Sorry, but I read all the way through this thread, folks passionately recommending different Makita models, De Walt, Bosch, Hilti, etc.... and then Boo's post saying he's settled on a.... Milwaukee!

... and then Gidon comparing his cordless drill to his daughter's beloved pet dog. Say what you like, but puppies are useless in wood, nevermind brick and concrete.

Not at all a criticism, just really made me laugh, thanks guys!

Keep on drillin'...

p.s. I favour Makita- have an 18v Ni-Cd drill for driving and wood and a corded 240v percussion drill for the tough stuff.

Yep, I don't buy it either. He claims "if nothing is properly criticised, mediocrity triumphs."- how true (and how bloody obvious too), but combined with the rest of his article this implies that "mediocrity" is worse than "bad". What a stupid, uniquely late 20th/early 21st century notion.

Criticism is inevitably subjective, but that doesn't mean a critic shouldn't strive to be objective. Objectivity is developed through knowledge and analysis of a field and a good critic should be able to identify and observe trends and patterns and develop his/her opinions based on them. If I wanted gut-instinct subjectivity I'd ask a taxi driver or my Uncle Rab rather than buy a newspaper who pay the wages of self-proclaimed critics.

Nevertheless, gut-instinct can absolutely be relevant in criticism. I am about 95% certain that even if I knew nothing about art, had never been in a gallery, never seen a painting, and knew nothing of artists' lives or historical importance I would still have stood, captivated for 15 minutes in front of van Gogh's painting of an olive orchard in the garden of a psychiatric hospital he was committed to, when I saw it at an exhibition a couple of years ago. Of course you could analyse it, but it pretty much transcends critique- it was just breathtaking. When friends asked what I thought of the exhibition, to see if it was worth the queues, the crowds and the entry fee my reply couldn't have been more subjective: "Just go and see it, it's fantastic."

What's the point of that article anyway? It sounds like this geezer is an old-enough-to-know-better example of the "keeping it real" generation i.e. "Yeah, I might be an arrogant @rse, but that's just the way I am. At least I'm keeping it real!" Yep... real dumb.

Don't take this as a flame Stinkie, as an ex-critic yourself I'm not having a go at you or your peers, I just don't like this guy's stance.

BTW I think his portrait at the top of the article gives him away as an arrogant,
self-important tosser... you can almost smell the "smug". How's that for subjectivity? LOL

Thanks Jerry, sorry I wasn't clearer- I was referring mostly to wood to use for external and internal finishes. For most unseen framing I'd tend to specify pine, usually sourced from northern Sweden, Finland or Poland based on cost, availability, sustainability and that it can be sourced relatively nearby. Maybe one day I'll venture into a fully visible timber-framed construction and the complex joinery that entails, but I'm a pretty determined "modernist" so most of my interest in timber is related to roofs, eaves, cladding, door, windows, decks, balustrades and other details. That said, I am very influenced by local traditional wooden construction (I should post some of my photographs of 500-yr-old Swedish timber houses- you woodworkers would probably love them- I know I do), but as I said, I feel like when it comes to actual know-how I am lacking and I'd like to rectify that. I can't believe it taken me this long to realise that all the expertise (and friendliness) of the Woodworker's Forum was the perfect resource for me to begin this process.

As a specific example is there a wood or method that springs to mind for flooring which could run from interior to exteriors for a sun room and deck? Of course internal and external boards would be completely separate so the external decking could be eventually be replaced, but I'd love to use a wood (not too expensive) which would look great inside, but which would handle the elements outside. Of course the finish could be different inside and out (and the weather and time would take care of that anyway), but I'd like the wood itself to match through rather than say beech on the inside and ipê on the outside!

I visited Japan last year and, even though I have read avidly about Japanese villa, tea house and temple timber construction for years I was absolutely blown away by them in reality. The most striking feature for me was the consistent blurring of the boundary between inside and out where, especially within the larger temples like Kennin-Ji, there were parts where even the idea of "inside" and "outside" seemed superfluous. The use of the same materials throughout the construction played a very important role in creating this feeling, which in turn unites building and the context. Once seen never forgotten.

Thanks Dave- the pdfs you linked to already seem like an extremely useful resource! Downloading the huge files as I write.

It's not that I'm not interested in, or will not specify non-European timber, but for obvious reasons I would like to source timber as locally as possible (Scandinavia) and for the most part I'm not interested in all these bizarre tropical woods with crazy grain structures. Really nice American timber is fairly readily available here (oak, cedar, amongst others) so I'll still use it if it's the right material for the job.

In general I want to understand a bit more about how well different wood types cope with weather (and how they weather), any special treatment they require, fasteners to be used or avoided (due to tannin corrosion, etc), if they're very stable or prone to warping, or pests.

The pdfs you referred to seem to cover exactly those issues and plenty more so I'm off to bury my head in them and see what I can learn!

Thanks Dave.

Dammit, I came to this thread via another and didn't notice it was a year old. I guess this project died out then.

Didier's Heightfield Generator script works fine for me- I draw the grayscale map in Photoshop and if I rememember correctly save it out as 8 bit RAW and then the heightfield gen ruby does the rest. It's brilliant for creating terrains in SU without tons of tedious vertice editing or hit and miss sandbox tools. Need a river- A medium soft brush painted across the map takes 2 seconds in PS- sweeeet.

The only real catch is the enormous amount of geometry it creates- 2 triangles per pixel of the map so a 500 x 500 px map will generate half a million triangles regardless of the complexity or simplicity of the terrain. To avoid this I usually export it as obj, polycrunch it in Meshlab and reimport it as 3ds.

I like the cobbled tiling components Pete, they look great.

Not getting nasty, just poking fun at the notion that time is our least valuable commodity.

This is something that's been bugging me for years... I don't feel like I know enough about the different qualities, workability, sustainability, relative cost, applications and suitability of different wood types for use in building. Can anyone recommend books or websites which list the most common wood types (ideally northern European, but certainly not exclusively) used in construction, fitting-out and cabinetmaking and their attributes, advantages and drawbacks?

I've tried picking the brains of timber yards/merchants over the years, but they mostly seem to have extremely limited ranges and are more interested in just selling the same-old-same old in large quantities rather than discussing and finding the right wood for the job.

Thanks in advance,
Jackson

@rebel28 said:

If the project ends up getting dumped, well what did you lose (other than time).

Sounds great, I've got so much time I don't know what to do with it!
I thought about working for a living, or spending my time socialising or educating myself or hanging out with my girlfriend, or travelling... but instead I think I'll spend it all working to help you; a complete stranger, with a "film" project which may, in your owns words, end up "getting dumped".

If only I hadn't cancelled my Facebook account... oh well.

Thanks Kwist!

All done with VRay for SU- I use the same solution we discussed once on the ASGvis forums with the following parameters:

GI map Multiplier 40
Blend Ratio 0.99
Texture A: VRay Sky/Sun with an Intensity Multiplier of 0.4
Texture B: Black ground to White sky gradient spherical map jpg (i.e. LDRI), just 200 x 100 px made in Photoshop with a Multiplier of 1.

I found even such a simple LDR gradient GI map really helps bring out the details in the external areas, especially the statue by providing 360° fill light to counteract VRay's somewhat overly-simple sky and sun GI. The crazy 0.99 blend ratio is required as the VRay sky is so massively powerful compared to LDRI or even HDRI GI maps- I've even had to take to down to 0.999999 for a couple of projects.

That last image is deeply disturbing and I can't even work out why!

This started off as as a very simple converted 3ds model from PushPullBar, downloaded years ago. I while back I took a good look at it and realised the dimensions of many parts were way off so started correcting them by eye according to found photos, but ultimately I ended up building it from scratch in SU using the imported 3ds as a base. Got a chance to visit the real thing last year so I took the opportunity to photograph it as much as possible and study the details first hand.

Always thought it was a shame to render it with a random found statue mesh in place so I used MakeHuman to model as close to the Georg Kolbe statue as possible, polycrunched the mesh in Meshlab and then did quite a bit of editing of the mesh in SU to smooth it out and refine some of the details before I was reasonably happy. She's still nowhere near as pretty as the real thing (although the real thing does have oddly large hands for a woman! ).

Everything else is modelled in SU, including the chairs and stools which tested my SU patience (especially as it was prior to Fredo's bend ruby plugin! LOL) as it involved lots of manual vertice editing and follow-me tooling for the piping around and across the cushions.

The images are all rendered as 32 bit .hdr files in VRay for SketchUp then post-processed in Photoshop; mostly gamma and exposure adjustment before converting to 8 bit. The background is a 360° spherical 15000 x 7500 px photograph made from around 60 photographs taken with a tripod in my local park, composited with Autostitch and then Photoshopped (I always paste in Vue rendered skies as Autostitch usually can't detect the overlaps in photographed skies). It's loaded in the VRay background slot so I didn't need the Alpha channel. Post-processing brings the background luminosity up so it looks almost like an HDRI background, but without the massive RAM hit that would entail.

I'll probably potter with it now and again for years to come; I started modelling the site context, but I need to do some dirt maps for the external surfaces and a better collection of 3D trees to do it justice before rendering the exterior.

The first 3 renders took around 3 hours each at 1400 x 800 on my Centrino Duo 1.83GHz laptop, mostly because of 64 subdivs on the stainless steel and leather. The others were much quicker due to less reflective materials in the viewport. The full size images can be viewed at the following links:

http://i449.photobucket.com/albums/qq215/JacksonPhotobucket/1_29BarcelonaPavilionInterior090-1.jpg
http://i449.photobucket.com/albums/qq215/JacksonPhotobucket/2_29BarcelonaPavilionInterior090-1.jpg
http://i449.photobucket.com/albums/qq215/JacksonPhotobucket/3_29BarcelonaPavilionInterior090-1.jpg
http://i449.photobucket.com/albums/qq215/JacksonPhotobucket/4_29BarcelonaPavilionInterior090-1.jpg
http://i449.photobucket.com/albums/qq215/JacksonPhotobucket/5_29BarcelonaPavilionInterior090-1.jpg
http://i449.photobucket.com/albums/qq215/JacksonPhotobucket/6_29BarcelonaPavilionInterior090-1.jpg

Reading between the lines I think it was the BBC who came up with the "bereavement" tag- it sounds to me like "The Rubble Club" (the name is a giveaway) has got less to do with helping architects cope with the loss of their buildings (they're too busy mourning the loss of their jobs anyway) as it is a tongue-in-cheek poke at the effects modern political wrangling and economic forces have on the increasingly disposable built environment.

On the other hand, maybe I should apply for membership on the grounds that in my 2nd year at university I spent a week building a physical model of that term's project, well ahead of schedule.... then came home drunk from a night out and stood right on it.

The sad thing about the demolition of the Forth Road Bridge toll gantries was that for 40 or so years they were just ugly engineer-designed (sorry) grey columns and beams with no aesthetic consideration evident whatsoever in the design. Finally, when this mundane structure, which is driven through by tens of thousands of commuters and Highland-bound tourists every day came to the end of it's life somone decided that its replacement ought to be elegant, interesting and given a little more thought than is normally afforded to scaffolding. Reich & Hall Architects delivered the goods and everyone who I heard comment on them (mostly non-architects) liked them and then 1 year later they were demolished... it just feels wrong.

Oh I should also say that when buying train tickets in the UK, even at short notice for day trips, always always always buy a return ticket if you are travelling both ways. Whereas in some countries (Sweden for example) two single tickets, there and back, will cost exactly the same as a return ticket, in Britain many train companies sell a return ticket for a little more than a single, maybe just 10 or 20% more. Presumably the "logic" is that this will encourage more people to take day trips for fun, but the reality is that its just a damn pain for tourists who end up paying almost double the price by buying single tickets before each journey.

Hi Susan,

Regarding getting from London to Edinburgh or vice versa I would recommend taking the regular train (or sleeper) over flying. The train takes about 5 hours and if the truth be told it's hit and miss regarding comfort- almost entirely down to how busy the train is (and its occupants!). If it's outside rush hour and on a weekday you may well have a quiet comfortable journey watching most England and southern Scotland pass by and maybe even have a nap for an hour or so.... or if you have to travel on a Friday and/or rush hour you may end up sharing your packed carriage with frustrated commuters, drunken stag parties (bachelor parties) and screaming kids.

The thing with getting around Britain is that trains are very expensive when you buy tickets at short notice (even more than flying), but if you book them over a month ahead you can often get very good deals- up to 70% cheaper, much cheaper than flying: http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/tocs_maps/tocs/gr/details.html.

My internet browser is acting weird, need to start another reply...

Strange, once my reply got to a certain length the text window would jump up and down every time I typed a character!

By the time you add in the time to get to the airport (especially in London- it can take over 2 hours from the centre), plus check-in (min 2 hours before departure) it is often quicker to take the train from London to Edinburgh and you have the tremendous advantage of departing and arriving right in the centre of both cities and knowing that if the worst happens and you miss your train another will be along in an hour and you can often use the same ticket (though of course you'd lose your reserved seat). The only real advantage to flying is that if you end up sitting next to an idiot you only have to endure them for 1.5 hours instead of 5 hours/eternity on the train! For God's sake if you do take the train go to Marks & Spencers (other supermarkets are available) beforehand and stock up on sandwiches, salads and drinks as the stuff they sell on the trains is a) garbage and b) extortionate. Trust me, realising you forgot to bring supplies with you and then having to pay 16 CAD for a soggy sandwich and murky cup of coffee isn't going to make those 5 hours go by any faster! LOL

I've only been on the sleeper twice (I was 10 years old), but I did look into it a few years ago and thought it sounded rather expensive for what may well be a bad night's sleep (I'm a very light sleeper). I suppose as a visitor to the UK you weigh it up against paying for accomodation for 2 nights anyway so it becomes much more priceworthy. Could well be a good option, especially to wake up the next morning right in the city centre.

Tom,

That's what I said at the end- it doesn't stick the texture to the vertices or edges, but it does stick the texture to the face. Once you've hit Enter you can move or rotate the unedited face about as much as you want and the texture will stay in place- i.e. SU seems to create a new UV coordinates plane which is fixed coplanar to the face. In this way the texture stays fixed until you edit the vertices or edges at which point the texture "moves" or rather the texture actually stays fixed on the face's UV plane while the faces geometry floats around on it. Like I said, it wouldn't be SU's answer to pelt or shrink mapping, but each face having its own UV coordinates plane would still be an enormous help in SU.

I was going to post a request/enquiry regarding this precise issue when I found this post. What baffles me is that this can already be done per individual face via the left click texture position editor (Right click on face>Texture>Position>Enter) which is fine for cuboids, but is pretty much useless when working on large triangulated meshes.

As it's already possible on a per face basis in SU is it not relatively simple to write a ruby which simply repeats this action on all selected faces? Easy for me to say seeing as am and most likely always will be completely useless at programming, but Matthieu Noblet's "Components to Groups" script got me thinking. In principle it does almost exactly what we want- allows you to select geometry/groups/components, then performs a series of right click actions upon it/them. In that case it is:

Select Component>Explode>Group>Deselect>Select Next Component>Explode, Group,... etc.

Could the same principle (or even some of the same code) not be applied to this problem so you select a mesh, and the ruby then starts the sequence: Select Face>Texture (i.e. Open Texture Editor)> Position>Enter>Select Next Face,... etc?

I've had a look in Matthieu's C2G code, but like I said, even basic ruby is beyond me. Matthieu's a very generous guy who I'm sure if requested would be willing to allow someone to edit and redistribute parts of it for a good cause. This ability, combined with all the recent "organic" modelling ruby scripts would be incredibly useful for SU users like myself who would rather keep 3D Max and Rhino OUT of their workflow!

I understand of course (or at least I think I do) that SU has major UV mapping shortfalls- as I understand it, if you stretch/deform a face in SU elasticly, there's no way for SU to stretch the texture accordingly so edges still tile with adjacent faces (though that does make me wonder how Whaat's UV Spherical Mapping tool works?), but even an automation of the current Texture>Position>Enter would be of enormous benefit.

p.s. guess who just spent 2 days texturing a tree!

Wow, I have NEVER seen such photorealism in watercolour! The light, reflections and refractions in the "Boats at Littlehampton" are absolutely stunning.
http://www.joedowden.net/Black%20Gallery/Boats_Full.jpg

Sadly, both Croatia and London are a little too far from Malmö to meet up, but I hope you have a great time in both! I've heard Croatia is beautiful, especially for sailing- we've talked about taking a holiday there for years. Just let me know if you want London tips.

Uuuughhhh, just like Chuck Norris, this thread never dies.

Thanks Pete for finally playing Devil's Advocate!