As nomer says Rob D, blender > zbrush > blender > SU > podium render

Trying to build Mr Spock. OK some modifications are needed. Rendered for my friends in podium forum. Now I need a background, these LoFi rocks, skies, etc, I love them so much.

The first render is a completely Podium raw without any pp, only a lens blur effect. Not even levels adjustment. The other one is the usual Sepo's PP lol. This first one is an unprocessed render, is the answer to everybody who's wondering why I like podium. You can't have a beautiful PP without a good rendering.

Thanks artysmedia and silver_shadow. I'm trying a really fast modeling here. Blender (basic stracture) > zbrush > blender > SU > poduim render > some sepo's style pp. I have in progress a huge scene now, (silver your scenes are an inspiration to me)

"Tristan and Isolde" sepo? My favorite.

Fine rendering Pete. Just suggesting some more polys for the road...

Pilou can you delete these images please? They have nothing to do with SU. They are just spoiling my thread. They are huge and I'm not interesting at all. This is not a football match. I don't like zbrush renderer and have some good reasons to say this.

This is a really quick modeling, just half an hour. I have in mind a much more complicated scene. Just to show that you can import any .3ds in SU using this work flow.

Here's another with some PP, just a little.
<this one is for pete>BTW I found what is the problem about importing .3ds in SU. I opened the 3ds file in a text editor and sometimes in the header, extention of the texture file is missing (xxxxxxx.). So I changed the name of the file(xxxxxx.jpg to xxxxxx.) and voila. It is a blender problem or zbrush who knows. After inserted in SU we should change it again to .jpg.

Update:
For all who want to insert a .3ds from blender. Have in mind that textures in blender should have a name less than 8 letters, else you are in great trouble.

You were right pete after all. Now I'm really happy.

Very very nice sepo.
I suggest to add some more noise before glow effects to avoid posterization.

I know pete but what can I do? Textures are there, they have the correct names as always and every other app insists to insert them correctly except SU, some other times everything is fine -see these renders here-. It looks like a SU bug to me. This is turning to be completely unpredictable and unstable.

My dear Pilou these are not in my interests but that's another story.

Sorry Pete but I'm missing something? What 3ds importer do you use? I haven't seen any dialog like this. Just a kind of report errors log... And this is happening lets say in every four models. sorry for my english... BTW the same 3ds file can be easy imported in Blender, Poser... no problem there. I think has to do with the geometry. But geometry has inserted fine in SU...

Sometimes sketchup refuses to import uv textures in .3ds format. Does anybody knows why? (Yes I know, texture files must be in the same directory, don't say this please).

Now this is a natural landscape not just flat...
Great work Pete!!!

Beautiful orgelf. This is Art!
An interesting work flow as well. But you can export textures bumps etc from zbrush via blender to SketchUp. If this is your trouble see this: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=19867
Now you'll need some tricks (zbrush is a tricky app isn't it?) I can help and need help.

Really beautiful. Somehow... do you now Hayao Miyazaki movies?

Another podium render with same work flow. A common scene from the old town of Athens.

Better and better Pete. Actually I'm a watercolour artist and this is watercolour technic. So if you're in Painter, there is a fine wash tool there, can use it on the edges of shadows, is a common technic is this medium. The real medium in watercolours is the paper.

So your name is Pete. You have a great talent Pete. About Painter, this is a great app. I'm always thinking to use just painted textures in a 3d construction. I mean huge ones. In a way, the opposite of what you are doing here.

Very good question Pilou. Podium has some great light IMO. Another reason was this challenge to do this, to import this model to SU. Is this nice community in podium forum. We may have arguments there but we like each other in the end. Oh zbrush's renderer is terrible, just for preview. Blender is a fine stand alone app. but not so helpful in architectural designing.