@driven: Hmm, you have to plug it into the style as watermark again and manually from.the start at every change? Where does SU store that image then, no way to access that file and just resave it internally?

The plugin cant be made to set up a style (create new from existing with maybe various options about the watermark) automatically when started?

A webdialog with several text fields, manually and automatically filled, sounds good.

Saving a file with transparency (tif, png, tga) is not possible so far? Maybe with some workaround? Thomthoms vray tools export images with alpha whereas native su doesnt.. With the help of.some.code snippet maybe?

@driven said:

should I pursue it?john

Wohoo.

5.times {thumb}
=>

Yes,

as the sketchup api is meant to be very broad and flexible for developers I do think that it should be possible to access data, edit data in and out and even display that in certain ways. I just cant do it, my programming skills end at "if else then do "" ".

Thanks to all of you for your input and opinions.

@Pilou: that's something I will keep in mind, definitely of use for certain circumstances.

I dont know how many of you are in the field of architecture but I guess quite a few - from my experience through some years such stamps are common and that for a good reason: to keep track of project's process, always visible, digitally or printed.

Some would be thankful for something alike I think.

Maybe there will be some one day, would be a project for me to get a little into programming, too..

Layout is not an option for me personally, I only use SU, like some others too, probably. I used it some time ago, maybe it has changed. But style changing may be accessible to free version users?!

Anyway, if its not possible to be done inside Sketchup it's not really practical.

And in addition if you export images you have the option to have a stamp applied to the image.

If the stamp would take date from the filename or in reverse if you set up some text file it will set up the file name accordingly, maybe adds date or incremental numbers on save, I can imagine this being of some use..

Mais non...

Btw, Pilou, sadly I'm not a premium member yet and therefor cant see the post you linked to..

Well, Layout is not really an option. It was just a guess anyway, thought why not having the same kind of stamp with relevant data like on architectural plans (revision number, who drew on the plan last > means who is responsible for messing things up, and so on)

I did not make it clear though, I did use the watermark option. Used a png as overlay, positioned on screen, scaled to the right size. This time is just used a png from wikimedia for demonstration, but using eg. coreldraw for setting up a plan stamp and exporting it as png works fine too.

But not really practical to be edited, should be done with a textbox / type-in field with some options maybe which would make sense. Maybe that plugin just writes an png output file and updates the style?!

And the image quality depends on the file quality for sure and will increase the filesize by this. But I would not call it crappy so far..

Watermark Stamp.skp

Hi,

was just wondering if there's some plugin already existing to fill and edit a little stamp window straight in SU which remains on top in the lower corner, showing plan (model) number, whos been working on the model, when, project name and others.

Maybe through a little type-in tool, maybe taking partly the data from the filename and other information.

Toggleable hide / show.

Good for keeping track in offices, stamping it with custom logos, useful in presentations and such.

More easy to access and manage than going through a 3rd party program and reloading a watermark png.

See attachment.

Thanks Rich! That was very useful!
I was never using unwrapping on large scenes but single / multiple objects only.
Actually even for rendering animations this will be MORE than helpful.

Great, thanks again!

After some further research I could narrow some things down:

@TIG: OBJ files can only contain ONE uvmap channel? Maybe thats the bottleneck in this case? The testmodel was pretty simple, probably does not contain any flipped faces.

@oceanembers: yes, materials were applied to geometry, not groups

Actually exporting the file as FBX from 3DS (containing auto-unwrapped textures, each group rendered to a seperate generated image file) and using the FBX importer from simlab I managed to get it transfered.

Auto-unwrapping and rendering the final model has some downsides, too- collapsed geometry would need a huge texture size, rendering hundreds of objects in seperate image files may take a while too.. But may worth it- as the result is definitely appealing. If one keeps the render options low this process should be more or less quick.

80 € for the FBX importer may be a little expensive, though..

There are other options (if I got it right) like LightUp sending bake-information along with FBX exports in some way, therefor should be useable in a similar way (reimporting to SU if necessary).

Hi,

I'd like to build some model in SU, send it to 3Ds, bake a GI'd render to texture and send it back over to SU to get some nicer definition for a "real time presentation".

Should work fine so far- but I just cant get UVs properly over along with the model.

I tried TIG's OBJ Importer script which works somehow (sometimes doesnt show the materials but this may be because of me trying different setups) but does not seem to bring over the uvs correctly.

See pics.

If OBJ is not an option maybe FBX would be - or is it simply SU which is the bottleneck?

Thanks in advance

PS: the shown model is NOT the one I'm going to build, just for reference..

Hey,

thanks for this guess and sorry for my late reply.
Could not get the point of the proposed plug that quick..

Seems like this is not the right for this purpose?

It helps keeping track of components and updates them from / to external libraries- right?
Actually it does not seem to allow me to copy all of those components I'd like to (even if they are inside of some other groups) and keep the original place, so I can insert them into an seperate file?
At least I couldn't find a similar explanation in the description and changelogs..

Am I right?

..well, solved it (should have known anyway) by exploding the upper level groups, selecting all instances, copied them and undid the explosion. Worked this time but if components are nested in different levels in may get tricky- so the question is still open.

Hi,

is there a way to select all components which are embedded in other components and copy them alltogether into another SU file?

I use the group copies (?) plugin which selects all components in the model but I cant get them copied to another file..

The intention in this case is to update those elements in another 3D program, therefor I need to get all of them "out of their groups" where there are embedded in.

Ideas?

Just got informed by mail about your response- the thread is almost two yrs old

But thanks for your workflow- actually it would be nice if it wouldn't disappear somewhere as it is a good how-to.

There are some more ways to handle larger scenes or objects with high poly count:

• using layers
• using ghost-components plugin

But loading / replacing components from single files is definitely good- building up some kind of library for future use is surely beneficial.

Hey,

sorry for my late reply- i was really busy with a project and therefor needed to take a break not seeing my computer for a while afterwards.

Forum was down for maintenance on sunday- and wow, a complete makeover!

Back to topic, thanks for your help!

But i could not get it to work- how is it meant to be handled?

I made a *.rb file with notepad but it gave me some error message when loaded.

Pasting it into the ruby console did't work as i can paste one line only..

I feel like i missed something as i think i remember that i had pasted some lines somewhere some time before.. but i don't know.

??

And, is it possible to extend the number of groups by adding lines in the same pattern like you did:

if ga.class==Sketchup::Group
ga.entities.each{|gb|
if gb.class==Sketchup::Group

and so on?

And relating number of brackets for sure.

Hi all,

when i'm exporting a SU file to 3ds Max it splits the file according to the layer structure.

But it always uses the layer of each group, eg. i have a layer "Level1" with serveral groups. But these groups contain subgroups- and these subgroups are still an layer0 -> and therefor put to "Layer0" in 3Ds.

Is there a way to put all nested groups to one specific layer?

(All geometry is still on layer0)

Thanks in advance..

Niko

Yep, you're right!

I should have thought about that..

I had some troubles with lines lines not showing up and difficulties creating new faces..

But I just see that there's newer version, i have ver. 2.0 installed..

-> Installed the new one- works perfectly! Thanks again, where would i be without your (and the other's) plugins!

Great!

Hi,

probably it's been answered somewhere already, i couldn't find it.

It would be helpful to be able to draw on a section cut, e.g. you design a house and want to add some variation to different levels-
i normally would export a jpg and draw over it with a tablet, but it would be great to do it directly in SU and then maybe loft these lines..

If you draw on a section right now it's 1. hardly possible to draw on the section (only from edge to edge) and 2. after drawing the newly created lines dissapear (logically)..

Any guess?

GREAT, thanks a lot TIG, i'll give it a try in a minute

@dave r said:

Why do you need the subgroups to be on a layer if their top group is on that layer. Turning off the visibility of the top group's layer will have the same impact whether the subgroups are on that layer or not.

It's about importing a skp-file to 3ds Max where 3ds splits up all groups with subgroups into seperate objects- and puts them to the layer each group was put on in SU. For toggeling visibility it would have been enough to change the layer of the top-group, you're right.

Thanks gilles,

i know,

but there are too many groups within these groups to do it "by hand"..

I did it for some groups with outliner but that's not really a solution.