We have tornadoes in Michigan, not too often but once in awhile.

The sky sometimes turns a scary green color when the storm approaches.

I ended up on that same site-- its very interesting.

Anyone know of a similar table for reflectivity?

Remind me of this in

Nice article on landscape modeling in Avatar from CG Society

http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=5434

@unknownuser said:

This patent, which was originally filed on July 7, 2008, describes a new system for promoting ads in online mapping applications. In this patent, Google describes how it plans to identify buildings, posters, signs and billboards in these images and give advertisers the ability to replace these images with more up-to-date ads. In addition, Google also seems to plan an advertising auction for unclaimed properties.

See info on the patent application here:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_could_soon_augment_old_billboards_in_street.php

Tricky

I finally got to see it in 3d IMAX

Visually stunning

Plot.... not so much

Seem's that folks are taking it a bit to seriously

Follow the link to read "Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible"

Coming Soon

(avatar-forums.com)

(via Boing Boing)

There is some decent language here http://www.adelaidecitycouncil.com/development/3d-city-model.html about the benefits of modeling. It's a start.

For source materials, in the US many cities have historic Sanborn Maps which give a lot of information (how many stories, wood frame or brick, etc.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanborn_Maps

I did a virtual reconstruction of a historic town in SU about a year ago. Not as old a Gaius' town but an abandoned sawmill from about 1908, I did it for the school kids that lived there.

You can see a few blog posts about it here:
http://sketchingypsi.blogspot.com/search?q=byng

I modeled from maps and photographs, not a lot of detailed modeling but it worked to visualize what the town sort of looked like.

Sumotori Dreams

Lets you wrestle like a drunken Sumo wrestler

Free version and $4.50 US
http://www.gravitysensation.com/sumotori/

After a match is over they stumble around like they had a few too many

Cheers!

Took me awhile but I think I got it so it looks square from every side.

I thought SU was supposed to be easy to use? cube.skp

For maudlin holiday music, my bet is on:

http://www.last.fm/music/The+Pogues/_/Fairytale+of+New+York

Heavy drinking, bad teeth

This thread is of interest to me. I design museum exhibits where lux / foot candles on the artifacts is very important to the curators. Is it possible to model LUX in an interior model based on the lighting in the exhibit gallery?

If it can, it means I could spec lighting fixtures in the design.

This is a fantastic tutorial, thank you so much for sharing.

I have a model of a historic town and this looks like a great way to animate change over time.

I have only begun to poke around in the kmz format-- do you know what the limits of the file size are? My models are often larger than simple photo textured GE models, I wondered what the limits might be.

Thanks again for sharing, this will take awhile for me to digest.

The post was a render but it doesn't look much different in plain SU.

Black background is under styles.

The rest is just line work (no faces) , then use tube along path to give the lines diameter.

This popped up in my SketchUp gadget, may be of interest. I love that they call SU the "heir apparent."

"As the next step in our Aftercad 3D Live market rollout, we have embraced Google SketchUp users as the heir apparent in 3D CAD work on the web. Google has done a terrific job with SketchUp and its rapid adoption across all areas of CAD and Design has made it a perfect tool to work with to introduce true 3D collaboration on the Web." said Chris Boothroyd, CEO of Aftercad. "Our goal to make 3D assets easily accessible for collaboration is now a powerful tool in any designer's tool belt. Now all projects that include SketchUp 3D assets can offer stakeholders equal access and the opportunity to participate."

SketchUp users can signup on Renderjam.com for free, create a workspace and start collaborating on 3D assets within minutes. The Renderjam service tracks all workspace activity and can issue a daily audit trail report of all changes made by participants. Most importantly, all project stakeholders including those who don't have SketchUp can easily see, manipulate and annotate the 3D project assets in the web browser and directly contribute to the project instead of having to wait for emails, look at still images or couriered paper rolls."

Press release
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/11/prweb3196664.htm

Video at
http://www.renderjam.com/rjvideo.aspx

The glow doesn't travel too far. I experimented with a few locations but settled for less flash on the sign.

It did lead me to an interesting quandary of sorts. Should the render look like a photograph-- or what your eye can see. They are different things especially at night. ?

Thanks-- modeling with a black background feels strange, like working in CAD in the 1980's or something.

Here is the file.

frame house.skp

I am reposting this one, I did it for Al's rendering workshop which was supposed to be about cars. This ended up to be a whole composition.

The neon lighting was tough to carry out-- I got the glow right but couldn't get any glow from the neon to hit the building.

I did the neon as a triangle tube to keep the poly count down. Each segment is a glowing light.

Never did a night render before I like it but would love to hear what others think.

Thanks to all

I was playing around with the tube along path and ended up with this interesting scene.

Almost like color by axis but with a slight variation.