And the modeler who makes the best model will post a tutorial about how to do it? -should this be a rule of this game? (i like to name it a game)

Ignorance maybe? What is so hard to be a "SketchUp Guru" when using just Sketchup's standard tools?
I started using plugins when I realized that those plugins exist and it was impossible to do certain things without them.
Question: Did those "Sketchup Gurus" let the impression that they were some kind of amish?

[flash=640,480:185ys3fi]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Spam_with_cans.jpeg[/flash:185ys3fi]
This is the guilty one !

@tomot said:

Most people will use what they have grown up with, They want to use whats familiar to them. They are basically lazy. They don't want to learn something new.

TRUE ! I tried to convince my brother to switch on linux (Linux Minth), but I failed in a shameful manner He's still on XP. The worst part is that he doesn't use anything what he would not find on linux.

Does it works for files moved in recycle bin, then recycle bin emptied ? Because what I use http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=22762#p192217 works just for files deleted with Shift+Delete. (and this tool doesn't require installation)

I like that single "no" vote!
Please let it like this!

I found this on my hard-disk, but I have no idea where I have it from, or what is for.
Does anyone knows?

SUDLL.zip

Yes, I just noticed that is no use to have bitmap data as binary in ruby. Because when asigning texture image to a created material

m = materials.add "mat1"
m.texture = "C;/texure.jpg"

We don't really add that texture, but pass the path to SketchUp and there, inside that evil thing some magic happens and it grabs the texture with the claws. So, yes... we need the bitmap as file on disk before any attempt to do anything.

I found this http://www.imagemagick.org/RMagick/doc/#introduction Maybe is a way to have the texture image as blob inside ruby. If so, making the skm material with script is the easy part and can skip the part with "temp folder"
If any of you have time, throw an eye over it.

@whaat said:

@newone said:

Can you write the UV data in an attribute? And using it from there... It would increase the size of the file, I think... for each face to write separate UV. But it can be a way.

Yes, you can. I use that method in SkIndigo but I have not yet added the feature to UVTools.

When using Oscar's UV mapping and tried to render with Maxwellrender I noticed that it exported a bitmap for each face and made a copy of used material for each exported bitmap. So, I had situations when I had 1000 materials just for one object
This is strange... I was eexpecting that the bitmap to be folded around object.

QUESTION: Does ruby have some debug methods which show the content of an object? If do, we could access what is behind of #<Sketchup::Material:0x6732f80> and do whatever we want wit that data. And I assume that the reverse could be possible as well.

@whaat said:

@earthmover said:

Dale, tested with 3ds Max and it worked flawlessly on this teardrop shape using the Unwrap UVW modifier. Thanks for the plugin. It will fix a lot of headaches!!

Great! Another app to add to the list! Thanks for testing

@unknownuser said:

One of the issues is that once a UV is imported, it does not "stick" to the geometry it was assigned to. For example if I did not like this brick and wanted to replace it with another material, the UV's become scrambled again. Also when I try to undo after importing the UV's, I get a SU crash.
Yeah, I hate that SketchUp does not keep UVs when switching materials. I'll look into that crash, too. Thanks!

Can you write the UV data in an attribute? And using it from there... It would increase the size of the file, I think... for each face to write separate UV. But it can be a way.

Well, extra data in skm (the xml file) is not necessary to be encoded. We can store the texture as base64 and tiling, alpha as some parameters. And the material to be created inside ruby.

So the problem which stands: (how to) send raw bitmap data directly to sketchup via ruby?

@martinrinehart said:

VisMap does a 6-bit string encode in JavaScript, decodes in Ruby. Go ahead and steal mine, but please attribute correctly.

Link is on my site, top-right corner.

But how this solves what thomthom said? He is true: we need a way to pass raw bitmap data inside sketchup. The only other method is with the temp folder.

I want to know if I can load a material inside variable and use it in sketchup. (I know, variables in ruby are pointers, they don't actually STORE data)

Using this:

model = Sketchup.active_model
mats = model.materials
mat = mats[0]
mat

Will return me the reference; the ID of material #<Sketchup::Material:0x68577b8>, not the actual material. If I delete the material from sketchup (or disk) just after I get that, that reference will not longer be valid.
Something like materials are stored inside sketchup file...
If this can be possible, then materials can be stored in a database (or other kind of similar file) and passed from there directly to sketchup. For now, the only idea I have is to encode the skm file in base64, store it as ascii string in database, then when needed, decode it in a temp folder, from where to be picked up by Sketchup, then deleted from temp file.

Any better ideas?

@johnsenior1973 said:

If this is true, then why do the vast, vast majority of professional CG artists use Photoshop?

As for PS being the same lady she was 20 years ago, here is a screenshot of PS 1.0 in 1990. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AdobePS-107-System6.png

I think that your opinions of computer software have even less value than your opinions on vaccines.

Because GIMP doesn't have YET some important features that Photoshop have?... Before 1996 there was not GIMP at all... just PS. So, you might be asking "Why vast majority of professional CG artist use Photoshop YET?"

There is Mover
It rotates by axis... just not with mouse.

@john sayers said:

Has anyone experienced problems with Thunderbird email not recognising 7.1 .skp files and sending them as text??

Well, this happened to me when sending dxf files

@gaieus said:

Well, it seems there is no official announcement (yet). It should be Google that leaks out info I suppose.

Like a dry sponge...

Does anyone what was fixed? Just small background things or is also something that we should know about?