I'm glad everyone's enjoying Thor's models. I wonder why he calls himself the "original moron" and his website "Moron Studios"? To my architect's eyes, his designs for aircraft and spacecraft seem strikingly original...not moronic at all. Just today that program AC3D came up in a discussion I was having with Diego Matho at the Boston Architectural College about next fall's SketchUp classes (which I have agreed to teach again)...it's odd that Diego should have become aware of it at the same time as I did. It's my understanding that AC3D has been out there for nearly a decade, but that the developer has recently extended its capabilities. I've been reading the manual, and the clear interface with which one creates organic (subsurface-smoothed) objects from blocky faceted ones is something Google should emulate for SketchUp (assuming, that is, that Google continues developing SketchUp). AC3D also has a very nice built-in mechanism for reducing mesh object polygon count. Incidentally, although it is available on all OS right now, on the Linux platform AC3D is about the closest thing to SketchUp, as far as I can tell. I could wish it had better snaps/inferences, but at least it has some, which makes it almost unique among the Linux-friendly modelers that I have evaluated. --Lewis poster-Lewis Wadsworth

Coen, Everytime I come back to check things out - you have made things better than I could have thought. That new front page, icons and descriptions are great. I don't know how you are going to make this any better, but I know you and I think you already have something else cooked up, another way to serve the SU community. You rock brother! Shaun Tennant

@jim said: "ayam".reverse More like "onihr".reverse, except with a clunkier GUI. The developer used OpenNurbs. http://en.wiki.mcneel.com/default.aspx/McNeel/opennurbs.html I'm thinking I need to learn to program in Erlang now. On the other hand, I'm an architect, so shouldn't I be designing buildings instead? --Lewis poster-Lewis Wadsworth

How about free laserscan software? all you need is a cheap laser. poster-LMNO

Your link to the Paintshop pluging contained no explanation whatsoever of the word bump map. That is why I placed another url, to a Gimp plugin that does explain that term. But the Paintshop plugin is a smart bumpmapper and not a real SFS. @unknownuser said: Animation of space ship going through a tunnel (seen at right) lined with rocks. Bump maps of the rock material were created by the Shape from Shading plug-in. @unknownuser said: Image can be rendered as a bump map in your 3d application First quote can be read under Tunnel.avi, second is the end of the plug-in demo SFS.avi. edit: added model to demonstrate difference between BM and SFS. This guy is nice and grey. I have neither BM nor SFS software installed. But I believe BM will probably push this man into the background while SFS at least theoretically should be able to see that he is floating in mid air. We can see that at first glance. It was the intention of mister (professor? doctor?) Horn, on of the founding fathers of SFS to give computer vision that very same level of intelligence. The S from Shape stands for 3D, bump maps can give a very nice 3D impression, but are actually no more 3D than stereoscopy. http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/sas/Ruby/BMP%20vs%20SFS.skp

#convert skp to obj #every thumb is putted in a created dir with name of related skp model's name #skppath is the residence of skpfiles require 'sketchup.rb' if(not file_loaded?("skp2obj.rb")) plugins_menu = UI.menu("Plugins") plugins_menu.add_item("skp2obj") {file_export} end file_loaded("skp2obj.rb") def file_export #skp file path #beware the end "/" e.g. skppath ="i;/skp/skptest/model/error/" skppath ="i;/tt/" #open dir and loop all skps dir = Dir.open(skppath) begin dir.each {|x| next if x !~ /\.skp$/i x = "#{x}" sourcefile = skppath+x x = x[0,x.length-4] destdir = skppath + x + "/" destfile = destdir + x +".obj" #mak dir Dir.mkdir(destdir) #open modle file Sketchup.file_new status = Sketchup.open_file sourcefile if (!status) UI.messagebox "error; " + sourcefile end #export obj status = Sketchup.active_model.export destfile if (!status) UI.messagebox "error; " + sourcefile end } ensure dir.close end UI.messagebox "Finished" end