Just want to share my first serious experiment with this plugin here. I love working with greyscale height maps.

I'm experimenting with terrain and water. Both the terrain and the water meshes were done with this plugin. Please excuse the terrain as I didn't smooth them, but this is mainly a water test anyway.

Details of this experiment can be read in a thread I started in the newbie section
http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=49668&p=447473#p447473

Thanks again ThomThom!!! You rock with this great plugin.

Thanks for your replies! The only drawback with this method is that you lose detail from the bmp image as you smooth the geometry. With bigger waves the mesh tends to create jagged peeks so smoothing is necessary unless a higher resolution bmp is used which greatly increases triangle count. I'm still liking the results I'm getting so far.

@notareal: Yeah, read about that. Saw some work arounds but never tried yet. I did some tests in Kerkythea by using photon map caustics and I see a difference. The water looks more realistic and I do see some subtle shadow effects on the river bed during the irradiance calculation. This is probably because the surface is a mesh displaced and not simply a flat surface with a bump map applied. But with calm water in a swimming pool I get what you're saying.

@Gaieus: That looks really cool.

I found some water textures from http://texturelib.com/#!/category/?path=/Textures/water/water

Here are 2 more renders using a texture from above site.
This is a semi-calm one with a bitmap at 100x75 pixels

This one is more turbulent with photon map caustics and I raised bitmap resolution up to 150x113 pixels.

I forgot to mention that during the Bitmap2mesh operation, the height of the waves also depend on the height set on the blue axis. A shallower height would make calmer water. The calmer image in this post was set lower than the second more turbulent one. I forgot the heights but will get into the habit of making notes.

Using images from real waves looks a lot more convincing. I tweaked them in PS before applying. To solve the small detail problem (the smaller ripples on the bigger waves) I am trying to apply a bump map texture to the glass in Kerkythea but for some reason the bump from the image is not showing up. I applied a bump map to a flat plane and it showed just fine. It's a head scratcher. To be continued....

I think I'm on to something.

I used ThomThom's Mesh from Heightmap plugin to make the terrain and the water mesh after making a greyscale bitmap in Photoshop.

In Photoshop I created some displacement maps for the water by doing the following from the filters:

1. Create clouds
2. Create Noise
3. Bas Relief
4. Motion Blur
   I played around with the settings of each filter to get various effects and saved out of greyscale mode as a 8bit bitmap. Using TT's plugin I try to stay at 100 pixels and under. 50 pixels works just fine (see the calm water below).

This is a result after doing the mesh to heightmap operation in sketchup. Works like a charm.

This is a test render in Kerkythea. I assigned a glass material to the water mesh. This one would probably be better for an ocean scene. Not as realistic as I want but it's a start. This water mesh was created with a bitmap of 100x79 pixels

This one is more like it but calm. It works. This mesh was created with a bitmap of 50x60 pixels

I will experiment further to get some better water effects. I'm trying to get more radial waves but still trying to figure it out in PS.

Hi,
I would like to create some water scenes like a lakeside or beach house but am at a loss as to how to go about setting up the water. In my last attempt, I made a terrain with TT's Bitmap2mesh and raised a rectangular plane where the water level would be. I then exported to Kerkythea and tried the various water materials from the water pack but none looked as realistic as I wanted. Though shaders and bump maps can be used, I would also like to model as much as possible to make the scene more convincing. I searched for any tutorials on making displacement maps for oceans but having a hard time finding a universal method that would cover most 3D render packages. I'm thinking if I can at least learn how to make a proper water displacement or bump map, I can apply it with the Bitmap2mesh to make a water plane within Sketchup and even make my own materials. Does anyone know of a good tutorial on this or is there a free program that can generate such maps like how the program "Wilbur" can generate terrain maps?

You have no idea how many times I got frustrated doing an offset and have to get in there and clean up the shape. Thanks TIG!

Looks good to me. From the sound of the original post, it's a render for a real project so would make sense to see it as it would be today no? Vintage for fun is cool too.

Found a useful article on bathroom design. Good tips for consideration.
http://starcraftcustombuilders.com/bath.design.rules.htm

Should I be adding these to my first post instead of making new ones?

Thanks ely. I actually got some thickness via vector pp. The problem is when I attempt to round the outer edges because of the sharp angle where the curve meets crease. I'm getting close. On my last attempt I got a hole in the geometry.

I tried last night to upload the file to share but it was too large (about 5 mb)How can I share a file larger than 4 mb here? I never did it before.

Thanks for this plugin Oscar!

It works on my system but it seems to hang and reset sometimes but I could be just using it wrong. First I tried simple primitive boxes and the subtraction worked fine.

I then tried it on a grouped shipping container to see if I could get a clean cut with a rectangle. The message at the bottom says it's processing. I wait a while and then move my mouse to see if Sketchup is frozen. The mouse moves and I am prompted to choose again like the process of completing the operation was cancelled and I'm automatically back to selecting the groups.

I then went back to doing simple tests. I tried 2 boxes with one turned horizontally 45% and it worked. Then I tried to add a cylinder to the 2 merged box group and got the same result as the shipping container. Tried again to merge a cylinder with a square from scratch and the same problem as before. Is there a trick to this or some limitations I should consider when using this tool? Should I leave the mouse alone??

Hi ThomThom! Another great plugin I discovered by you! I been flirting with Blender, Terragen 2, and shopping around for terrain generating solutions for a couple months now. I was planning on using Artisan and your useful Vertex Tools (perfect for fine tuning natural shapes I imagine) to sculpt terrain and do a composite in other software. I will still use those plugins but this just cut all kinds of time down for that process. I have terrains that have specific landmarks and features so knowing I can work from greyscale images in sketchup is blowing my mind right now. Thank you again.

Just one concern before really diving in... When I go to the draw menu I only see Mesh from Heightmap option and not the added BMP to Mesh. I just downloaded the version on page one. Should I be seeing the 2 options you show?

As you can see it's different from example on page 1

I put the ruby file in the plugins folder and I'm on Win XP. And is there any more documentation for this?

Thank you Ely! When I'm done with this train you're the first to get a copy

Your tutorial gave me a new perspective on modeling in Sketchup. I got it now. I have to get out of the habit of neglecting the usage of some of the simpler native tools. I'm currently finishing another project and will get back with an update to this over the weekend.

@ely862me said:

Ok !

3. smooth the geometry you are creating using the right click menu go to Soften/smooth edges

I used round corner to make the transition between the two planes smooth,then I used Joint push&pull to give thickness to the surface,then I used tools on surface to create the contour and pushed the inside part backward using again Joint push&pull .

Right now the model is about 600 kb !!

I'm Very impressed and humbled!

Still a little baffled at how you got it so clean. How did you get all the donuts to be components? And in doing so that brought the poly count down?

Thanks for your pointers, I will keep them in mind. I'm missing something with your first step of using round corner to make transition between the two planes. I assume you started from the flat version right? Did you smooth the geometry first before using round corner and if not, what edges did you select or did you tweak the joint pp parameters (tab button)?

I tried using round corner on the edges and keep getting broken geometry

So I tried smoothing the edges that connect the 2 planes one by one and got a continuous face. I then tried the Joint push pull and the transition is not as smooth as yours.

What did you do to keep the shape with the extrusion without getting that bubble effect?

@ely862me said:

Add it to archive, zip or rar , it will drop like 70% .
Just that part is over 4 mb ? WOW, what do you have there !!

And the gap you got , I think you can simply fill it by drawing a line from the opposite corners .

Ha. I did a purge just to make sure and yeah...it's around 5 mb for that part. Must be all the donuts that make up the coil. I knew from the start that this model was going to be a monster. I'm putting a lot of love into it so I spare no expense of polygons as much as my system can handle. But if I can figure a way to lower poly count and maintain top quality, I'm open. This is actually my second serious Sketchup project I started back in spring of 2011 so my modelling skills were still very newbish. I'm inspecting it now though to see what I would do differently if I started it today with all the plugins I discovered.

Thanks for you tip on closing that hole. It worked but I'm still not satisfied with the geometry. Also thanks for reminding me I can make a zip file

I bet this is easy for some in these forums....feel a "duh" moment coming on.

This is where I'm at now
Train Gate Thingy2.zip

This is the basic shape without rounded edges
Train Gate Thingy1.zip

And this is a flat starting point in case the others are too messy to work with
Train Gate Thingy flat.zip

Just bought it!!! Great plugin TT! I think my arsenal of tools is pretty beefed up now. Thanks.

Bumping this as I am revisiting this model to get it completed for a scene I'm building. I'm still stuck on this part. I know I can just do something generic but I want a proper model. Can anyone help with suggestions regarding my last post in how I can solve getting that shape I'm going for. I now have a few new plugins since I posted in this thread last. I tried going at it with Artisan but didn't get the results as I'm a new user of that plugin. I also have 1001Bits (if that would help here). Any help is appreciated.

Mystery solved thanks to massimo! I had to switch to rgb mode in Photoshop before saving as PNG. All is well now. Now to continue growing trees.

I noticed that sometimes when I assign a texture instead of the wood grain or the leaf PNG and even GIF would show as a bright solid purple or green color. I even tried re-working a PNG and a GIF leaf texture in Photoshop from scratch and assigned it to an xfrog shrub I made but I keep getting a solid bright purple color with no alpha option instead of the texture I chose. It's as though Kerky is ignoring my input. Is this a bug with the program or am I not aware of something I missed doing in the process? I don't have this problem often and it just strikes me to be very strange. Any help is appreciated.

This is the latest PNG leaf I'm trying to assign

This is what I keep getting

I also tried the texture as a GIF image and got the same results. It also happens with other textures once in a blue. I would usually just assign a different texture of similar type but now I really want to get to the bottom of this.

Lets say I build a house and want to see how it performs in various conditions particularly weather and climate or simply test the flow of energy throughout the house. I would like to explore building houses and test the designs for real life situations.

I actually found 3 plugins (IES VE SketchUp Plugin, EnergyPlus OpenStudio Plugin, and GreenspaceLive gModeller) from this page after doing a search. http://www.sketchup.com/intl/en/green/analysis.html

Does anyone recommend these plugins or are there better plugins or software for this purpose?

Well Goh got back to me sooner than I expected and explained what was going on (IP stuff). It's all sorted and I just bought my license.

I'm having such a great month upgrading my Sketchup! Artisan, SketchUV, ProfileBuilder Pro, 1001Bits, and now this VERY useful plugin.

Managing materials was always a major headache for me, especially when building multi-story houses with downloaded furniture. I tend to forget the fact that the downloaded furniture may have some of the same materials I assigned to what I already have in the model. I once waited for a long KT render to find out the pillows on one of the beds were made of chrome. This looks like it will save me a lot of material scanning time before export.

Your first Ruby is a shiner