Well, I want the Gothic one!

In a different color, of course.

My "professional" opinion? I think that given the additional complexity of constructing a multi-story highrise with many rotating parts--along with the additional resources involved in manufacturing, assembling, and maintaining the structure (think about it:giant, rotating, precision-machined metal elements...at the edge of a desert full of abrasive dust and in a corrosive environment, otherwise know as a coastal region)--that this building will consume so much additional energy and raw material that it will never in its usable lifespan "break even" or even come close in a "green sense." (We're making a common, if commonly unconscious, assumption here that "being green" is a zero-sum game played with resources and their consumption.)

Not that it won't be cool to look at, of course. I'm all for cool and visionary, I just think one shouldn't pretend that this sort of gratuitous engineering and construction elaboration will have anything more than an aesthetic value. There's some good reason to believe that no high-rise construction can be "green" in the sense that it is not exorbitantly (and perhaps, immorally--given the resource-deprived nature of three-quarters of the population of the planet) resource- and energy-consumptive.

But if we just drop the "green" business and truthfully declare that this is a giant wind-powered kinetic sculpture that people (if very, very wealthy ones) can live in...well, that's great. It might be more than great. It will be a wonder of art(which seemingly cannot be quantified in the zero-sum green game), and I'm just bitterly jealous that I'll never get to design or work on anything that interesting in my likely professional life.

These remind me of the "grungy" graphic style of the British illustrator Dave McKean, one of my artistic heroes. It's very inspiring to suddenly comprehend (or be reminded) how that idiom might be combined with architectural illustration. I have a competition entry in development (not that observatory thing, in case anyone is wondering), and I think these styles, or my own variants on them, might be the key for effective depiction of it.

Thanks again, Dave.

@remus said:

Lewis, even so the ideas there, and im sure it'll be far more efficient than current buildings..

It ismy profession, remus. I do have a certain sense for these things by this point.

That's a thought: Google Earth as a rendering package.

I'm not sure my clients will be too thrilled with that little corporate trademark in the corner of every image though.

@johnsenior1973 said:

@allen weitzman said:

The building is self-sustaining, making its own energy by tapping into the energy created by the rotation.

I strongly suspect that is an example of "green-wash."

@kwistenbiebel said:

As a side note:
One of the developers at Asgvis (Vray for Sketchup) told me that implementing 'large adress awareness' is a matter of dropping a few code lines in.....
As they want their render engine to perform at full power (64 bit + large RAM adressing), they can't understand why it takes Google that long.....

Let's hope Google does not remain deaf to the calls of 3td party developers....
To be honest, I don't like the silence around SU7...Google could easily spill some needed info for developers and ruby coders which way SU is heading. They could do that without having to reveal 'secret features' no one ever heard of.

Just needed to say this...

John Bacus told me (at the AIA convention) that the issue was realtimeshadows and textures in 64-bit applications. That is something with which VRay doesn't have to deal. Of course, it is possible John just wanted to get rid of me and made the problem up.

Incidentally, I just looked up that phrase "large address aware" in one of the MS Developer sites:

@unknownuser said:

Specifying Large-Address-Aware When Building

It is a good practice to specify large-address-aware when building 32-bit applications, by using the linker flag /LARGEADDRESSAWARE, even if the application is not intended for a 64-bit platform, because of the advantages that are gained at no cost. As explained earlier, enabling this flag for a build allows a 32-bit program to access more memory with special boot options on a 32-bit OS or on a 64-bit OS. However, developers must be careful that pointer assumptions are not made, such as assuming that the high-bit is never set in a 32-bit pointer. In general, enabling the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE flag is a good practice.

Thirty-two-bit applications that are large-address-aware can determine at run time how much total virtual address space is available to them with the current OS configuration by calling GlobalMemoryStatusEx. The ullTotalVirtual result will range from 2147352576 bytes (2 GB) to 4294836224 bytes (4 GB). Values that are larger than 3221094400 (3 GB) can only be obtained on 64-bit versions of Windows. For example, if IncreaseUserVa has a value of 2560, the result is ullTotalVirtual with a value of 2684223488 bytes.

So "aware programs" can use 4GB not just 2B. I take it that true 64-Bit apps should have greater capability.

All right, carry on with the griping now.

Works pretty well with fog...very mysterious.

I'm really fond of the coffee stain one...thanks! I scanned actual paper stained with coffee for my final advanced studio project in grad school and layered it with output from SU3 for great effect...none of the jury actually was able to identify the medium and thus get worked up about the fact that I used a computer (still a likely sin, four years ago when I did this).

Now to find something more recent and to try your coffee-stain style on it!

Just downloaded the new version, Adam. Thanks...this should be very interesting.

@alan fraser said:

Sometimes it's better to stick with computers.
http://www.tronguy.net/TRONcostume/

That guy has become the image of Linux users everywhere.

Carl, welcome to the Forum. I'm not skilled enough to develop that script for you, but I am very interested in 3D fabrication and worked in a fabrication lab while I was a grad student. Could you describe your fabricator and its capabilities a bit more?

How much of what I do with computers could I really do with cardboard, construction paper, a digital camera, and a lot of patience?

(www.dailymotion.com)

@kwistenbiebel said:

Mesh Painting? Hell yeah !!!!!

I think it would suit the Sketchup philosophy well.

I still want a "Make Espresso" function.

Then learn Blender.

This function exists in Blender. Get the code, work it out in Ruby, and you're ready to go.

@jackson said:

Ross,

I never understood the fuss about Dr. Who either. I guess when it began in the 60's, in B&W it must really have captured the imagination of British children (like Mr S above!) , but by the time I was old enough to watch it (the 80s) it was just low budget, cheesy sci-fi. Now it's a high budget (by UK standards!) cheesy sci-fi with "stars" queuing up to cameo in it- it really feels like a case of the emperor's clothing to me.... sorry Dr Who fans!

...that said, daleks definitely ARE cool.

I actually regularly watched the Doctor on (American) PBS, as a child in north Florida in the seventies and eighties. Cheesy side effects aside, it was often (not always) the best-written piece of science fiction available at the time. And where else would you find a hero whose response to the possible destruction of all life would typically be something like, "Would you like a jelly baby?"

I haven't quite enjoyed the new ones as much...somehow, the one where a stereotypically-arrogant-and-crass American superbillionaire nearly destroys the world (or maybe just Salt Lake City) by resurrecting a crash-landed Dalek for his "collection" of alien artifacts ended the charm for me...and I'm usually not terribly sensitive to cultural bashing (and that really wasn't that rough a bashing either).

@unknownuser said:

Lewis, I appreciate it! Looking forward to your reply. No rush, this isn't a tight deadline kind of consideration.

peace,
Nick

I came back from 3DBC to sort of a backlog of work, Nick, so give me another day or so and I'll hopefully have a chance to write something that isn't completely cynical from the stress of it all.

That is an interesting set of software.

Notice this one:
http://sketchboard.sourceforge.net/index.php

A SketchUp knock-off?

And this one:
http://arbaro.sourceforge.net/

It makes 3D trees?

@dale said:

You may want this nifty little milk scanner to make prototyping fun.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=XSrW-wAWZe4

Great. I foresee a sudden spike in the cost of dairy products....