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I will have lots of fun using this, thanks Pilou!
The billboards I made looked terrible when rendered in Poser, but the PNGs look okay in SketchUp... So, just in case anyone wants to use them for something in SketchUp, here are the smaller versions I used in SU... They are very simple... it was just for a test, so sorry if they look a little cartoon-like.
Hello Pilou.
Thank you for the link to TreeMaker, I have been using it a lot lately, but I wanted to be able to populate a small terrain with my own models (or simple billboard components)... what I was actually trying to do, was make specific weeds for an overgrown area... TreeMaker is very good, but the template models are too... "pretty" for weeds and I do not really know how to add my own models to the list (if that is even possible)... so I decided to try Fur which sort seems to work like Component Spray, but with more random distribution.
I used the other link you provided and downloaded V 2.1.0... I see now that I skimmed past the the "Download Here" link at the top and went straight to the bottom where the updates usually used to be... I keep doing that with older plugins, I forget that the links to the newer versions at the PluginStore are often at the top now, so thank you again for the link.
EDITED OUT PREVIOUS TEXT AS I NOW HAVE THE PLUGIN RUNNING
I think that the dialog boxes are different for Windows and Mac.
Once again, thank you Pilou for the links and info!
Okay... Something was amiss... I turned of the computer and restarted it and now it works... it makes crowds.
I think I know what the problem was... sometimes my computer acts a little wonky after using certain programs at the same time... so to get it back to normal, I'll shut it down for a few minutes... which I just did... now I see the tool palette buttons too, which were not showing up in the preferences...
Also one other thing... I guess I failed to purge the document I was testing fur with... leaf1 was a component I made to test the crowd feature, but I deleted it and made a pink box instead... which did not appear a choice...
The weird thing is leaf1 one was actually the file name, not the component name... (TestLeaf)... I don't know why it chose the file name over the component name... So when I saw "leaf1" I thought it was some built in component...
Still, if it had populated the surface I would have seen it was my component.
Some of the controls are slightly different for Mac (still no slider controls, but no big deal), but the crowd feature DOES work...
So thanks again Pilou, it does now work more or less exactly as you showed in your "How to" images (which I thank you very much for going through the trouble of making!).
Have a great day!
That was just for the screen shot, I took pictures of each menu and put them together in one image using photoshop... I have tried checking the boxes, there is no reaction from the plugin when you click "Make Crowd"
Hello.
If anyone can answer any of the following questions I'd be extremely happy... (thanks in advance)....
1- On the first page, in the "Attachments" box where you click to download the plugin, it says "fur_en1.5a--This is Older Version.".... Is there an newer version somewhere? Or is this the most current version?
2- I see that in later posts, people seem to have a dialog/menu box that is green... is this only a Windows feature?
All I get is a slightly different version of the original (whatever version was first released)... I'm on a Mac, and sometimes not everything appears the same on both systems.
3- Also on the first page, where the versions/fixes are listed, I see "Crowd" Problem on mac do not fix yet. "....
I'm not sure, but does that mean that the crowd feature does not work on a Mac?
4- I feel really stupid asking this one, because it is clear that other people are able to do this, but how exactly does one go about using/loading components? I've tried several ways, based on what I think other people are doing (though nobody who seems to be using components seem to be directly saying how they did it... or I'm completely missing that)... I don't actually seem to be able use the Sang or Leaf1 components either... I watched the video and read every page of this thread and unless I skipped something obvious , I just don't see that info...
Sorry, for asking what are probably really stupid questions, but I've been going at this for about 3 hours and I decided to just ask the questions instead of poking at it anymore.
By the way, I can make grass(fur)... I'm just not able to use/load leaf1 and Sang components/load my own components... I was hoping to be able to use this plugin to populate a small area of terrain with some simple weed billboards/components I was making and I remembered that this plugin seemed to be able to do that... But I'm not sure if I'm understanding fully if that is what it does...
Anyway, thank you in advance for any information you may be able to share on this subject!
I was just looking at this amazing plugin, I wish I could have had this a couple of years ago when I used to build G scale LGB layouts for people. I would have been great for visualization.
I also just had a look at your site, amazing and brilliant stuff! Especially the castle!... I would also like to thank you for the Texture Positioning tools! Texture Randomizer and Texture Aligner will be huge time savers! Thank you for sharing your work!
I don't know what you wish to use them for, nor the exact method of modeling used by Form Fonts, but you could try using the Artisan plugin to sculpt some low rez models for Sketch Up, or if you need really good quality posable models you could use Poser or DAZ3D...
DAZ's models are fairly affordable and DAZ Studio 4.6 is still free, so if you don't want to spend a lot on the program its not bad.
You can export the models you make in SketchUp into OBJ format using Pros native OBJ export or TIG's Free Object Exporter... once in OBJ format you can import them to Poser or DAZ studio.
One thing to note, DAZ base figures are nude, so you need to buy clothes for them (or not)... which is basically how they make up the cost of the free program... Poser on the other hand does come with a whole lot of free content as well as several clothed figures.
If you go for Poser, try finding an older version like Poser 8 or 9 on Amazon, you will save a lot.
Edited to add... sorry I just notice you said "for SU"... Well, Poser models are pretty detailed and make huge SU files in general...
I sometimes pose and export DAZ people into SU using an older version of DAZ which had a Level Of Detail option for certain figures... I drop the LOD pretty low, since I need the figure only for scale reference... I don't know if LOD export is possible in Poser, or how it now works in DAZ Studio (I think you now need a $$ plugin called "Decimator").
I hope this was of some use.
While I respect the opinion of the OP... it would be the death of SketchUp.
I will no longer purchase Adobe products because of their "Creative Cloud".
Cloud base for SU?
No thank you.
Danke Aerilius. I forgot about that... I was just thinking in relation to the KT Repository... actually I probably never would have thought of that on my own. It is good that KT is still available in at least one form... (unfortunate for though for Mac users)... I hope the KT materials, tutorials and other assets that were in the repository are not lost.
Hi, I know that Kerkythea is a separate program and has its own website, but since some people here use KT and a couple even post occasionally at the site, I figured I might get a quicker response here.
Heres the question, while checking some links for something I was writing, I found out that the KT home site is locked... looking into it I discovered that a site upgrade was in progress, but apparently that was couple of months ago... does anyone know if it is just going slow or is Kerkythea dead?
I wanted to recommend KT, but if it is no longer available I will have to remove it from my suggestions.
Thank you for any information you may have on this and sorry if this is not really on topic... well it might be, since there is the SU2KT plugin... which would be obsolete without KT...
Anyway, thanks for any help.
Sorry if that was a weird title or if this is in the wrong forum, but I figured since its about about plugins, it might be okay.
I was writing a short "how to" for people new to SketchUp (actually for Poser/DAZ Studio users) and since I do not own Trimble Make or SketchUp Pro 2013, I was wondering if the names of the installation folders has changed...
Previously it was:
Windows:
SketchUp and SketchUp Pro: C:\Program Files\Google\Google SketchUp #\Plugins.
Mac OS X:
[YOUR USER NAME]/Library/Application Support/Google SketchUp #/SketchUp/plugins
Being that Trimble now owns SketchUp and has changed the version names (Make and 2013 Pro), I figured they probably changed the folder names... I know this may seem trivial, but I don't want to confuse anyone.
Thank you in advance for any help with this!
Hi! I'd like to thank TIG once again for this truly awesome plugin as well as all the subsequent updates.
I frequently recommend this plugin for people who are new to SketchUp, showing them that their modeling efforts can be used in other programs besides SketchUp.
A lot of people tend to believe that SketchUp is very limited, has no export options for the free version and are not aware of all the amazing plugins that extend SU's capabilities and give it greater power.
I was just writing a short "How to" for people who wish to use their models in Poser/DAZ studio, but it occurred to me that while I giving instructions on how to install a ruby script such as "OBJexporter" I was not sure if there were any other plugins that needed to be installed for OBJexporter to work properly... I have quite a few and the thought came to me when I was describing the progress bar and "Model exported in X# of seconds" features... so I figured I'd ask-
Does OBJexporter require any other plugins such as Progressbar.rb to function properly?
Thats probably a pretty stupid question, but before I tell someone how something works, I figured I should probably include any relevant additional information.
Thanks in advance for any information any of you can provide!
Am I correct in understanding that you want the figures to be poseable so you can use them to base drawings on?
If you are looking for a program that lets you pose human figures easily, then DAZ Studio...
http://www.daz3d.com/daz-studio-4-pro/
may be useful to you... it is similar to Poser and can still use many Poser figures.
The Free Pro Version come with some "starter figures"(Genesis Starter Essentials)... There are also many more "Morphs" for those available at ShareCG... (search under DAZ Studio> Genesis).
This software is basically a photo studio to create scenes either for still images or animation.
DAZ Studio was created as a free alternative to Poser... Poser was originally created as a software replacement for artist's mannequins.
This might be a well known piece of info, or not... but I just thought I'd share something I found...
A while ago in the plugins forum there were several other people asking if there was a plugin that would preserve MATERIAL names when exporting models from SketchUp using the COLLADA (.dae) format... by that I mean the materials "painted" on using the paint bucket tool... NOT image based textures... I suppose it would probably make more sense to call these "sketchup's native shaders", but whatever...
If you export your models using Free SU's COLLADA export feature you know what I mean... Some of us actually go through the trouble of renaming the textures too... But this is for naught when you open the model in most other programs... your fifty shades of gray are now all called ID3, ID14 ID89 ID202836 etc... not very helpful if you want to know which is which... Which I do... I use my models in Blender and Poser and like be able to quickly identify them when tweaking them in these other programs... and I suppose somewhere out there someone else might also...
I recently decided to drop a DAE file into TextEdit and see if it were possible to figure out what was going on in there...(I'm no code monkey... just a plain monkey, monkeying around)... Well, after scrolling down through all the code right near the bottom, I found all the materials I renamed and what their "ID" equivalents are...
Usually they are located between a large block of vertices coordinates and a bunch of zig-zagging code...
Basically what you will be looking for will be something that looks like this:
(The relevant code is in blue....)
78 76 80 79 81 79 80 78 82 81 83 81 82 80 84 83 85 83 84 82 84 86 87 86 84 85 87 88 89 88 87 86 89 90 91 90 89 88 91 92 93 92 91 90 93 94 95 94 93 92 95 96 97 96 95 94 97 98 99 98 97 96 99 100 101 100 99 98 101 102 103 102 101 100 103 104 105 104 103 102 105 106 107 106 105 104 107 108 109 108 107 106 110 108 111 108 110 109 112 111 113 111 112 110 114 113 115 113 114 112 116 115 117 115 116 114 118 117 119 117 118 116 120 119 121 119 120 118 122 121 123 121 122 120 124 123 125 123 124 122 126 125 127 125 126 124 128 127 129 127 128 126 130 129 131 129 130 128 132 131 133 131 132 130 134 132 133 132 134 135 136 135 134 135 136 137 138 137 136 137 138 139 140 139 138 139 140 141 142 141 140 141 142 143 50 143 142 143 50 49</p>
</triangles>
</mesh>
</geometry>
</library_geometries>
<library_materials>
%(#0000FF)[<material id="ID3" name="X2619L_MiniCam_VT">
<instance_effect url="#ID4" />
</material>
<material id="ID16" name="LCD_ScreenBezel">
<instance_effect url="#ID17" />
</material>
<material id="ID24" name="MainHousingMaterial">
<instance_effect url="#ID25" />
</material>
<material id="ID44" name="X2605L_MiniCam_VT">
<instance_effect url="#ID45" />
</material>
<material id="ID69" name="X2622L_MiniCam_VT">
<instance_effect url="#ID70" />
</material>
<material id="ID89" name="JackPlastic">
<instance_effect url="#ID90" />
</material>
<material id="ID211" name="BrassContacts">
<instance_effect url="#ID212" />
</material>
<material id="ID267" name="DarkerHousingTexture">
<instance_effect url="#ID268" />
</material>
<material id="ID449" name="EyePeice">
<instance_effect url="#ID450" />
</material>
<material id="ID463" name="DullMetal">
<instance_effect url="#ID464" />]
</material>
</library_materials>
<library_effects>
<effect id="ID4">
<profile_COMMON>
<newparam sid="ID6">
<surface type="2D">
<init_from>ID5</init_from>
</surface>
</newparam>
<newparam sid="ID7">
<sampler2D>
<source>ID6</source>
</sampler2D>
</newparam>
<technique sid="COMMON">
<lambert>
<diffuse>
So now based on this, I know that for example, that "MainHousingMaterial" is "ID24" and "EyePeice" is "ID449"... which is great because they look pretty similar...
This is no real solution to the problem, but for me it was sort of a Rosetta stone to understand what COLLADA was calling my materials, making it a lot quicker to identify them in other programs.
You could cut and paste that list to a separate document and use it as a decode list... or...
I have in two instances actually used TextEdit (on a MAC, Notepad I suppose would work the same on a PC), to find and replace all the instances of "ID naming" with my original material names... The models worked well and I found no problems with them... BUT- if you do decide to do this too... MAKE A COPY before messing with the code...
Just in case this is a well known thing or someone has a plugin that preserves the Shader/Material names (not image based texture names... this exists already), well sorry if I wasted anyones time... But since this was useful to me, I figured I'd pass it along...
Good Luck!
Thank you very much for this extremely useful tool! I Just tried it out and it works smoothly and without any trouble! Thank you!
I was recently reading an older thread in the Plugins forum and I realized there was some confusion as to what was the correct term...
I assume that We should refer to an image based material as a "Texture"... correct?
But... what is the correct term for the non image based "color type" materials such as found in "Colors- Named" and "Colors"... I've been referring to them as "Materials"... I'm assuming that the term "Shader" does not really apply since within SU there really is no other property besides the base "Diffuse" color... Just calling it a "Color" does not seem proper either...
I'm just asking, as correct use of terminology is often very important and can make or break the understanding of an answer or question.
Thanks!
I'm curious if anyone has found out if it is possible to keep the material names (by that I mean the SketchUp "color only type materials" not image textures) when exporting using DAE... Has this been determined to be impossible?
Hi. Your post reminded me of a similar question I was going to ask here a while ago, but I never got around to asking.
Today I went looking for and found the Plugin that I was going to ask about, thanks to your post...
Component Spray:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=33908
I know I used it to make a model that needed evenly spaced columns arrayed along a path... but I'm not sure if it was an easy workflow...
If you go to this page, down to plot-paris's post with the image showing column placement you can see what I mean:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=11746
Hope this of some use... good luck.