Yes, it works! Thank you Andrew.

It's not just a matter of grayscale contrast: I want to achieve a visual style that simulates (fakes) natural light. Natural light comes in a wide range of different flavours, and the difference between them can be enormous. The source of all our natural light is the sun, however it takes on different characteristics at different times of day and in different weather conditions, turning this one source of light into essentially many different ones ranging from hard and warm to soft and cool. In Wings 3D, shadows and color are driven by Spherical Harmonics coordinates. Since I have no idea if Sketchup's rendering engine can do this, I found a workaround by painting my model's surfaces. I tweaked the ruby script "Color By" by sdmitch, using my personal colour values. The result is a sort of "Cylindical Harmonics" style. My palette is based on the Kelvin Spectrum, which I find pleasant for my eyes. Here the part of the script that I changed. def self.direction_color(v) v.y = v.y > 1.0 ? 1.0 ; v.y angle=Math.acos(v.y).radians angle=360.0-angle if v.x < 0.0 ### change these test ranges and/or color to suit... case angle when 11.25...33.75;color=[255,189,124]; #2000 K° when 33.75...56.25;color=[255,217,181]; when 56.25...78.75;color=[254,227,203]; when 78.75...101.25;color=[253,237,225]; when 101.25...123.75;color=[249,237,232]; when 123.75...146.25;color=[245,238,239]; when 146.25...168.75;color=[238,238,247]; when 168.75...191.25;color=[232,237,254]; when 191.25...213.75;color=[223,232,254]; when 213.75...236.25;color=[214,227,255]; when 236.25...258.75;color=[201,219,255]; when 258.75...281.25;color=[191,212,255]; when 281.25...303.75;color=[181,206,255]; when 303.75...326.25;color=[166,197,255]; when 326.25...348.75;color=[151,187,255]; #8000 K° else color=[255,255,255]; Now, it would be nice to drive this with the sun position, and have an imput panel where you can set 2 main colors and let the script generate the gradient between them. In this way we could easlily fake the light of midday sunshine, late afernoon, sunset, dusk and so on. Anybody who can help is welcome! [image: uYhU_skechup-test-1.gif]

Thanks Pilou, I must be suffering from amnesia Jean Giraud was always in my top-ten of idols... true genius he is.

@matteo said: I suppose that these rubies work directly on the rendering engine (opengl) parameters. Afraid not. They are simply setting the Style and Fog settings available in the API. No control over sun or shadow colours.

I don't have illustrator and I think it's not worth buying it only for that reason. In Sketchup, when you export to 3ds format, you have many options: I just wish they could develop a similar interface, when you export a pdf, in the next version of Layout.

@jhauswirth said: I think the problem might be the same as the z-fighting issue. The dashed lines consistently render while in hidden line mode so I don't think it is Z-fight related. Are the lines on the same plane as the faces they are drawn on? Yes (in test file) Can you pull the lines up off the ground/faces by a very small amount and see how it looks then? I tried this (+ 1/8") and it did not resolve the missing line segmnets Thanks for you help on this, Best, C

@matteo said: Wow Tig! Quite perfect. I may be wrong, but I suspect that the triangular faces are part of an array of pyramids surrounding the upper part of the cup. Time for a lathe&array ruby plugin? CF's Component Stringer does the job already - easily added with a small pyramid component [make path in two parts as it can't handle loops] - then explode instances back into main geometry...[image: wAta_LathedVasePyramids.png]LathedVasePyramids.skp

Since it seems that the windows version of LO doesn't support font kerning, the best way I've found to manage this is to write the text with an image editor and export it as png image with transparent background. Photoshop has a quite good text management and supports well text kerning. If you have to put some text labels in your LO file (i.e. 'elevation north' or 'level 04'), it's good to set up a new Photoshop file with a grid and write down the text for your labels. Don't forget size and scale: i wrote my text @ 300 dpi. Then with the slice tool cut all the labels and export them all at once with the 'save for internet' option in the menu 'file'. Save them as plain png images, since the html code is useless in this case. Now you're ready to import the labels in LO and position them. Your text will look more elegant now! I guess that you can do the some with The Gimp and most of the image editors available.

@matteo said: yes, you are right Juan, I'm experiencing that Layout 2.1 is very solid and stable. Yes and no, in an odd way. I go for days without any problems at all in LO and then suddenly (with the same model!) have a patch where it blows up anytime I look at it the wrong way. I had a spate of total 'poof' crashes a couple of weeks ago; no crashlog, no bugsplat, nothing, just ... gone.

Fantastic, the building is my favorite bit

Hey everyone, If you see bugs with 7.1 and Ruby, please share a detailed post with the following information: Your OS (Mac, XP, Vista, etc.) Exact steps to reproduce A keyword or email that you typed into the bug splat screen Does it happen if you uninstall all other scripts? Thanks,

Looping

@unknownuser said: Ah the good old days of pin bar drafting and mylar and rapidiograph, and sepia although I don't miss the smell of sepia eradicator...I'm sure that stuff killed a few brain cells of mine. I found out that the active ingredient in the eradicator was acetone. We quit buying the expensive special purpose eradicator and went to the paint store for our mylar eraser. And, we opened windows. Otherwise, everyone used Exacto knives for small corrections.

Yep, that's it! Thank you Ken I'll use the as_pluginloader.rb to recall set.rb and svg.rb when I need to import some svg files.

nice try Kwist! In effect the castle looks much better when animated than in a static scene. Like of MrWip, I've not had a happy reaction to LighUp: the possibility to apply such kind of lights and shadows inside sketchupit is great, but I cant't live without displaying edges and profiles. Then I abandoned LighUp, but you made me feel like doing some animations with this model.

Wow, I really like that shot. The perspective messes with my head a little bit, but it's definitely dystopian future Second image >>> First image

thanks. I cant help but wonder why software developers would choose to use such strange units, though. I mean 1 unit = 8ft, whered they come up with that idea.

@karamouza said: Wow, very nice concept! Now if someone could do this as a sketchup style... great! actually I used the moleskine as background in an animation for a documentary, as you see in the attached image. Thank you Dave for the kind offer to make a style with it Karamouza, if you want to make it by yourself the process is easy: just render the moleskine with plain pages (or ruled or whatelse you want) as jpg image, create a new style and use the saved jpg as watermark; then choose a sketchy edge you like and mix them. /matteo [image: 7cCR_moleskine-e-cartolina.jpg]

Thank you all for the kind comments. here a quick x-ray shot and another wip, quasi fisheye shot, rendered with vue 6, I used for a while as desktop wallpaper. [image: vjLz_radiografia.jpg] [image: eujE_grandangolare.jpg]