Gata:

" ... if you softened the out-of-bound mesh from a Sandbox-made grid, then it's one face to select for deletion."

This tip will help be out significantly!

I will have to download Soap Skin Bubble and install it on my new PC. I had forgotten all about it.

Thanks, again.
John

Thanks, Chris. It looks like a practical interface/approach.

If only ONE point were selected, then is the "stretch" done relative to the opposite point on the same plane or relative to the center of the 9-point plane?

I have a huge site area for which I may have to produce a surface from contours. Since it is so large, the fewest possible contours will probably used.

In certain areas, close to structures, more detail may be added. I was hoping to create a From Scratch surface (see the sandbox toolset), project the boundary edges of the focus area onto the From Scratch surface, do an intersection, and erase the surfaces/edges which lay outside the boundary. Then use the Smoove tool to do some surface shaping. However, the step where the out-of-bounds geometry is erased is a painstaking process.

I was wondering if there is a script that could create a grid from a selected surface and automatically trim of the excess; even better yet do the triangulation bit that the From Scratch tool does?

SU Follow-ME and many of the scripts that have been written can create some very awesome geometry.

However, the properties of native circles and arcs are lost as they are kloned, moved, rescaled, and/or rotated; ie., when a circle is Follow-Me'd along a curve.

The conveniece of using the Entity Info properties (for example the Radius property) is no longer available for the derived geometry, which can make subsequent modications to geometry more difficult.

Couldn't a script be developed that could analyse a model or a selection (and all its nested entities) of all Non-Circle and Non-Arc geometry which are comprised of coplaner segments which are equal in length with equal angles at their vertices and then "redraw" them as Circles and Arcs?

Regards, John

Hi Chris, as always, very impressive.

A few questions:

Are the deformations restricted to just the SU default axis?

If the group/component is rotated manually before being deformed, what determines the deformation "planes"?

Is there an ability to deform relative to a specified point, (ie., center, opposite handle, or inference point). Is there concentric deformation relative to a specific point?

Regards, John

I'll have to ask.

Is there away to import a Naviswork model into SU6, Pro?

Thanks, TIG, I'll give it a try.

John

TIG,

Very Nice.

What determineshow the copies are aligned to one another?

In this case, thought my settings would have made the copies concentric relative to the Z axis.

Regards, John

YES, I would pay!

One concern is the skewing handles and the relationship to SU axis.

I am asking this question of SU folks that also use or have experience with Rhino v4.

Rhino was my first exposure to a 3D application and I used it occasionally from version 2 through version 3.

When SU2 came along, I realized that I do so much of what I used to do in Rhino quicker/easier with a lot less aggrivation.

Soooo ... I haven't used Rhino in the last 2 or 3 years at all. There are tools in Rhino, however, that can do things extremely easy. Blends, patches, etc.,

I was briefly looking at the capabilities of Rhino 4 and possibly getting an upgrade from v3. Before doing so I would like your opinion on how well Rhino geometry comes into SketchUp and the "editabilty" of that geometry.

Regards, John

My "Bend Distortion" posting got me thinking that a Tapered Pipe Along Path might accomplish something similar for cylindrical shapes.

I think this has been discussed before but not sure if it came to fruition.

TIG, could you make a hybrid of PipeAlongPath.rb?

Regards, John

Fredo6:

Do you have anything like this in your bag of tricks. It would take geometry and "bend" it.

This example isn't very good because I only rotated a few hidden sections, it should look like a smooth, non-segmented "trunk". Also this is only "bent" along the blue axis plane. Could a more complex distortion, for example, along the blue and then the green axis plane be done as you might see in the trunk of a palm tree?

Even better. Thanks.

Hi Tom:

No, unfortunately, I don't have any info on the topography.

Thanks for the compliment ... should be directed to Gaieus.

Yes, Pete.

I did something similar a few minutes ago where I made a second image of the photo and rotated it 90° so it was horizontal. Then lined it up with the vertical photo near the base of the hill at the end of the grassy field. Yours is better because the blades of grass don't appear to be so distorted with a better transistion to the vertical part of the image (the photo is now a darker shade with less contrast, though).

Gaieus:

The Watermark method worked pretty darn good and made it easy to adjust focal length, lighting, and shadows without modifying the photo's attributes (display shadows on ground was turned on).

Thank you, thank you, thank you for bearing with me.

It really helps sharing ideas. Helped me to try a different approach.

Regards, John

G:

Obviously, I didn't explain my objectives very well. What I was trying to do is match an existing model or component to the photo. Attached is an example where I painted a rectangle with the photo as a texture. The rectangle was tilted backwards a bit so it wouldn't darken when the sun for shading was turned on.

I will try your Watermark method next.

Photomatch Test.skp

Well, thanks for sharing.

This is where I think SketchUp should give us an alternative method to the current Photomatching process.

1- If possible, allow a photo (a "background" photo like this) to remain STATIC and act like image on your Windows desktop. That way you could tweek the the field of view manually until the foreground, 3D-geometry matches the FOV of the photo without the photo being distorted.

I haven't used Layout much, perhaps it could do what I am suggesting above?

2- Another issue occurs when trying to adjust the lighting of the 3D-geometry to match that of the photo. If you turn on Use Sun for Shading, then the photo usually darkens and looses contrast because it is on a vertical plane. So it would be helpful if photo had a Use Sun for Shading attributewhich could be toggled on/off independently of the Scene setting.

Come to think of it, it could be very useful if SU had a toggle on/off Use Sun for Shading attribute for any objectvia Entity Info (similar to the Cast Shadowsand Receive Shadows attributes).

Is there someone confident in their ability in doing this process?

I've got a photo that I can't for the life of me figure out how to establish the vanishing points via the red, green grids, etc., as explained in the Help file.

I opened a simple model with a few cubes and cylinders (see attached), then tried to follow the procedure of importing the photo via Camera > Photomatch. The photo is a landscape shot of yard with a building far in the background on a hill. The side of the buildng faces the camera almost dead-on. I want to keep the model oriented as you find it when the .skp is first opened, looking at the butt end of the pipe which points to the rear of the scene. I couldn't figure where to place the red and green axis handles without the model going bonkers.

If someone wants to try a tutorial to help me see the light .....

Model.skp