Animation and modeling entirely using the open-source modeling package Blender.

Blender - The Free and Open Source 3D Creation Software — blender.org

The Freedom to Create

Blender (www.blender.org)

PC only.

I've actually had a decent experience with Google Docs, especially since Google granted me the option of working on my Docs offline with Google Gears.

WINE Review has some more notes on SU on Linux and other OS, like FreeBSD.

Moved Permanently

(wine-review.blogspot.com)

(And yes, I posted a comment telling them to look at this thread...so we might see a bit of traffic.)

Really like that one, Dave.

Our fellow SCF member (and occasionally my boss) Diego Matho likes this better:

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/fx_composer_home.html

A little more user-friendly, but it is essentially a shader designer. With a that node-based graphical scripting that I think, along with Diego, might be the real future of coding, although you could I guess resort to Python scripting.

Between Gelato and Fx Composer, you can finally come up with that dream renderer for SU you've always wanted. Assuming you have A LOT of time on your hands.

Nothing like writing code to get a quick a rendering!

That Rhino newsletter from Bob McNeel is always fascinating, and usually includes one or two new tools free for the testing (this is how Rhino beta tests things).

If only certain other software companies worked that way!

By the way, the future of scripting might be something described here, linked in that same newsletter (I've also been testing this):

http://designreform.net/category/_tutorials-rhino/

They call it "Explicit History", but you should really think of it as scripting with a graphical interface based on the concept of nodes. Blender and Nvidia's shader designer have incorporated similar interfaces, as have certain FEA tools and various performance/video packages like Max/Jitter, PD, and VVVV.

@mirjman said:

congrats! nice renders, and it looks like construction is going per your images so far...

Thanks. I had a minimal design roll in this...I just translated other peoples' ideas into models, and then checked out the implications versus the program and structural requirements. I won't know until they finish the entrance if either of the twoitems which I feel I had any real design input actually made it.

I did draft a great many of CD details and sheets, as well, but that's just CAD monkeyshines.

If you open your component (or group) in edit mode; open the Styles window or the Face Styles toolbar; switch to Wireframe; and select your entire component's edges using a crossing window (NOT using CTRL+A, which will select the non-visible faces along with edges); hide the selected edges; and then switch back to some other face style, THEN all of the edges for that component/group will be hidden although the faces will not.

This little trick also works (if you use the Styles window to turn off all edges temporarily) if you wish to select and hide only faces of a given object, group, or component.

@unknownuser said:

My suggestion is, to keep Google emails from going into spam, create a filter where all emails from google.com go to a label and get starred or something.

That's a good idea...I just did it, and applied it to previous messages. What is interesting is that none of the forty-or-so other emails in my inbox originating from a google.com address had been intercepted as spam. I think it must have been semantics in the message contents that flagged it.

Thanks, Andrew, I have it now...thanks, Gaieus. Odd, considering that I have a fairly extensive Google Docs setup and that Google manages my domain's email that the message should get de-spammed.

No joking, for the moment:

This message from Google ("SketchUp Basecamp 2008") just turned up in my Gmail spam box:

@unknownuser said:

Hello there,

With less than two weeks until the start of Google SketchUp 3D Basecamp 2008 in Mountain View, we thought we'd provide you with some more detailed information about the event. We've:

* added to our list of Frequently Asked Questions; please check them out.
* created an Event Map of places on the Google campus.
* published a Detailed Event Program which provides an hour-by-hour schedule.

We hope you have a safe trip to Mountain View and look forward to meeting you,

The 3D Basecamp Team Google Inc.
2590 Pearl Street, Suite 110
Boulder, CO 80302
sketchup.google.com

Interestingly enough, all the links in it were dead, and there was a big red warning from Gmail (!) not to trust it.

@unknownuser said:

Warning: This message may not be from whom it claims to be. Beware of following any links in it or of providing the sender with any personal information.

I assume this was some odd mistake on the part of the people in Boulder and not some fiendish phishing scheme. If someone has access to that FAQ, that map, and that detailed program view, would you mind sending me the links? Thanks.

(That's assuming that it's different than what is at http://www.google.com/events/3dbasecamp )

You know, the more I look at the program, the more I think to myself:

*OK, Lewis, you know how to do all or most of these things very well already, so

A) First thing, grab your goody bag and scarf up on edibles.

B) Sneak into the Google Restricted Zone and look for cyborgs and/or The Wormhole.

C) Be back in time for the party.*

At one point I made a small movie entirely in SU5 for this (with minimal editing in After Effects), which the client never saw. I still use it to demonstrate some of the limitations of SU as an animation producer.

This is half the normal res, and I've knocked down the fps to something like 10 so that it doesn't take forever to download (meaning that it seems a little jerky now).

Notice the weird shadows inside the trees near the end...I've never been able to figure that one out. They were partially transparent in hidden line (remember, there were no "Styles" then).

http://lewiswadsworth.net/SketchUp/ec_movie/all_together_nowsmall2.mov

This guy built a 24 core, 48 GB render farm in an Ikea cabinet for seemingly next to nothing, and he's planning on building a 96 core version. No indication what actually he is using as rendering software, but who cares?

http://helmer.sfe.se/

He gives fairly detailed descriptions of the assembly...and none of this looks particularly difficult.

I was in a part of town I don't often visit and noticed something I spent a couple of years on was actually under construction.

It's a teaching lab attached to an existing historic college administration building. I must have made at least a hundred different SU models (using v4 to v6) of it, almost exclusively as design studies...even to the point of modeling the framing and setting up a database using SU's outliner so I could track the member sizes. The client used someone else for presentation renderings: these "architectural visualization specialists" whined about my SU model, insisted that they had to build it anew in Max, and ultimately botched it. The greyscale image...a real last minute job...went on the construction set cover after the firm decided that the render house's image didn't reflect the design intent.

I left the firm at the beginning of bidding, so I don't really know how much of the design survived that process.

I read about it the other day.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2008/05/28/google-earth-in-the-browser-is-fast-but-ugly

Google has never been fond of stand-alone apps...their whole thin-client "singularity" model is based on the idea of running programs through your browser, through the Web...Google Docs, Google Gears, Google Apps: just the beginning of their attempt to push that box on your desk and all the stuff in its drives into insignificance as anything other than a window into cyberspace. The whole purchase of Earth from Keyhole was a run-up to this incorporation of the virtual globe tech into a web-based schema.

This has interesting implications for the future of SketchUp, don't you think? Notice that this embedded Google Earth business allows you to create geometry.

I'm not sure I'm going to miss the current model of CAD/3D modeling, once "Google Docs 3D" is online.

P.S. Don't get too used to Ruby. Outside of SU, it looks like Google is pushing Python for this sort of thing.

That's not a bad idea, in a weird sort of way.

You see, Google's business plan was inspired by this Cyberpunk novel called Snowcrash. In that near future, the CIA and the Library of Congress have merged and then held the mother of all IPOs. And their main computer interface is this virtual globe thing...

Oh, and in the novel they send out agents in what they call full "Gargoyle" wear, which probably looks a little like that...and their intelligence-gathering is re-marketed as a reality TV show...

Actually, I'll just be there with me souped-up Asus eeepc 900. That will be annoying enough.

I'm going just to irritate everyone else...a sort of resident "troll."

Would it be helpful to set up a public Picasa web album for SCF? I tend to believe there will be an official one for Google, but perhaps we could have one ourselves, linked to the Blog.

I'll be there, of course. I'm sure after three days no one at the conference will be on speaking terms with me.