@align said:

why is it that google can do no work at all or rather what amount to very little work in improving sketchup, and guys like fredo improve sketchup with every new plugin? does google even care anymore? doesnt seem that way... i think its sickening and just want to state my disgust and call google out. rant over.

The explanation is simple:
Google does not invest a lot of ressources in Sketchup development as Sketchup is not a top priority for them.
But I do think that some of the (few?) guys that are working on the project do some good stuff.
Take Layout for instance, which I think is maturing in a good way.
We had a Layout thread a time ago where one of the team members came in to defend the project.
At that moment I understood that he (they) were working on it in a passionate way.

I learnt not to shoot at the development team as they might not have enough people or funds to really make a difference.
I rather shoot at Google as a company, not being able to see the potential of sketchup. If they did, things would be totally different i am sure.

@solo said:

Remembering that too many lights will give overlapping shadows which can ruin a studio setup.

Some photographers use a 3 point light setup to achieve overlapping -but soft- shadows.
Supplementary they use big reflectors to soften the shadows even more.
It depends on what the subject and the goal of the studio setup is I guess
.

That Fry thing is still in development and no info is spilled.
And it is supposed to be a different concept. You still need to through a render process while the game engines are truely real-time.

@pixero said:

It says you cannot use it for anything that will generate you money so I guess it's not possible to use for archviz. Fun to play with none the less...
Unity is free and you can use it commercially. Thats the best path for archviz at the moment.

The downside to Unity is that it is the lesser god compared to Cryengine 3 and the ChromEd engine which seem to have global illumination.
Unity requires a light pre-baked model, for instance with LightUp, in order to get a decent result.

And yes, free for non-commercial means not usable to go to a client with..unfortunately.

I think the trouble began when developers started to use internet controlled IP adress based licensing.
It seriously limits the users freedom.

Great work Miguel!

I see a lot of potential for walking people and cars that drive around in scenes.
Hopefully, a lot of SP users upload a lot of pre-rigged ones we can use.
Maybe even a commerical package with high quality ones? Why not.
Recently I called for a simplyfied SP version, solely for setting up things like that easily in arch scenes.

It would lift Sketchups animation capabilities to another level.

@unknownuser said:

Doh! Good thinking Remus.
It was as simple as navigating to the US site as you said.

Sometimes you might be surprised with the differences in amount you have to pay per country for the same product.
Just for fun just browse the Apple site for different countries. Apple.com, Apple.com.au, Apple.be, Apple.de etc...
I don't get the reason for these hugh differences sometimes.
All I know is that I rather ship a Belgian Mac to Australia than to buy an Aussie Mac.

I know what you mean and I don't want to get to that debate again.
But it is just sad that this is the result.
People can't even tell anymore which software they use, for crying out loud.

Hi Sid,
The second and third renders (first posts) are smashing.
Superb athmosphere and great lighting.

I am not blaming you csaba or other moderators. i know you try to keep your integrity.
I am not blaming the commercial people either as I can understand the jumpiness.

What I wanted to adress is the general climate that has been created on this forum that doesn't allow users to evaluate software and share an opinion in good trust anymore.

Well done SCF management!

Sorry Olli, I am to blame for the thread hijack.

But I also realise that this forum has a problem.
It has become impossible for an 'ordinary' forum member (read: without affiliation to commercial software) to share a testimonial on using a particular software.

Somehow it just triggers all the commercial people to come and 'defend' their product.
Well guys, your products were never under attack.

I seriously have had enough.
Either this is a forum or it is something else.

Users can't have opinions anymore or share experiences in good trust. A real shame!

Wuaaah...wouldn't that create a temporal anomaly in the subspace field ?

simple, quick and clean.
Podium is very good at this.
I am using it more and more again for clay type renderings for masterplans, predesign proposals and stuff.

It is the only render engine I know that lets you use the sun (='Shadows'on) in combination with white skydome light ('background color'to white and by 'sky' unchecked in the Styles panel.
Sometimes you just don't want the blue overcast of a physical sky.
The sun+background color methods brings out the colors in your model as they really are.

Another plus for architectural use is Podiums ability to render out true elevations (parallel projection)... a thing Vray, for instance, seriously lacks.

@unknownuser said:

fwiw, you can mix sun & skylight very easily in indigo as well..

Yes, Whaat made me aware of that in one of his posts (the layer blending is a great feature). But I was referring to Sun+skydome, not sun+physical sky.
I believe this needs to be implemented as a Indigo feature first before it can find its way to Skindigo.
I am sure this will happen.

@Olishea: cheers

@gaieus said:

But then again, I shouldn't be "promoting" any software here (nor hijack Oli's thread...)

Can we now please stop with the render war bull shit?
It's not promotion.It's useful information.

But I agree, we're kind of Hijacking Oli's thread now.
Sorry Oli.

The renders are really good.

Let us forget about that silly render war thing for a moment hey...and let us be informative

Are you referring to Twilight? (I don't know all the ins and outs of that software yet)

Damn!

I am glad I am wrong in this case.
A tool like this would definitely speed up the whole modeling and texturing workflow if it would become a stable plugin.

I have another idea to make this happen.
A 'global' toggle button that switches between 'nested' mode and 'edit all geometry' mode.
Toggling to 'edit all geometry' would enable editing all geometry as if they aren't in groups or components.
It would temporarily lift up all the nesting, but without collapsing/exploding the model.

That way, it would apply for all the Sketchup tools, not just the push-pull or paint tool.
Does that make sense?

I hope the Japanese version says 'Banzai' and the Scottish version 'Skeeeeeetchuuuuup'

Great idea, but for some reason I expect a plugin like that to be very slow and a possible reason for bug splats.
Sketchup doesn't seem to work that well when going over the boundaries of nested groups and components.
The slowdowns of having the Outliner open while editing a model or using plugins proves that....

But I might be wrong