Liverpool bus drivers are wusses, but the black cab drivers are nutters!
I flaggad one last night who seemed to think you have to drive faster in the snow.

I got out half way for fear of my life.

Thx,

Its my email chritmas card this year, as long as it makes someone laugh it is job done!
It started off as a santa hat for the speed modelling challenge but quickly got way out of hand.

Regards

Sam

Ho Ho Ho

Happy xmas everybody,

Well it isnt facebook.

Statistics, graphs e.t.c. always concern me in a strange way.
Its like excell spread sheets - does information in a spreadsheet become more real/believable simply because it is surrounded by a grid and has the appearance of a calculation? Adding up to something more tangible?

"Oh my god its in a spreadsheet, it must be true"

Its a bit like putting a collection of words in a triangle

Anyway rant over.

Regards

Sam

It saddens me that interest in facebook is even linked with interest in sex. Is nothing sacred!

I too will never sign up even if i am the last person on the planet with less than a thousand 'freinds'.

That is just not right on so many levels.

Thank god you sorted it out i was worried about the safety of your dog.

Thanks Tig,

Will be useful to me i am sure.

Regards

Sam

Hi Guzman,

I'm sure someone else here more competant than me will give you a better shot at it.

I thought that the lettering suited using a coloured emmiting mesh and some oblique spotlights to light up the underside edge of the blocks and one to give some sort of gradient colour, i tried unsuccesfully to focus the eye more on the cube. Yes my colour palette was pretty unsubtle but it amused me. I got the blocks whiter but ran out of time.........

Hope it goes well.

Regards

Sam

About as much 'pop' as i can muster on a sunday afternoon.

The more render freindly model in Thea for about 15mins TR2

Should have made the whites whiter: never mind.

Regards

Sam

Suzy

If you feel so strongly about this as your response suggests, get a shed load of money together and make them an offer and then try to employ your own development team.

Imagine yourself in the position of developing a product where there are so many different views as to how it should progress (mostly driven by specific personal usage and needs) and a multitude of different tasks required of the product by an enormous volume of users. Lets see how you do. Could you please all of the people all of the time?

Reading through this thread the most important thing that appears is that there is a dialogue between developers and users which is the most valuble thing to maintain in the context of a constructive discussion.

Personally i am still glad that SU provides the opportunity for anyone with the lowest level of hardware to have a go at 3d modeling. Maybe i will think differently the next time i am waiting impatiently for something to explode at snails pace, but i will still probably continue to do just that (and have only myself to blame).

Regards

Sam

Yes this sounds familiar as i have had some unexpected crashes for no apparent reason. I will keep my eye on this and do the terminal thing. Will help if i can.

Thanks for the response Gaieus,

Yes, sorry about the essay, turned a bit stream of conciousness!! will keep on trying and shove something in the gallery when i am happy with it; on a different model hopefully.

Regards Sam

My 4 year old Festool cordless was stolen the other year. I was gutted. When i first had it a freind of mine looked in the case filled with eccentric and round corner attatchments and said it looked like a sniper rifle. In terms of precision and performance the comparison proved pretty much spot on.

I went for a Makita Li ion 18v replacement, it was on offer at a significant reduction, dont remember the number but it is strangely coloured white and grey and it certainly does all i ask of it through timber (big forstner bits) and 8mm mild steel flat bar (12ml bits): it is extremely powerful. I tend to think that the ah on the battery is maybe more important than the volts. The weight is also a winner after a long day.

Bought this before the Li ion festools came out and i can imagine that in terms of power and controlability these will be somewhere near the best machine money can buy and even though the outlay is large, if they are to be used every day as they are designed to be, they will represent good value for money and be a joy to use. The Festool deburring countersink is also really nicely engineered and recommended.

I also have an old Fein cordless that keeps on going and an obvious weakness for European tools! One day i WILL own a Felder cf741. Good luck with the cordless hunt, dont think you will be dissapointed with the Festool.

Regards

Sam

Hi People,

I have been scanning the forums for a while now to help me learn.
I use sketchup for a variety of things but primarily for making models of things i am going to build.

The attached model is basically my construction documentation of a simple metalwork frame (various sizes of rectangular steel tube) built for a theatre company touring show in the UK

I have found that Sketch Up does more than i expected it to do; especially in tems of precision.
By designing the frame in 3d I can more easily visualise the welded connections and the positions of predrilled bolt holes. This makes the build much more efficient as i have already gone through the trouble shooting in a virtual build.
I can send the file via 3d PDF keeping hold of my .skp so people know exactly what it is i am building them.
I can produce a functional render of it by placing it in a theatre basic studio (not required for this model), i have done all the hard work so why not.
I can order an expensive projection screen for the set from the drawing with absolute confidence that it will fit.
Whilst building i can reference the model taking point to point measurements from anywhere on the model to check i am still in square and there will be no nasty surprises.
I can easily make sure all the frames fit the transport - saves time, cash and angle grinding disks!

The limitations are in terms of 2d data production / construction drawings for someone else to read and build from as i would rather generate in 3d first. My current thinking is purchasing the 'flatten' plug in but i am not overly sure that this will do what i want it to. Is it any better than the overhead view with no perspective? Double cad is out due to OSX and Vectorworks due to the price.
I have not found yet an easy way to annotate the angles in the drawing like dimensions either but this is probably just me.
Sketchup does not know what is required of it when applying textures! Does a program like UVX give me more options than this?

In terms of producing a render i am planning to use a basic studio that i can place all my models in. Either in SketchUp or merged in the Render studio and tweak from there

I have done a few tests in Thea Render with volumetric scattering to gain a type of theatrical haze to show the lighting with some pleasing results but is the studio model best to be the realistic one i have now or one of the bowl shaped ones i have seen for product renders?

Anyway you probably get the general idea. Eventually i hope that this will be an efficient process whilst using Gimp to help with texture generation probably in the Thea material editor. Using and adapting already made components will hopefully reduce build times for models as the focus is on productivity, i have already used the bridge deck cut up in two other models. If anyone has any recommendations of software, modelling tips for this kind of thing or any other comments relating to this kind of process i would be grateful. Most of the rendering software focuses on architectural photo realistic stuff which is not nessecarily what i am after for this useage. It seems to me that Thea can offer something else if tweaked for saturated stylised theatrical lighting.

Am i on the right track or should i be going down a different path?

Love the forum, it is the most useful one i have come across. Had a look at the 'Extrude by Loft' plug in by the 'we are not worthy' TIG, pressed enter and nearly fell off my chair. That is awesome. As i am sure are the are others that i will come across in time.

Regards

Sam

construction model

Hi,

I recently did a few material tests for molten metal manipulating a simulation scene in a render engine. A combination of textures and meshes. Just a test!!!!! and did not have enough time to render it fully as i was trying to get my head around some other settings, emmitters, global medium e.t.c.. Maybe it will give you a few ideas to achieve what you are after .............. or maybe not!

Regards Sam

Thanks for sharing this.

Very clear explanation, great result!

Material editor has taken me a long time to get to grips with (im certainly not saying i have got it yet, in fact this post shows me how far i have to go) but it is EXTREMELY rewarding. Many thanks again