Noticed, with the last set of directions from Google, that everyone who attends will have to sign a "Standard Google" Non-Disclosure Agreement.
EDIT: I removed the quote from the NDA, because I realized it is also labled Confidential/Proprietory.

Some of us may have seen something like this before, if we do beta-testing for any software developer.

I wonder if this will prevent us from discussing anything related to SU7, assuming they demonstrate it. Those of us who went to the last Basecamp might remember some very interesting demos of future features, including the items that ultimately became Layout and Photomatch. If such things are "revealed" this time around, will we be able to talk about them?

It definitely means that if I find any cyborgs or wormholes you'll never hear about it from me here, but that probably goes without saying.

@solo said:

Looks like a Fred Bartels design.

Actually, it looks like a warmed-over, NURBS-ified Bart Prince project, done with FormZ (don't know quite why I think that, but FZ models with NURBS have a certain look).

http://www.bartprince.com/default.html

That's very handsome indeed, both as a model and a rendering.

My only suggestion: I think the top edge of the swells in the background should probably be a little more obscured, given the fog and and rain.

I'm actually more interested in the low-power, low-heat Intel Atom and its variations. An Eeepc (the 901) with that chip came out the day before yesterday, to much acclaim. I may have to buy yet another Eee sometime in October when the next gen is due.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080602-atom-everywhere-intels-mid-netbook-and-nettop-strategy.html

If you only need the geometry and no textures, your best bet is to export to SU from Rhino using DWG, because any goofball materials assigned by Rhino will be shed in the process. Be careful about the export settings...the one named "2004 Lines" is generally the best built-in export scheme for ACAD export if you're going to SU using DWG.

Incidentally, if you are exporting anything from Rhino 4 to SketchUp via some mesh format,
do yourself a favor:

Select the objects in Rhino you want to export and type the command "ExtractRenderMesh".

Use Rhino's selection tools to "Select Mesh" and then "Export Selected" those meshes.

Selecting any old NURBS object and then either using the "Mesh" command or the exporter itself and their respective dialogs to create meshes is much less likely to get you a decent mesh copy of what you see on the screen than simply asking Rhino to make the displaymesh "real" and exporting that. The quality of the extracted display mesh matches whatever display properties you had set for the document prior to extraction. (" _DocumentPropertiesPage
_Mesh" is the command for getting to those properties.)

There is an exporter available for Rhino 4.0 for SketchUp.

http://en.wiki.mcneel.com/default.aspx/McNeel/ThreedWareHouse.html

The importer installs by default, but you need this package for export. It may fail with very large models. And it will not solve the problem with textures in exported files.

With regard to textures...this is where Rhino falls down, and I've spoken with the McNeel people about it and the local rep explained that they are working on it.

Surfaces and meshes that have been textured with bitmaps in Rhino itself will not hold their textures or their mapping on export to anything. The experienced Rhino users I know well (if they are using the Rhino Renderer or a similar plugin) often texture objects "by layer", not "by object", and then export their models as DWG or DXF to mesh modelers (and this includes SketchUp). The ACAD formats, unlike 3DS, will lose their materials but they will hold layer status and layer color. In the non-Rhino modeler they "select by layer" and apply new textures and texture mapping using that organizational strategy.

Because of this problem, it most often makes sense to import SketchUp meshes into Rhino for rendering, as opposed to the other way around. The mapping tools, lighting tools, and the Rhino Renderer are quite basic but reliable, as long as you use them to produce output from Rhino. You can also (at least for now) download free betas of several renderers for Rhino, including Brazil and FlamingoNXT.

@grahama said:

I'll bring my headlamp and Wormhole Detection Goggles.

With my luck, I'll end up being made into a cyborg and then they'll shoot me through a wormhole. It'll be just like an outake from The Black Hole.

@unknownuser said:

As a "coder", I think to myself "omg - what a lot of work".

Oh, hey, I've got no problem with "coders" in general; I just don't ask questions on certain FOSS forums anymore. Too many times someone will jump in with some reply to the effect that I'm too stupid to be anything other than a Windows user.

Ironically enough, this man was my undergrad computer science instructor, and he tried to convince me I should be a "coder" (although I'm not sure the term was general use in 1987). In most respects, I wish I had listened, because there ain't been nothing nice about being an architect.

Hey, Todd, take a look at the node editor in Blender, if you want to see a fascinating interface. If only there was some kind of coherence to the feature set for this beast!

Thanks, Frenchy. Not sure if that website likes my computer, though.

Despite being a Blender and a Linux user, I'm not entirely convinced of the universal wonderfulness of all things Open Source. For every Firefox, there's a pile of botched Open Source stuff out there made by sociopaths with utter contempt for "mortals" (non-coders). They will flame you wildly if you dare to point out a problem with their UI.

Ah, so this thing is no longer under development, then...they're gutting it and moving the good bits to something else, and that's why it's free.

Thanks, boss.

Actually, I'm puzzled by those videos and screenshots...it doesn't seem that different
(except for this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvVK1oMdcnw&feature=related , which reminds me of Rhino's rendered viewport) from the version 2.46 I was using this morning.

I've been hoping they would deal with some of the true oddities of Blender, like the damn "bad Unix" file browser interface and the over-reliance on cryptic key combinations. Multiple windows has never been a real desire for me.

Oh well.

@solo said:

Is this not a plugin for Max and Maya only?

It's a renderer, like Mental Ray or VRay but leveraging NVidia hardware.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelato_%28software%29

There is a way of using this with Blender...someone wrote their own plugin, which seems to be the general requirement for anything outside of those two. There has been a certain amount of whining about this piece of software...apparently it is a more restrictive replacement for some earlier NVidia renderer (BMRT) that was much beloved by the Open Source crowd.

Already noted here:

301 Moved Permanently

(www.sketchucation.com)

It's also been already noted that it is not terribly useful (outside of certain Dinosaur modelers) unless you are capable of writing a plugin for SU. And you really must have a modern NVidia card.

@kwistenbiebel said:

Blender is such a pain.

Yes, it is.

And without a doubt, if you folks ever get your wish for a multi-processing, high-polygon-capable, NURBS-capable, IK-capable, super-dooper-Krytonite-resistant SU, it will also be a pain.

@jim said:

I'm sure I'm not the only one to have this thought, but what if they open-source'd the SketchUp code? They code keep Layout and the exporters proprietary, and sell them as the "Pro" version plugins. Just open-source the base code, and SketchUp would kill everything else out there in about 1 year.

I brought it this topic up a while back in the old SketchUp forum. The Google team made some remark that amounted to, "Well...no."

On the other hand, open source projects are not always miraculously wonderful. Do you really want to see SU turn into Blender because the "lords of coding" decided this was good? Keep in mind that for five years or so the Blender team refused to institute a "Ctrl+Z" undo, because it made the code "messy."

It's still not well done. There's an undo for mesh editing, and outside of editing mode there's another undo stack. If you quit editing mode and hit undo, it undoes everything you did during that edit, no matter how complex the mesh editing operation was, and the entire history of mesh editing is lost forever.

But maybe the code looks nice to the lords of coding. And there are lords. Or may we should call them the "Techno Elite." Open source projects are driven by the code contributors, not the users. If you use a lot of FOSS software (and I do, and I even sometime contribute financially to them), you sometimes get the impression that the coders think general, non-coding users are inconvenient at best, or parasites at worse.

Just think...SU could be "GIMP-ified."

Would you prefer that to Google's neglect?

I was at an IKEA today and was very tempted to buy a Helmer...

I've installed it on four PC's...not a hitch with any of them. As a matter of fact, I think it fixed some problems I had created for myself by tampering with Registry settings and then losing my archived version.

...runs pretty nicely on an Asus Eeepc, too.

Blender has the capability you are requesting, KB. Neatest part is where you can actually use painting tools on the unfolded map and then see them applied in the rendered viewport.

I haven't used it in a while, but now that I've been given a little project with a certain degree carte blanche I was planning on testing all kinds of integrations with SU, Blender, and more obscure programs.

@jenujacob said:

i cant wait for the new UI in blender 2.5!!!

I'd almost forgotten about that...does anyone know where the "new" UI is described in an "official" way? I remember reading about it a while back, and wanted to refresh my memory. A quick Google search just brought up a bunch of argumentive Blender forum sites. When is it coming? They're going to mess it up...They already messed it up...blah blah blah. It actually reads very much like those SU 7 threads here.

Major UI change is a contentious issue, I'm sure...Blender's interface is so unique, and after all these years they want to change it? What happens to those poor sods who actually have mastered the current "traditional" version?

I'm very happy to see them prospering, though...I made a couple of small contributions to the Blender Foundation and I've bought all three of their official manuals. It looks like Google is once again helping them out with the Summer of Code program.