Hi Chris,

I am experiencing trouble using your nice Loft plugin.
Below, I attached what is happening. I am trying to connect two closed curves to form a solid. I was hoping the loft tool would connect the points of the two curves with 'the smallest distance between points' as if it was a tensile structure.
Unfortunately I get an error.
First I thought I needed to do this with the soap skin bubble plugin, but that doesn't seem to work.

Any help would be welcome.

[Edit]: the blend.rb seems to 'almost' do this, although it connects existing points on the curves one after the other. That means it generates unwanted diagonals.
I think I would need a loft tool or 'skin tool'for it, as that would work independantly from the location of the control points on the curve and makes a skin (= by smallest distance between curves).....It seems though that the skin.rb is not being further developed.

I tried all three methods (raster,vesctor, hybrid) and none worked.
As a note: I set the line weight in the styles panel of LO to 0.1 to have thinner lines (the default 1 was too fat).

As I mentioned before, the PDF looks OK in Acrobat Reader (all lines are there), so I am pretty sure it is something in Photoshop, or a change in the PDF format that LO exports...
I'll try to Google this specific Photoshop issue and see what it brings up.

Sweet.
Must check it out.

Hi Csaba,

I indeed guessed that the low, medium and high settings in LO 2 were the equivalent of 72,150 and 300 dpi in LO 1.
So the dpi is not the issue, as I opened the 'High' PDF as 300 dpi in Pshop, which should be the right way to keep scale and resolution.

Somehow it has to do with some treshold that makes fine lines disappear from a certain thickness (thinness).
It's driving me nuts that I can't find a solution.

As a workaround, I tried exporting as a .jpg, but LO doesn't allow for exports of big sized sheets, A1 in my case.

The LO1 PDF files worked very well in Pshop. Did Google maybe change the PDF format in LO2 ?

I have it on my ipod touch and my conclusion is that the screen is just too small
Also, the concept isn't that new. I ran similar software 5 years ago an a Asus winmobile pocketPC. I think it was a pocket version of Artrage if I remember correctly.

A really good app would be Sketchup for Iphone, but I don't think that will ever happen as IphoneOs is a competitive OS to google's own Android.
Although...Google did release G Maps for Iphone, so maybe ...

You are right about that.
It wouldn't be faster to do it like that.
Maybe we users are the impatient bunch .

Don't get me wrong, Layout 2 has quite a bit improvements over the previous version and it is a very useful program.
It's just that when time is precious, things never are fast enough...

Hi dermotcoll,

I had a quick go at your SU file.
Another render engine was used, but setup should be quite universal, so I guess it could apply to Twilight as well.

Some general observations:

1. use a groundplane around the subject and make it big enough. This way, the physical sky will bounce around light in the interior (ceiling) more realistically.
2. If render time is not an issue, render the room as fully enclosed without the back wall missing. More realism, but I know...render time...
3. thin glass is the way to go.
4. Create some background in the exterior. In my example I placed a 2D clipmap treeline surface.

Here's what came out:

and the SU setup:

I don't think that is the problem as I tried with both layers Off as On...

In the office, I tried opening the PDF in Photoshop Elements on another box, and surprisingly it works.
This makes me think that my Photoshop CS2 is handling the PDF wrongly, so I tried to find some settings to control this but I couldn't find any, besides the option window (for dpi and size) that pops up when you open the PDF.
(There is a PDF settings option in the Edit menu, but I think it is only useful for writing PDF's, not reading).

Anyone with a good PS knowledge has a tip to solve this?

Thanks in advance...

Hi all,

Anyone else experiencing trouble with exporting PDF's from layout?

It seems to export it ok when opening the resulting PDF in Acrobat reader, but when I open it in Photoshop, half of the linework is gone...

I didn't have the issue in Layout 1.
Am I doing something wrong, or did the PDF export change...?

I exported the PDF as 'High Quality' and opened the Pshop file as a 300 dpi.
In Layout 1 , you were able to specify the dpi, but that option is gone in Layout 2.

Included a screengrab of the crippled PDF in Pshop CS2.
I expect this to be a Pshop issue...?

I agree that Layout is very good but slow.
Anything you try to change in 'styles','views' etc... makes it a pain to update.
Basically the communication with the SU file makes it so slow.
I think it is more a Sketchup issue than a Layout issue and I have the feeling that once G team would fix the SU speed, Layout will be much faster as well.....maybe for SU8?.

Funny, cause I am running it on a 64 bit system (Vista Business x64)....and it works without even entering compatibility mode.

Vray can't do 2Point perspectives (unfortunately).
I am not sure about the latest Skindigo and Maxwell...

What's wrong with Xrok1's postings?
Al, you can't expect your render solution to be the only one allowed to be mentioned on this forum....

I think Podium Render can do 2point perspectives as well.
http://www.suplugins.com/

.

Nice porn.
Now, where's the girl?

This will be good for LightUp as well.
The combo LightUp-Unity is worth trying out.

Fantastic!
Downloaded it , installed it, tried it for 10 minutes and loved it.
A very useful 2D CAD solution.

In order to 'really' be used in an architectural environment, following features are lacking though:

1. import of DWG/DXF.:
   For quick sketch work in design phase, one should be able to import the 2D site/terrain file etc....

2. more line options:
   double lines for walls etc...

3. more direct editing
   for instance: double clicking the value of a dimension line should enable changing to a custom value etc...

4. Get rid of 'revit like' editing
   Instead of the rotation gizmo , hovering above points could trigger scale/rotate/stretch handles as in Layout + provide short cut key combos. Much faster, much easier. etc...

5. VCB for entering values on the fly
   as in Sketchup

All in all, a very pleasing new product with a lot of potential. Most of all, it is fun!

Could well become the 'Sketchup for 2D'....unless Google would develop Layout to be a true 2D CAD solution (save as DWG etc...)...

The current downside of Layout is that you can't save as a CAD file, only as an image.

Have you guys seen this .
Why,oh why can't we use this technology as a Sketchup user ?....
The Chrome Engine 4 seems even better for Archviz than crysis...

[flash=560,340:3ifqe996]http://www.youtube.com/v/vud7p7iIV6w&hl=en&fs=1&[/flash:3ifqe996]

Thanks for the support. I just sent you an e-mail.

I just installed the trial version of Simlab 3DPDF.
Unfortunately, when clicking Plugins/3D PDF/Export, nothing happens.
Am I doing something wrong here?

That second render looks amazing.
Twilight seems to be very performant on transparent materials.