480,385:2qjih4rx]http://www.youtube.com/v/XKhbtj9iM1Q?fs=1&hl=en_US[/flash:2qjih4rx]

The free Training Edition of Tgi3D SU Amorph does include this option but the number of faces in the mesh is limited, you can work in smaller chunks of the mesh.

To texture large surfaces with the free Training Edition of Tgi3D SU Amorph you can work with smaller chunks. The UV mapping and texturing utility also keeps the previous texture. So what you can do is include a portion of the mesh that has already been textured in the next area and then you can try to do a seamless merge of the texture visually to the portion that was already textured.

@thomthom said:

Don't think you can create zero length edges via Ruby.

model.active_entities.add_line( ORIGIN, ORIGIN ) <- returns nil

The first step in my note should have been "move the vertex on top of the other vertex you want to merge with" (then there may be an edge with zero length). After that follow the next two steps.

Hi,

A clean way to merge coincident vertices would be as follows:

1. create a dummy group containing a non-zero length edge emerging from one of the vertices to be merged
2. explode that group

This forces the SketchUp geometry engine to repair connections.

Take a look at Tgi3D SU Amorph's uv mapping and texturing utility.

[flash=480,385:10amufnf]http://www.youtube.com/v/8q9TE62bksY?fs=1&hl=en_US[/flash:10amufnf]

You do not seem to have too many triangles, the free Training Edition of Tgi3D SU Amorph along with an image editor (Gimp, PhotoShop etc.) should work for you.

Hi thebreadking,

I believe Tgi3D SU Amorph has a very nice and easy solution to your problem. Please see the video below. I created the video in one shot, it is unedited, so a bit long (still only 3 mins 12 secs though).

Please note that you would not be able to do this easily with the free Training Edition as your curves exceed the limit of the max. number of vertices allowed in the free version. I have not tried it myself but you should be able to work around that by limiting the number of vertices in each curve to less than 10 and working with more curves.

[flash=480,390:1jivq7s2]http://www.youtube.com/v/XqHsDoiuYPY?fs=1&hl=en_US[/flash:1jivq7s2]

Hi maxius,

You can also use Tgi3D SU Amorph plugin (http://www.Tgi3D.com) to create curved surfaces. It has also a free Training Edition with a limit on the number of vertices in the mesh. Below examples are created with the free Training edition, the resolution can actually go a bit higher but after a certain number of vertices in the mesh you would have to use the commercial version.

You simply select a closed loop and use “Create Mesh” command. This command creates the “smoothest” surface that fits the boundary. In the latest version, released two days ago, there is also an option to create “clean Bezier surface”. You would have to convert the boundaries to Bezier curves first. In the example below the one on the left is created with regular mesh and the one on the right is Bezier surface.

I would like to announce that we have just released upgrades of Tgi3D SU plugins. You can find the new versions on the Downloads (http://www.tgi3d.com/index.php?Page=Download) page on our website.

The new releases include a new downsampling feature to reduce the polygon count of a model while preserving the model fidelity in a controllable fashion. There are also some enhancements and fixes to the existing features.

Below are the details of the updates in the new releases:

-- Introduced "Downsample" command to decrease the resolution of a mesh

-- Create mesh can create Bezier (i.e. parametric) surfaces, if the boundary is

1. A quad of bezier curves and the number of samples on opposite curves match
2. A triangle of bezier curves and the number of samples on the longest two sides match
   
   -- Introduced "Collapse" command to collapse the selected region to a point
   
   -- Mesh editing (upsample and downsample) results are placed in a Sketchup group optionally to allow faster processing.
   -- Cross Section Tool now supports measured motions.
   -- (Mac) Plugin now works on Mac OS X v10.5.x.
   -- (Upsampling & Downsampling) Preserve the texture mapping during upsample and the new downsample
   -- (Texturing) Preserve SketchUp assigned material transparency in texture creation
   -- (Texturing) Preserve the horizontal and perpendicular structures (e.g in buildings) in unwrap mode of texture mapping
   -- (Texturing) Preserve material transparency and color in the texture mapping.
   -- (Texturing) Do not display uv map in the texture if the seperate uv map output is selected.
   -- (Move tool) Improved Bezier curve editing.

In addition to the updates included in Tgi3D SU Amorph, Tgi3D SU PhotoScan includes the following fix.

-- (Calibration Tool) Added user warning if a camera can not be found in the built-in or local database

Hi Antonis,

There is also another plugin, called Tgi3D SU Amorph, which includes a UV mapping and texturing feature, along with other tools. There is a Free Training version with a limit on the number of vertices.

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=34136

If you want to try the unlimited version of the UV mapping and texturing tool, you can download the 30-Day Trial Edition of Tgi3D SU PhotoScan which contains all the features that are included in Tgi3D SU Amorph (UV mapping and texturing is one of them) plus additional features for creating 3D models from photographs.

Regards,

Gulcan Ocali
Product Manager
http://www.Tgi3D.com

Hello,

Kristoff, thank you for starting this thread. It seems that some people are experiencing load time issues with Tgi3D. We are looking into it. One thing that comes to mind right off the bat is:

Tgi3D SU products check for updates every ten loads or so, if the internet connection is slow that might also slow the load time. Additionally, Tgi3D SU PhotoScan 30-Day Trial Edition connects to the license server everytime it loads, again may slow things down if the internet connection is slow.

@unknownuser said:

TGI3d has a splash screen that says 'Do not show on start up' and a checkbox...i can't click it

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? Does anyone else have the same problem of persistent Tgi3D splash screen?

@unknownuser said:

And yes it's the demo, do i look like some with $999? I'd pay that to get the word 'Beta' off ShapeBender though

I would like remind here that we have two sets of plugins, Amorph and PhotoScan. Amorph being priced a lot less than PhotoScan. PhotoScan is a specialized product that allows you to create highly accurate 3D models of real life objects from photographs. It includes a seperate executable called the Tgi3D SU PhotoScan Calibration and Metrology Tool, which provides state-of-the-art camera calibration and metrology capabilities that can also report measurement uncertainties accurately.

We understand that pricing of PhotoScan may be an issue for many SketchUp users, however, we believe that Tgi3D SU Amorph is a really beneficial set of utilities that would appeal to majority of the SketchUp users as well. Please keep in mind that all the other capabilities of Tgi3D SU plugins are included in the Amorph product like view locking, selection utilities, extrusion crosss section editing, curve editing, surface mesh creation and smoothing, surface remeshing and upsampling, and recently released UV mapping and texturing utility.

By the way, we are also working on a soon-to-be-released new feature to reduce the polygon count of a model (down-sampling, if you will) while preserving the model fidelity in a controllable fashion.

Regards,

Gulcan Ocali
Product Manager
http://www.Tgi3D.com

Hello all,

I wanted to let you know that we have just released the new versions of Tgi3D plugins for Google SketchUP which are now also available for Mac users! You can download Free Training version of Tgi3D SU Amorph and 30-Day Trial version of Tgi3D SU PhotoScan from the Downloads page on our website at http://www.tgi3d.com/index.php?Page=Download.

There is also good news for Microsoft Windows users. The new releases come with a new texturing feature and other enhancements to the existing features which are detailed below. We also encourage you to update your versions of Tgi3D plugins and try the new versions.

The new versions include:

* Mac OS X support.
* New texture creation and mapping feature which enables you to easily create, seamlessly merge and paint image textures on smooth curved surfaces, while keeping existing image textures. The produced texture images can be accessed from Sketchup's Materials window and edited with your favorite image editor. You can watch the video of the new feature from our website at [http://www.tgi3d.com/index.php?Page=Amorph&VideoID=17983944&field=content10](http://www.tgi3d.com/index.php?Page=Amorph&VideoID=17983944&field=content10) or on YouTube at [http://www.youtube.com/Tgi3D#p/u/0/8q9TE62bksY](http://www.youtube.com/Tgi3D#p/u/0/8q9TE62bksY) 

* Enhancements to existing features:
      o Tgi3D Move Tool now supports vertex snapping (via pressing Shift key during move)
      o Tgi3D Select Tool now has a face tagging option where the user selects a group of faces and tags them to be able to reselect them later with a single click.
      o Tgi3D Cross Section Tool now works with user selected closed loops.

* Fixes
      o Tgi3D Costruction Point Tool correctly places construction points inside the component under component edit.
      o Tgi3D Cross Section Tool loop detection is improved.

In addition to the updates included in Tgi3D SU Amorph, Tgi3D SU PhotoScan has the following additional updates:

* Tgi3D Calibration and Metrology Tool's SketchUp Export now produces a SKP file. There is no need to “import Tgi3D calibration” in Sketchup anymore, you simply load the SKP file created by Tgi3D Calibration and Metrology Tool. 
* Tgi3D Calibration and Metrology Tool's 3D Viewer refresh functionality after a new measurement entry and recalibration has been improved.

Regards,

Gulcan Ocali
Product Manager
http://www.Tgi3D.com