I'm trying to create a door handle as a challenge and to be part of my decorative doors I'm modeling. As you can see in the image below, the surface goes from flat to rounded at the edge of the lever. Also the shape is an overall slight "S" curve. I could use some help making such a shape. Even if not this particular lever, I would be satisfied with learning a principle method for this situation. Any suggestions is greatly appreciated.

For the record here is a list of some tools in my box I been trying to use:

Artisan
Curviloft
RoundCorner
1001bit Tools
BesierSplineCurves
Vertex Tools

Very nice renders!

I like your works.

Update 2

I replaced the grass to try another look

Thanks for your encouragements! Especially coming from you very talented artists.

I am now working in xfrog to make various plants and grasses to add to the scene. So far I made some marsh grasses and I'm deciding how to arrange them in the scene. Next I'm trying to decide what kind of plants in this situation would add more color and make the plants more vibrant. I find that when a slightly brighter version of the leaf textures are placed in the translucence channel, there is a SSS effect on the leaves. I also increased the bump placed on the water material to give a little more turbulence. I'm on the fence about the grass color. I wonder if I made it a little too bright?

So my next update will include more plant types that will introduce more colors.

Here's where I am now with tall grasses added

A fictional park I'm working on called "Stonebrook Park". These are some raw renders. I plan on adding more stuff like different grasses found in waterways and maybe even some wildlife etc. I'm using this to practice organic modeling and natural scenery. I will be doing some post-pro later. All suggestions and critique is welcome.

Tools:
Sketchup
Thea4Sketchup (scene was exported to Thea Render Studio)
Xfrog 3.5
Shadermap 2.1 for some quick bump, spec and normal maps.

I'm torn between what water to use in my final render, the clean or murky water. The water mesh was created with ThomThom's Bitmap2Height plugin.

I ended up returning that CTH 680 for the Intuos Pro Medium. Cost more but it has more buttons for customization in programs a pen holder and wireless kit included. I"m getting used to using it in SU. The best thing I'm experiencing is I finally find the freehand drawing tool very useful. Making freehand contours and actually drawing on a surface is a breeze now.

John2- If your tablet can support it, check the properties to see if you can bring up Sketchup in a list to customize commands.

I just got a message as I was closing Sketchup about a compatibility issue. On further investigation, I was led to discover I have the wrong ActiveX version for my system when I went to Adobe site (don't know how that happened). Is this a critical thing I should fix? Most times I close SU, I do not get this error and all seems to work fine when I'm working. What is the relationship between SU and ActiveX?

Great, blame it on the kids......
Maybe when they get old enough, they can learn Sketchup and you can make them staff to help you bring Catchup back.

Really...Congrats. They're adorable!
I know that's a lot of love, work and attention.

I know this is a late reaction on my part. I just realized I didn't read a Catchup article in a long time and went to see what the latest issue was. Last issue is 19 from October 2013. Was it canceled? I use to look forward to the informative articles.

@cotty said:

To clean up, you can delete the outer face first and select all border lines (even if segemented) with a double click afterwards to delete them all at once.
Do you remember the step when the segmentation happens?

Thanks cotty. Don't know why I didn't think of double clicking. But it still bothers me that I am not getting the results like before.
I right-clicked the sandbox group and clicked on "smooth normals/soften coplanar" and moved the slider all the way to 180 as instructed in the video. The weird thing is I did it a few days ago and got the exact results like in the video with solid edges not broken up into segments. I don't know if it's related but yesterday when I launched Sketchup, at first it hung and I had to force quit. Then I launched again to find all my plugin bars dismounted into the middle of the screen and I had to organize them again.

Yes the face is divided. It was originally a grid from sandbox "from scratch".

I followed a video from Basecamp teaching how to make terrain and iregular shapes with the sandbox tools. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHCEXlEZlo4 (You can see the operation around 8 minutes in)

The first time I followed this I had no problem and got solid lines that I could easily erase from my target shape draped onto it. Now I keep getting segmented lines that's more of a chore to clean up, not the solid clean lines he gets in the video. The border lines are now broken up like an exploded curve. Either something changed with my Sketchup or I am missing something.

Notice the broken lines

How do I get the solid borders.

Do you by any chance make models for SimCity4 Rush Hour also? I'm a big SimCity4 fan. Nice works BTW.

Thank you Dave for your help. Turns out Zorro2 was not even necessary. Your suggestion to simply select the top part of the model and move it down worked like a charm.

Thanks sdmitch but it's not working. I can erase the vertical lines without destruction but that horizontal line will not budge. It highlights but nothing gets erased. Perhaps there's a better way to slice?

I made a Gothic window that I want to shorten in height. I did not want to remodel so I used Zorro2 Beta plugin. The slice worked good but I am having trouble figuring out how to join the geometry so I can erase (heal)the lines going through the middle without destroying the model. I even tried exploding the component and still the 2 halves will not join. If I do 3 clicks after joining, the 2 halves act independently. Is it possible to join geometry to be as one after performing a slice operation? Any help is appreciated.

Window after using Zorro2 Beta and erasing the middle part

Joined but not as one unit. Note the thick middle line.

I had to look a few times at the first image to see if it was a photo or render. As KrisM said, those are some of the best folds I seen in a render. Very nice.

Thanks.

Hi,
I'm new to Windows 7 finally coming from XP almost 2 weeks ago. I recently turned off windows UAC to install my Flight Simulator (to avoid certain issues warned by others) and never turned it back on. So far I'm not getting any issues but I am wondering if I should turn it back on before anything happens. Is it something to worry about or does keeping it off help the install of older plugins? I'm using SU2014 Pro and Windows 7 Pro 64bit BTW.

Yeah, I moved too fast on that cooler. It was actually sold separately as these CPUs do not come packaged with cooling fans. Getting a replacement is on the list.