@unknownuser said: That is not a vectorizator that you want first? free online http://www.autotracer.org/ Thanks Pilou! Never heard of that. I see the value in it. Bookmarked!

@unknownuser said: Nice tree btw! It was made with tree maker plugin for SU... @unknownuser said: I have to get used to using MLT method. It seems a lot slower though. Maybe you can try with Path tracing progressive? A bit quicker for that kind of scene. @unknownuser said: Just out of curiosity why does this happen? (Bias=halo unbiased=no halo) Well, I've never used biased presets so...I don't know. I think you need to tweak some settings as I said.

Looks good!

@bob james said: @Gaius Whose guitar music is that??? Super music. I have no clue, Bob. I just grabbed an example from YT.

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 find this interesting. I havent tried any of these, please report back what you find out. I'm not an architecht, but I do buildingpermits. Recently new rules, and energianalysis is required in my country. It would be fun to try to construct plugin for this, but I think the plugin has to be approved or licensed or what you call it.

An official material tutorial would be welcome! Thea is great and every time I read through a tutorial I learn something new and useful.

@solo said: Once you register Thea after purchase you can download some Xfrog trees in the licensed user section, there will be more added as they are optimised for Thea. The next version of Thea is 1,2 probably coming out next month, free upgrade to all registered users so buying now will make sense. How do you plan to use Terragen2? with Vue? Thanks for the info on Thea. I was just holding out in case they had an upcoming sale. Was wondering if historically the cg community had these conditions every year. I actually did some research and chose Terragen over Vue after reading some comparison reviews. Traditionally I been painting landscapes for many years so having a 3D landscape generator makes sense for me to have. I would like to use Terragen to make back drops, and even use generated terrain meshes to import into blender or even Sketchup. I downloaded the demo already and the only issue I'm having so far is the lack of good tutorials and info to learn the thing quickly. I would like the license version to use professionally and break out of the 800x600 maximum res. As far as xfrog goes, aside from the libraries I can get to use in Thea, I would like to have the tree generator itself so I can make my own trees. So far I been using the free Tree[d] program but xfrog look so much better. Im still feeling my way around the cg community and getting an idea of what tools will be great for me to have in my workflow. So far I got plenty of modeling tools, now I am focusing on Thea and anything that enhances the environments for my projects.

U can use a program to monitor your CPU and see if ur overheating it. every CPU is different just look on the net for the right one to compare. I used coretemp and speedfan to check my CPU as i was afraid i was overheating my pc. I'm not a computer expert so i can't really help u more with this.

Thanks Pilou! I will look into that.

You're welcome.

OK FollowMeAndKeep [FAK]... makes a good basis...

love the idea... love the presentation. I had to struggle to see the container in it. awesome.

Hi, There are a lot of free materials here (especially if you are using V-ray). As said, "Materials are made in V-ray, but you can use these textures in your favorite render engine as well. (Maxwell, Fry render, Arion, Brazil, or anything else…)

Thanks all you guys for those links

Looking good!

In SU, As suggested already But: Add this -difficult to find these days- ruby. Download it here: http://forums.sketchucation.com/download/file.php?id=86061 This will remove inner faces (non manifolds). Very important because: In blender: -Import the obj -edit mode (TAB), [W] menu, remove doubles! This will weld all overlapping vertices automatically. -Hit [ctrl+N], it's the shortcut for fixing normals. (it will be a mess if non manifolds/inner faces exist!) SU UVs are still there and you may edit them in UV editor. TIGs obj exporter is an excellent tool! If you love blender (you should lol) and its new render engine (cycles), it's possible to model in SU only and just import. Some important things to know about blender. -You may wish to re scale SU imported objects. In this case after scale/rotation or other transformations, hit [ctrl+A], this brings up a menu, apply these data transformations. Now, bumps/displacements etc will work correctly. (blender avoids to do this automatically for a good reason, it has to do with its particles/instancing system) -you may face depth clipping in 3d view port. Under N panel / view, clip start-end, here your solution -I suppose, you already edited the default preferences of blender, making it similar to SU. -You already learned the shortcuts of transformations, yes? [G] for move-grab, [G]+[x or y or z] for direction, [G]+[shift+z] for moving in xy plane, etc etc , yes? You also learned how to use the excellent snapping methods of blender. If not, ask me.

Thanks for your helpful replies! All good suggestions. I started naming materials but its the ones that come with downloaded models that I'm concerned about.the ruby MrMike pointed out is a big help (material select). Even though not perfect, it pretty much helped me discover what model brought in that dark red color. And if I select a material I have the opportunity to see if its in use and by what. Cool. I actually would rather make my own models to have more creative control, especially when it comes to material introduction. There's not enough hours in a day for 3D modelin when working on a deadline.

My PurgeAll script also allows you to control what is purged - unlike the Model Info version which purges everything. With my script if, for example you don't want to purge unused layers, you can choose not to... You can also get a report written showing what has been purged...