@pilou said:

By Fredo6

Again, thanks for sharing.......still another approach.

@pbacot said:

Here's an oldy. You can start there. Some advances and techniques have been added since. Tal shows how to create an irregular sandbox shape from scratch among other tips.

https://sites.google.com/site/3dbasecamp2008/all-sessions-2008/working-with-terrain-and-other-irregular-surfaces

WOW - What a video.

This addressed exactly the kind of issues I had in the back of my mind. I have stored a reference to this video. If anyone is working in landscaping or needs to create something like a canopy type object this is a MUST video to watch.

The replies from you guys is exactly why I come to Sketchucation every day.

@panixia said:

you need a bunch of plugin to do this sort of stuff.. sketchup don't support it natively..

Thanks a lot. I will check all of these out to "educate" myself. I think this is exactly what I was asking.

@Box - Thanks to you as well. I had watched some very interesting tutorials (The Sketchup School and Harcast) and understand how to use the Sandbox tools. However, when I tried to use the Smooth tool with panixia's (playspace organic)skp file, it would not allow me to set the radius for the Smooth tool.

My initial curiosity was how to divide the face into quads. While I understand how to create the TIN with the Sandbox tools, you can only do that by defining a rectangular area. What if you have a different shaped area (like the original post) where you want to define some terrain or other surface (like a human form). It appears that you need to use something like the tool panixia has pointed out.

@panixia said:

@ntxdave said:

Since I have never worked with a mesh, I have to ask what tool you used to convert his original drawing into a mesh.

are you asking me? in that case..

i selected only the bottom face of the original model and erased the rest (keeping a copy for height reference) than used mainly native offset, split tools and quadface tools "add loops" and "connect edges" to get the main quad subdivision then started shaping it whith vertex tools and finally subdivide and smooth to get the higher poly version..

Thanks for the reply. I have been sick and have not been online for a few days.

I am not sure what tools you are talking about when you sap "split tools and quadface tools 'add loops' and 'connect edges'".

I tried doing some research about how to create a mesh (which I assume is what you mean by quad faces).

I also looked at your model and tried to us the Smooth tool but it would not allow me to enter anything in the VCB. All I could do was use the Move tool to change any of the terrain.

I can seem some potential down the road of wanting to use this kind of capability (event though my normal work does not include anything like this).

Since I have never worked with a mesh, I have to ask what tool you used to convert his original drawing into a mesh.

@panixia said:

nice vid! and nice house..

+1

Many things in your video that I need to learn (like how to do the terrain with a model like this).

@pbacot said:

Thanks Panixia!

I think people say "in english" to mock their own inability with technical terms, compared to the teacher, not meaning to be impolite.

100% Correct I was not criticizing your "English". He is correct, I just did not understand the technical aspects of what you were saying. While not 100% correct, your grammar was not the problem.......... I just did not understand technically what you were saying. Still not 100% sure but your explanation is moving me in the right direction.

I have been using SketchUp for a little over a year now but this type of stuff has not been needed for what I do. I have not used any other 3d modeling tools nor do I have an engineering background. I usually ask questions on this forum just to try to learn and understand the tools/environment. I will go off and do some more studying............

@panixia said:

however i achieved this by making some basic cuts to your mesh to get some rough quad mesh to start with, then refined the subdivision using quadface tools (triangulating also helps to make the texturing work better) and grouped some regions, again quadface loops helped a lot in selecting the faces. finally textured each group with more convenient method in thru paint.. natural mapping for the main straight parts and quad mapping for the curved slices.. just played a bit to orizontally scale them convincingly so the texture don't stretch too much.. this is pretty basic you can achieve better results than this spending more time in it, but maybe if it's intended for mid/long distance use and you don't need close-up views i think it'ok.. hope this can help!

OK - would you mind trying this in English so people like me can understand/learn? As examples:

@panixia said:

i achieved this by making some basic cuts to your mesh to get some rough quad mesh to start with
Since I do not work with meshes, what is a quad mesh?

@panixia said:

then refined the subdivision using quadface tools (triangulating also helps to make the texturing work better)
What is a quadface tool?

@panixia said:

and grouped some regions, again quadface loops helped a lot in selecting the faces.
Is this normal grouping and again what is a quadface tool?

@panixia said:

quad mapping for the curved slices
What do you mean by quad mapping?

As I said, I do not normally work with a mesh and some of this is total Greek to me and I would like to learn.

@rich o brien said:

Click the image to view the default projection mapping in Sketchup applied to your model.

Rich I tried using the default projection of the texture but because of the many sections, I did not get it to work like you did. How did you do that?

Secondly, when I rotated your model, I noticed a couple of other things. One, you had the texture applied to both sides and two, when I rotated the model, I noticed that I could do a complete vertical rotation. I had not seen that previously on any of the other models with your viewer. I think that is a great step forward. Really getting more excited about where you and your team are going with it. Keep up the good work......

Really like this one.......

I have to ask what software was used to create the figure and what format is it when you bring it into SU?

Really like what I have been seeing. Loading time has improved a lot.

@rich o brien said:

Visual fluff is last to be added.

Priority #1 is making the .skp conversion cross platform and feature rich.

We won't be beta testing this side of Xmas. Come the 15th it'll be shelved until new year.

In its current pre-alpha state it's only being used by less than 10 people.

And it's also running of a computer in our office.

Something like this needs good infrastructure in place first. That costs $$$$.

Fully understand.......I still would like to participate and much as you will allow...

Their main concern, I think, was the amount of time/work it would take my to make the models available no necessarily the cost of the software/service (they pay me by the hour).

Technically, I am retired but am listed as an employee for convenience

I have a couple of other models you can test if you wish.....

Also think that tool tips for the function icons would be a big help for many users (especially once you start publishing/sharing the models).

@gábor said:

@tig said:

Full-screen X works - opens a new tab.
So no need to press Esc to back step ?

Thank you for the info. Well..... This "fullscreen" might need some refining.... Right now this was the easiest way to go to "fullscreen" from within an Iframe but later it might change to a more fancy solution.

Yes, this worked for me. However, I do see something a little different. With all of the others that I have viewed I could do some amount of zooming with the scroll wheel on my mouse but with the full screen view that function is limited. I could only zoom out and could not zoom in.

I love following this thread as it is exciting to see where this is going. This is something I am trying to sell to our management instead of presenting everything to their clients in a PDF format. Their primary concern is one of cost (primarily in the time it would take me to take our models and make them available like this).

@rich o brien said:

@box

set the hemi to lightblue and light yellow at 60.

set spec/shiness for material to 20 and the opacity to 60 or so

Are you guys using a renderer or what the heck are you talking about (remember that I still consider myself a newbie to SU so I am trying to learn all I can)?

Rich, I really like this one too. I like the color highlighting and the background.

After it loads I see kind of a dark monochrome of the 3d model until I rotate it or do something like that. I am using IE 11. Does that have something to do with it or is that supposed to happen?

I will go try it in Chrome and see if I see the same thing......

OK - I tried it in Chrome and saw the same thing......

@rich o brien said:

Mixed specular materials

This one loads really fast for me as well

Box I really like your last one. However, when it first loads (after clicking it) it is all black until I click the screen and then it appears. The background also disappears.

@Rich - I think this is really headed in a good direction.......

I looked at the source code for the page and see that there is a simple iFrame tag with a link to the source. Is it really that simple?

Cannot tell from this but am wondering if this is something that I can host on my local machine or server and have it all "self contained" or do I have to upload my skp file to you or some service and have it rendered from there? In particular, when we were at our convention or if we are at a customer site the web service can be an "ify" situation. Thus we have a keen interest in being able to display the skp files on a web page in a stand alone environment.

Looking at your html, it also looks like it might be rather straight forward to provide a list of models as hyperlinks that would then populate a single iFrame on the page when I clicked on the link.

What happens if the skp file contains scenes? If my model has a transparent background, can I then specify a background color for the iFrame when the model is displayed?

I would also like to see tool tips for the buttons at the top of the displayed model and a little more color contrast so that it is easier to see which button is active.

BTW: You said you display an image to speed up the page load (which I agree with), is that an image that has to be generated ahead of time or are you somehow creating it on the fly (from watching the page load, I assume it is an image that is created before hand).

@rich o brien said:

@ntxdave said:

the largest .skp file was a little under 16Mb but most are under 10Mb so they are a little smaller than I was thinking. I do have one model I built that is about 70Mb that I was using for a "presentation".

It will eat those up and spit them out is seconds...

Sounds great......

@rich o brien said:

Ok, while its great to get all this feedback we are still adhering to our initial roadmap.

That being browser based initially.

Regards file size. What's large? >100mb?

The viewer allows you to embed into any web page. We generate the html code to do just that. You just paste.

Testing involves playing with it. Breaking it. Suggesting things. Nothing to strenuous.

Well, I went and looked and the largest .skp file was a little under 16Mb but most are under 10Mb so they are a little smaller than I was thinking. I do have one model I built that is about 70Mb that I was using for a "presentation". It has a car wash inside a building with other equipment outside the building.

Sounds interesting to me.........one of my jobs in the past was to design web applications and then help test them.