@krisidious said:

are these wheels free for download?

Well, they will be, once I upload them. Just gotta do a few things to them first, some need lugnuts, center cap work, some texture tweaking, things like that. Actually I'll try to get to that tonight if I can.

Couple shots of my 56 Chevy, just sorta pieced together for the photos -- bumpers from my 56 Ford, interior from my 57 Chevy, grill is not modeled, just a texture on a face, etc, etc. Still needs a lot of work, but I'm gonna take my time with this one, cause this, IMHO, is one of the finest hunks of steel Detroit ever turned out. I love this car.

@3eighty said:

Question: Are those cars available anyplace?

Well, there's an early version of the '56 Ford in the Warehouse, but frankly I'd wait till I upload the later version. As for the others, thinking about uploading the '57 Chevy, but it's not quite ready yet, and the others are just WIP, don't know when they'll be done. I've got so many going, I just keep bouncing around between them and starting new ones, I never seem to get one done (at least to my satisfaction).

Thanks for the positive comments. Bryan, what kind of a tutorial do you mean -- cars, wheels, or textures? Doesn't matter I guess, it would be difficult to make a tutorial when I don't know what I'm doing half the time

Thanks Rich. I couldn't quit SU if I tried, I'm hooked. And congrats on another great issue of CatchUp. I always learn some interesting things from it, any chance of making it a weekly?

Took a break from SU for awhile, but I'm getting back into it. Been working on my cars, but whenever I need a break from that I've been making some wheels, just for the heck of it. They are full wheels, not just a "hubcap" type affair, and I've made them easy to adjust for various tire widths. Some of them still need minor work, lugnuts, center caps, etc, need to model some of the treads that are just projected, after I've taken care of that I'll put them on the Warehouse. Some I like, some not so much, but maybe somebody can make use of them. I've also been working on a collection of steering wheels and other misc interior items.
I've been playing with some of my cars off and on, opened the doors on my 56 Ford and 57 Chevy, added a continental kit and spoked hubcaps to the Ford, made a few other changes. Also played around with some flames on the Chevy, that's kinda fun. Working on a Crown Vic version of the Ford, and a 2-Door post and a sports coupe version of the Chevy. Other cars I'm working on include a 55, 56, 58, 59, 60 and 61 Chevy, a 40, 57 and 60 Ford, a 53, 55 and 59 Buick, a 57 Desoto, a 58 Edsel....the list just keeps growing. I'm including a shot of the 59 Buick, still in it's early stages (with some cars behind it just for fun).
A couple of weeks ago I entered a contest sponsored by Golden Sim (a great car modeler). He asked people to customize his 59 Cadillac Biarritz. I didn't win, but didn't really expect to because I didn't customize it, I just tried to make it look showroom new. Didn't have time to finish it because of his deadline, but I've included some before and after shots.
Well, better get some sleep. Looks like a really HOT week coming up here in Michigan, and I don't know if my poor old air conditioner can handle it, so I better sleep while I can. The weather is going nuts all over the world, I think Mother Nature has had enuf of us. Can't say I blame her one bit.

How do you respond to a question that somebody asks in his rating about a model you've uploaded to the warehouse? By respond I mean answer the question by creating another rating, so that your comments appear in the ratings section of the model.
Also, does anybody know why a model downloaded from the warehouse has changes made to it somewhere in the downloading process, specifically lines that were smooth are now unsmoothed, and other lines that were smooth are now hidden? Makes the model look like crap when downloaded and it's frustrating, especially when it's your own model.
Thanks in advance.

Hi Brodie, thanks for taking the time to try to help me out. Yeah, I've already resigned myself to learning how to get things done with fewer polys, seems to be my only option. Although the point may be moot, it's a little discouraging when you bust your butt keeping it down for the warehouse, and then nobody bothers to download the dang thing. Not sure what I'm doing wrong here, maybe it's the large file size, but hey, that's the way I model. Even if I managed to knock the file down by 50 percent, I would just use that to add more details. It would be a lot easier to not worry about the file size and just go for the gusto. That might be interesting, but right now I'm just gonna step back from SU for a while and get some other things taken care of, maybe see what life was like before it became digitized. Oh, for the days when all John Boy had to worry about was getting a new writing tablet .
Again, thanks for the input.

I can't tell which is the latest version of this, very confusing.

@gaieus said:

What would be the difference between "unzipping" and "extracting"?

I have no idea, all I know is that when I extracted it, the JPEGs showed up, but when I just unzipped it, only the icons showed. But hey, if SU made sense it wouldn't be any fun

Well, I just installed ThomThom's Cleanup plugin, got about six thousand errors when I opened SU, most of my toolbars went away, basically I'm screwed here. I'm sure it's a great script, all of his are, just something went wrong. Looks like a complete uninstall of SU is in order. Oh well, who needs sleep .

@tig said:

Depending on your zip/unzip application... you should always 'extract' the contents keeping all files in their original subfolders, otherwise everything gets lumped into the one folder with confusion - especially if subfolders containing files with same/similar names... This error is also the cause of many Plugin mis-installation woes...

Are you saying that zipped plugins should always be extracted instead of unzipped? This hasn't caused me any problems (yet), but it's good to know.

Oh wait, just noticed that you did mention "extract". Guess I'd better get some sleep and recharge my brain cell.

Thanks, guys

That's how I do it, I rename the KMZ file to a zip file, and then unzip it. But usually I can see the JPEG's, no problem, like in attachment 2. Now, for some reason, all I can see is that blasted icon, unless I click on the icon to see the JPEG.

Hey, I think I just figured it out. If I extract the zip file, instead of just unzipping it, the JPEGs show up just fine. Huh, go figure. That's probably the way it was supposed to be done, just forgot it in my old age .

Sometimes I have a problem with viewing the textures in a KMZ file. It won't show the actual JPEG image, only an icon of some sort (attachment 1), instead of the actual JPEG of the image (attachment 2). This makes it very difficult to use the file, I have to open each one to see which texture it is. Also, can someone please explain what is meant by "Compressed size" vs "Size", and "Ratio" (attachment 3). And what is CRC-32?

@alan fraser said:

Well you must be using pretty large images then...or applying them to very complex surfaces, because the tire I uploaded...which has a decent looking tread on it..is only just over 100K.
OK, with a little more modelling on the walls and hub...and an image for the hub, it would end up a little larger; but maybe only twice its present size, certainly not 1MB.

I suspect that this is the real culprit. The skp format bloats horrifically with UV mapping information...far more than any other format I've come across. And you have an awful lot of separate textures on that car. A good illustration of this is if you save the file as a V3..the mapping will go all to hell, but the filesize will drop by nearly 3MB. I can only advise that you keep the surfaces you intend to map images to as simple as possible.

Are you saying that the file size increases if I apply a texture to a complex surface as opposed to a simple surface? I had never heard that before. If it's true it's very disappointing because I use textures on a lot of complex surfaces.

Well, I guess I'm just stuck with my large file sizes, because I'm not about to simplify my models to the point that I no longer enjoy making them, just to keep my file size down. My only option is to refine my modelling techniques and learn how to use fewer polys to get the results I need. I suppose that will come with time and experience.

Thanks to everyone for their input and suggestions.

@alan fraser said:

I'd definitely advise against modelling the treads.

But the file size decreased after modelling the treads

As you can see

But I do use repeat components, all over the place, the tire, the steering wheel, everywhere I possibly can.

@solo said:

Do you model with symettry? (only model half and join afterwards), using components?, and I'd suggest using one texture (baking them in a 3rd party app)

I mirror components whenever possible. Not sure what you mean by "using one texture (baking them in a 3rd party app)". I do edit my textures using two different graphics programs (Photoshop CS3 and Digital Image Pro), both before and after applying them to the model, but what do you mean by using "one" texture?