I'm searching now but if anybody knows if such a tool exists that would be very helpful.

Best,
Jason.

Great work!

It may be 3DCoat it the answer you seek -- you can sculpt freely (voxels) and retopologize easily so the the sculpted form will need the minimum amount of poly's to retain the desired form, which will help in getting it back into a Sketchup file at a reasonable size.

I've used ZBrush in the past to do this but topology can be a more painful issue in ZBrush.

Best,
Jason.

This looking great!

Best,
Jason.

I like the render -- but the photoshop work and your skill with color just makes it "art"... I'm a big fan

Best,
Jason.

Thank-you for the feedback for context here's a render with a matte type paint finish.

Best,
Jason.

I'm playing with the idea of using some sort of metallic finish as the base for most of this -- as opposed to the standard military matte-finish drab paint... the basic idea was to "sex" it up a bit and show off the curves a bit (the same reason they paint cars in metallic flake paint).

Any thoughts?

Best,
Jason.

Sure Rich, here's a shot from Sketchup... I'll make the model available to anybody who wants it after I'm done.

Best,
Jason.

Yep, that looks like exactly what you want to do and then some: http://www.1001bit.com/products/hlouvres.shtml

Best,
Jason.

just to be clear, the issue here is the roof louvers -- I can get everything else to do what you want with no problem... I'm just trying to wrap my brain around how to adjust each louver to both the roof angle you want and the spacing you specify.

Best,
Jason.

I think I have part of the solution... I'll think some more.

Best,
Jason.

part_solution.skp

That is an interesting challenge -- getting the louvers to change with the house should be do-able and getting them to be adjustable is do-able but having them do both at the same time presents some challenges.

I'll have to think about this, I'm sure somebody else has done something like this before...

Best,
Jason.

I'm still working on this between some other things -- here's all the parts together, at this point it is mostly little details and cleanup (as far as modelling).

Best,
Jason.

The night shot is especially stunning.

Best,
Jason.

Looks great!

Very interesting work -- I have used Z-brush and I have contemplated 3-D Coat but Sculptris seems to be a viable alternative.

The harlequin technique was very appealing as well...

Best,
Jason.

Here's the legs with feet -- I had some cooler looking feet made that were a bit more faithful to the design but they could not achieve the articulation I wanted so I took some liberties to make them a bit more functional for moving. I may still do some tweaking but at this point I could consider them done...

I've rigged the legs to get them ready to do a bit of DC animation based posing functionality (just like I built into the arms). This will allow me to "pose" each leg individually with just a click -- a very handy thing when you have a army of these guys

Best,
Jason.

Very cool!

Best,
Jason.

My approach is simple -- you can either take Sketchup for what it is, or you can help to change it to be in line with what you think it should be... but only griping solves nothing, and griping about something you got for free just makes you look cheap and greedy.

If you want to do something about it great -- if you want to leave for another software great... these are your first posts on this forum and it seems like you are only here to say "I can't get everything I want for free from Sketchup, why not?!"

BTW whaat has every right in the world to charge for his work and personally I think if you have a problem with his price then you are beyond help.

The whole idea with open source anything is that the user base helps build it -- it doesn't just happen so you can take advantage without contributing nothing... that just makes you a parasite.

The question here should really be why should they give a damn what you think since you offer nothing in return? (which was the point I thought I already made).

Best,
Jason.

@johnsid said:

Sometimes plugins don't work properly, nobody guarantee quality of them, and so on. Some of them are commercial, and you have to pay for them, and there are other free programs which have these functionality by default.

I just wonder, why Sketchup do not have some of this basic functions in default instalation.

Despite this, I like the idea of plugins in Sketchup. It is just sad, if I want Subdivide and Smooth, I have to pay for it, but in WIngs it's free and work very well out of the box. So full feature SKetchup isn't free, it needs lot of stuff you have to buy extra. Like render engine.

I'm sorry guy but this just comes across as you griping because you have to pay for something -- and that's just sad.

SDS (subdivide and smooth) plays absolutely no role in why Google bought and made Sketchup free in the first place. You don't use high poly modeling techniques when modeling for Google Earth... if the feature you want for free has no value to the developers as a feature they are interested in giving away, then why should they include it? Especially in the free version...

It is only logical that they will develop and release tools for the free version that serve their goals which may or may not align with yours... but free software is a gift and to complain about a gift not being as "full featured" as you would like it to be is ungrateful and poor etiquette.

If you want a right to complain then buy Sketchup Pro, or try to become a Super Modeler (Google Earth), or write some Ruby Plugins for the community -- until you contribute something of worth I would not expect the Sketchup dev team to see your complaint as anything more than white noise.

Best,
Jason.