Posts made by halroach

@tig said:

You could always go into the SUp material-browser, model-tab, pick the problem material's icon, edit and then rename <white> as <HALwhite> (or whatever) to avoid the glitch after export... That way the parts of the model aren't affected at all as their colour etc stays as it was - only that material's name has changed to protect the innocent/guilty...

Yep, that works too - sometimes!
I have played around with changing the problematic material's name. Some times it works sometimes it doesn't. I tried renaming to other names which include the word white, like '<White>XXX', and it still failed intermitently. Either I did something wrong, or actually having the string 'White' in the material name calls the problematic material in Maxwell... haven't recreated the problem yet.

Thank you Thomthom!
Your script worked very well and it helped me re diagnose my problem.
Apparently Sketchup wasn't the problem maker, all textures were well defined and linked.

For those who are interested, the problem was (and still is) as follows:
I had a material in my model named '<white>' - which when exporting to Maxwell - using 'Auto MXM conversion' - was pointing to a problematic MXM - a material within my Maxwell material libraries (which is apparently called '<white>'!?!?).
I went through a lot of trouble to find which material IN SKETCHUP was causing the problem, and I am currently in correspondence with the Maxwell Support Team to figure out a way to quickly find the problematic MXM in my libraries, since I don't have any MXM called white, but rather a bunch of MXMs that include white in their name.

So, a temporary solution to get the render going is to delete the material called <white> in the sketchup model, and redefine parts of the model that were affected. How to find that <white> (or any other texture for that matter) was making the problem, we have yet to discover...

@thomthom said:

Open the Ruby Console, type in

> Sketchup.active_model.materials.each { |m| puts m.name + ' - ' m.texture.filename }
> 

I am not very familiar with Ruby Code. If I'm supposed to add something, substitue something let me know.
Typing in the above code as is gives an error.

Error; #<SyntaxError; (eval);131; compile error
(eval);131; syntax error
Sketchup.active_model.materials.each { |m| puts m.name + ' - ' m.texture.filename }

What am I supposed to see after the code is executed?

@ecuadorian said:

Have you tried purging the model?

I don't use Maxwell, but perhaps this could work:

Create a metal-alucobond-white-r.jpg file with MS Paint, and burn it to a CD inside a folder called metal.

1. I've tired purging. It doesn't help
2. That will work, but it's not worth the trouble, since errors like this happen quite often!

The best solution is to find the problematic material, but how!?

Hello

I am using Maxwell Render along with Sketchup. Every now and then I get the following type of error within Maxwell Render:

ERROR; - File "D;/metal/metal-alucobond-white-r.jpg" has not been found. Render cannot continue.

I am unable to continue rendering until the texture is either miraculously found, or if I delete the problematic material from Sketchup.

The sketchup material is linking to a D drive (which is a DVD drive), meaning it is not a texture that I created. It is probably a material that came with one of the hundreds of components that I imported into my model.

The Problem IS:
I cannot find which sketchup material is causing the problem! I have a model with 40-50 materials in it. I have gone over each of the 40-50 materials to see if they are linked to a material by that name "metal-alucobond-white-r.jpg" but it doesn't appear anywhere!
If I delete all the materials in the model the problem will be solved! but then I have to reassign materials... that is not a good solution!
In the passed I have a problematic texture called grass.jpg. so I deleted all the green and grass materials until the problem was solved. But I can't seem to find a straight forward way to find the material.

I tried generating a report to see if anything might be listed in there, but the model is too heavy, and the report just jams sketchup.
generating a report with a simple model doesn't seem to fill in textures in any case.

Anyone have a solution?
Maybe there is a way through a ruby script, to list all materials and linked textures within a model?

Good Day

@solo said:

Importing foriegn meshes with UV mapped textures is totally possible, and there are numerous methods of doing it.
I personally like .3ds format the best at moment.

The trick is being organised and having a good folder structure so that you keep your mesh and your texture images together a well as making sure your model units for both the exported model and SU match (commonly overlooked)

A trick that Silvershadow showed me that works is if you import a model and the texture is not attached, look at the 'errors' message in the import dialogue, it will ask for the texture and normally the problem is the naming of the texture, make a note of the name SU is looking bfor then rename the imported texture accordingly and do the import again, this time the texture will be mapped.

I use an expensive tool called Deep exploration to import into SU, so I pretty much bake my textures to the mesh and do a straight 3ds to skp coversion which makes life very simple, but at $2500.00, the above method is definately the cheapest way around.

Hi Solo,
How would you convert a 3DS or MAX file into an SKP using Deep Exploration? How do you make sure the texture mapping doesn't jumble up? What temperature to do you turn the oven on when you "bake" it?

That's an option too.
Thank you Chris

Thank you Ecuadorian for pointing out Matt666's plugin.
It pretty much does the job. It doesn't deal with nested components. But it definitely saves you from doing the 5 steps you mentioned...
cool!

@chris fullmer said:

You would even like the main outer component to become a group? Seems like it makes more sense to just leave it as a component and convert everything inside to groups.

I have to admit, I'm curious what this script is for? Have you made a bunch of components made of tons of components and you are finding it hard to edit them because it changes all other component instances?

Chris

The idea is to select any component or group of components, if they are nested, or not, (which ever which way you choose) and to have the option to convert it/them into groups.

Yeah, I have made a bunch of components made of tons of others and it does become quite hard to edit them. When you least expect it, you suddenly reach a point where you've lost track of which component is duplicated where and what will happen when you change it.

When I start off with a small amount of components it's very ideal and efficient working with them. It's more efficient than groups, because making them unique is a type of group in itself. And components are far superior when it gets to changing a set of stairs, or for applying materials for working with Maxwell Render.

What happens is that after a while I find that I need some of the components which I have duplicated all over the place to be very singular... for example a desk made of many nested components, which has been copied all around a building. And then you want to change just one of them to fit a corner. So I start double clicking each component through and through to make each one of them or group of them unique. Not always sure how many components there are and how many click ins I should click... And most of the time I don't even want to know how many components there are. Exploding isn't an option cause I might want to change that desk to fit another corner... It becomes quite difficult and inefficient. A single click with a simple script could do the job... Just like you can convert a group to a component it should be reversible.

i'll check out that script from Matt666. That might do the job!

@ecuadorian said:

1. Double-click on any instance of the component to edit it.

2. Select everything inside that component with Ctrl+A

3. Right click > Make group, and close the component

4. Select all the instances you want to convert to groups. There is a free script to help you with this:
   http://www.smustard.com/script/Instances

5. Right click > Explode.

Now they're groups, and you can freely change any of them without affecting the others.

Thank You. That is a good way to convert a bunch of components which have no nested components within them. I for example, have a component with with a complex hierarchy of 10 steps of nested components. one within the other within the other... n times. And I'd like to convert allof the components and nested components into groups without the need to do the 5 steps you mentioned, cause that would require hundreds of double clicks and quite a health hazard if you know what I mean.

What I'm looking for is a command that would in one click convert the selected component into a group with the option of converting all of the nested components into groups or leaving them as they are.

Is there a way to convert a bunch of components into separate groups?
I know you can convert a group into a component but can you do it the other way around?

like for example if I have a bunch of nested components and I don't want to click through each one to make them all unique, and I don't wish to explode the hierarchy. I just want to make them all unique and not have to worry about changes I make to each one, that might effect the same object I had long ago copied on on the other side of my model...

Thanks

I'm getting the same problem as tolieolson's

"I create a box.
Draw lines connecting sides in a random fashion, about 9 lines.
Pointify.
Export cpoints.
Click on voronoi, and all that happens is a flash of a dialog box in the corner of my screen that looks like DOS. No shape emerges."

In the Ruby Console I get the folloing error:

Error; #<Errno;;ENOENT; No such file or directory - C;/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 6/Plugins\qhull\qvoronoi.txt>
C;/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 6/Plugins/voronoi.rb;14;in `initialize'
C;/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 6/Plugins/voronoi.rb;14;in `new'
C;/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 6/Plugins/voronoi.rb;14;in `mesh'
C;/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 6/Plugins/tooling/voronoi.rb;138
C;/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 6/Plugins/tooling/voronoi.rb;138;in `call'

suggestions?
Thanks!

@tolieolson said:

Hi. I love the concept of the plugin. Problem is that it won't work even after I've tried deleting the old point file and creating a new one.

The details of what I'm doing:
I create a box.
Draw lines connecting sides in a random fashion, about 9 lines.
Pointify.
Export cpoints.
Click on voronoi, and all that happens is a flash of a dialog box in the corner of my screen that looks like DOS. No shape emerges.

Perhaps there is a bug that I ran into. Any tips?

Hi, I'm running into the same problem. Have you found a solution?