@david_h said:

I've been a SKP using since the old @Last days (2002 or there abouts. V2!) I even went to the first basecamp in Boulder back in 05!

I don't wanna sound like an old'"Back in my day. . ." doofus-- but really...back then it seemed like the Mission of sketchup was just to be a simple, intuitive and easy to learn modelering program that pretty much anyone--from kids to architects--could download and start using in about 1/2 hour.

Sketchup only really took on higher levels of sophistication because of a community of wizards out in the world developed the plugins for differnet missions. Google and Trimble didn't seem to give a heck or a darn about developing it into anything more, so the idea of these high subscription fees seems ludicrous to me. IT seems to me that Trimble is looking to basically kill sketchup--(death by a million lost users!) rather than support it.
Luckily i have a work situation where subscriptions can be paid for but for a long time I carried my own license and it was working fine for me. but when i retire, in a few years, and still want to do some modeling as a side gig or for fun. . . Sketchup might just be a fond memory of an antiquated old kitchen appliance that will be probably get replaced by a new blender.

I don't suppose there's any chance of @Last buying it back?

This X1000... especially the part about all the talented people who created all the fantastic plugins that made SketchUp worth having, most of which are available for free...
SketchUp by itself is bare bones. Most people who don’t know about the plugins think SU is not capable of much and dismiss it entirely.
It’s rather audacious of Trimble to charge a subscription on a product that relies so heavily on the efforts of people who donated their time to a community.
If I thought for a moment that Trimble had some intentions of actually doing something that would make the core product significantly better instead of finding new ways of monetizing other people’s work, I’d say “well, these things happen”...
That email they sent out was a real kick in the crotch to anyone who’s been a long time user... basically saying “Say goodbye to the freedom to choose when to upgrade and instead pay way more money for the same thing! Yay!”
From the moment Trimble hobbled the free version, I’ve stopped steering students and teachers to SketchUp, instead telling them about Blender... it may be harder to learn, but it clearly has a future.
SketchUp was a wonderfully easy to learn product that was simple in design and actually fun to use, too bad this is where it’s gone.
Screw any software that becomes subscription.

The plugin thing has been winding down for a while, mostly since Trimble took over... once they got clever and killed off plugins in the free version, they pretty much guaranteed that SketchUp will eventually be left behind.
The generosity and vision of the majority of the plugin creators gave SketchUp it’s greatest value... without all the plugins given away for free, SketchUp would have been an obscure curiosity, a good idea, but very limited in what it could do... it was given power and versatility by the free plugin community.
Those plugin creators gave away their brilliant work because they were part of a community that shared ideas.
I can’t speak for plugin creators, but I make freebie models using Blender, if Blender were to become paid software with a “Pro” version able to use free models, and a “free” version locked into a small library of models included with the free version, I’d be pissed that someone was making money off of something I once donated to the free community. I would leave my models up, but I wouldn’t update or offer any fixes and I’d never donate or share another model.
It’s the principle... they bought software given value by free contributions, then they decide to limit access to the free items to profit on someone’s gift... that’s BS... yes, it’s raw capitalism, but who cares.
Yes, my silly hypothetical example isn’t exactly the same, but it conveys the basic idea. I can’t imagine a lot of plugin creators weren’t either disappointed by the situation or fairly turned off.
I’m sure plenty of brilliant people will still contribute either free or paid plugins and maybe SketchUp will continue for many years to come... who knows... I’m glad and very thankful I was able to experience the exciting times when SketchUp was still growing and seem to have a promising future.

Thank you both!
It was Zorro 2... I did not know that was what that tool did... too bad, I could have used that a bunch of times.
Thanks again.

In the video pilou posted, does anyone know what plugin the person is using that has an icon which looks like sword?

Sorry about the crappy screen capture... and thanks for any info.

Thank you for the reply.

This looks like an interesting plugin, but I don’t see a price stated anywhere... am I missing something or is this something that shows up after downloading it? I’m not a premium member is that why I’m not seeing a price?

@pixero said:

Yeah, but even 2250 leaves are not much if your going for something that look real. All examples have the twigs and leaves as an image plane. Seem to be more for real time games and such.

You could do as I believe Pilou is suggesting, and perhaps instead of using images of single leaves, use images of smaller branched groups... This might not be too useful with trees like maples, where the spacing of the leaves is uniform and a bit distant, but for certain oaks where the leaves are closer together and more irregularly placed, it works well.
I made a PNG in Photoshop once using images of a bunch of diffent oak leaves I photographed and connected them using some thin branch images... It was a bit of work, but it allowed for a fuller looking tree that needed fewer leaves.

Thank you Pilou!

You could also try a program called Sculptris
http://pixologic.com/sculptris/
It's a separate program from SketchUp, and only exports in OBJ format, but if you get TIG's OBJ Importer, you can bring whatever you sculpt there over to SU, provided you don't make it too high poly.
I recently sculpted a rock formation that a structure was supposed to sit on and was very surprised I was able to bring it over to SU because it was higher poly then I thought would work.
Also, if you have problems importing using OBJ, you can try using Blender to convert the OBJs to DAE, which sometimes works better for certain models.

Thanks pilou! It seems pretty good... Definitely much better then Google Translate...
At least for the the phases I checked it with.