Thanks, Gaeius, for staying on top of this.

I have sent an enormous letter to support with a breakdown of all of the major bugs in Sketchup that effect me on a day to day basis.

I have not heard a word back from them, but at least they have the list, with descriptions and suggestions.

Hopefully, SU7 will address all of these, or at least the major ones.

I think that Gaieus is correct concerning the other thread; it certainly sounds like the same issue.

Here's to support blowing us away with their progress! (fingers crossed...)

I, too, absolutely love this script! I had asked John a few months ago if he would tweak it so we could choose which frames we want to export which would allow quicker image generation for composting. Hopefully he is still considering it!

I really think QTVR is the best way to put model information on the web; you can't beat the amount of information you can present with such small file sizes. And the interactivity is a great selling point for clients as it keeps people on the site much longer.

You can see some of mine here: http://otbdesignworks.com/otb-design-wo ... tours.html including me playing around with integrating models with actual panoramas (not as easy as it sounds, I can assure you).

At least it works, great!

As to why it calls itself an mpeg 1 for default, I have no idea. That is weird; it's almost like we are talking about the peculiarities of a computer

Have a good monday!

Forgive me if this is a silly question, but why would you need to "open" a styles file? Don't you just place them in the SketchUp styles folder and SketchUp takes it from there? I think, too, that I read something on this forum earlier that the style file was really a type of zip file and that you could change it to a zip, unstuff it, and then you can access the files in it.

Not sure if that is the case, or not.

Not quite sure if I am understanding the problem.

Are you saying that when you download a file from the internet, that it shows up with the proper extension but opens in Quicktime? If that is the case, right click on the file, choose 'get info' and you will find a dialogue about half way down the window that allows you to choose the software you want to use to open the file.

If I am misunderstanding you and you are saying that downloaded files are showing up with the .mov extension even when they are not a movie file, then you can just erase the .mov and replace with the proper extension. You will get a window that asks if you are sure you want to change the extension, just confirm your change and you should be good to go.

As for why this is happening, I really don't know. Sometimes, my downloaded files will show up with a .php extension for some unknown reason.

I hope this helps a bit.

Have fun with it! It really is a great renderer (and my images don't do it justice at all) and it is getting better all the time

I don't have any experience with Blender, but I understand that the interface is pretty difficult.

I have found Cheetah to be fairly easy to get decent results. I, I guess, am a bit of a perfectionist, so I am constantly fiddling with settings and such to get my results just that little bit better, but getting started is fairly straight forward.

Cheetah is a modeler, as well as a renderer, and the modeling side of things is taking me more time to figure out, but I had no modeling experience (other than Sketchup) when I started with cheetah. It is an incredibly powerful program, and, in my opinion, one of the best bargains out there.

FWIW, they have an awesome forum, with a few really talented guys who are also really helpful. I think Martin (the developer) offers a free trial and I would be happy to get you pointed in the right direction, if that would help.

Hey everyone. This is as much a test of attaching as anything, but I would love to hear some reactions.

Renders were with Cheetah 3D (sorry, Mac only) with radiosity and caustics. Render time was 15 hours for the interior and 2 hours for the exterior.

All modeling in ShetchUp, of course

Both renders have some Photoshop post processing, the background for the exterior was added, and some clean up in the interior.

here's another little animation; me just playing around

http://www.otbdesignworks.com/files/bug-guy.mov

I have to throw my support behind Cheetah, too.

It is a really capable program, and the developer, Martin, really does a ton of help and support.

Updates come quite frequently.

I use it primarily for rendering, but I have started to play around with the animation and modeling aspects of the software. The forum is second only to here for help and advice and friendliness.

Check out this link for a quick example of an animation I made, experimenting with lights, caustics, transparency, etc.

It is 3.5meg, so it will take a few moments to load (I would suggest using a second tab)

http://www.otbdesignworks.com/files/bouncing_ball.mov

Now, that is what I call a thread subject

Edson, check in your System Preferences, maybe something useful there?

Tim, I have an ATI card in my Macbook Pro, where would I find this control panel you speak of? don't remember seeing anything like that in my system preferences?

Also, FWIW, about the only thing I have found to really help the moire is reducing the contrast in the texture image. Taking the time to minimize the contrast as much as possible actually will make a noticeable difference. As my way of self rationalizing the unavoidable effect, at least it happens in meat space, too.

If you happen to have a Mac, shift/alt/4 all at the same time gives you a crosshairs that allows you to draw a window and get a png. This works particularly well with dual monitors.

Thanks for the update, Craig. And thanks for making sure support saw this.

you are da man, man

Hahahaha!

I like the way you think Ross!

Well, to add a bit of irony to the whole thing, I have had very little respect for Fallingwater and, quite frankly, Frank Lloyd Wright in general. I never understood how everyone got into a lather about a house that was falling apart before they even finished building it, leaks water like a sieve, and took 9 million dollars worth of remodeling to bolt the house to the rock to keep it from falling off the hill. And this is considered one of the greatest house designs in America. Kind of tells you something about us, just interested in the surface fluff with much less value placed on quality and longevity.

Craig, I am glad to hear that things are in the works! I am not to the point of giving up (the Sketchup interface really is flat out awesome and makes the other modeling programs seem like stone age tools) but I do more architectural visualization work than design and most of my projects are developing flyovers for 50+ acre, 100+ unit projects for "big" developers. But still "cheap" Laughing There are just times when I feel that I have wrung all the quality of export I can out of Sketchup and find it still lacking somewhat. Too much flickering; too much moire; clipping can sometimes make the interior animations a real trick to get right since camera locations have to be just right to avoid it; and dxf exports that drop more lines than they bring in.

I could not agree more about not enough time being spent on design excellence. But, since I am already hovering on the edge of hijacking this thread, I am going to leave that be for now. Mr. Green

There are plenty of softwares that will accept 3ds, fbx, or obj formats, all of which Sketchup Pro will export. As far as taking skippies, that list is much smaller, and perhaps empty in the Mac world.

Tom, I, too, am running a "small" business. I have actually been a custom builder and furniture maker for the last 17 years and architectural visualization is a pretty recent reinvention of myself. When I first learned about Sketchup it was the closest thing to religion I had encountered in a long time. I mean, I was a total believer. But, I have a nasty habit of pushing envelopes and taking things to their limits. And my initial euphoria is waning because I have run up against limitations that are not being addressed. There are no quick and easy (one of the things that Sketchup completely kicks a#$ at) solutions for quality presentations. At the least, it takes a few softwares working together and lots of practice. My main workflow usually starts with Sketchup, then Quicktime Pro, Photoshop, Cheetah3D, autopanoPro for my cycloramas, Cubic converter to make my virtual tours, etc. etc.

But, and this is a big but, almost every software I work with, other than Sketchup, has really improved drastically in the last 2 years. Compare, for example, the difference between the most recent Photoshop (CS3) update and Sketchup's. Photoshop worked flawlessly from the get go, added features that were not only really useful, but WORKED right out of the box, and there has been not one update since it released because they had it right when they released it. Compare that to Sketchup's release, which was fraught with peril right from the get go (remember the license fiasco, thank god for Craig for helping us all out during that crazy couple of weeks) and was a less than amazing update. Just like you, Tom, I still use ver 5 for almost everything and I use an Intel Mac which means that big models suck to navigate through.

How crazy is that! We were given a free copy of SU6, which everyone had been waiting for, for what seemed like ages, and a lot of us have tried it and gone back to 5. Yikes! And Layout has been a terrible disappointment; there has been talk about "grizzly" for almost three years and Layout is still it's original beta from 9 months ago!?! And needs so many work arounds as to be almost useless. Yikes again. And I need Layout; I would love to use Layout, but it is not the best piece of software.

Spence, I hear you!! I was so excited that morning when I logged into the Sketchup forums and saw that 6 had just released. It was like Christmas for adults. And it has been nothing but downhill since that moment. Everything since has been one letdown after another.

The ONLY bright spot has been this forum!! Can you imagine how low we would be without it? Where would we be if Coen hadn't stepped and pulled off a miracle? I am just saying................

I did notice that Eterea is a one man show. That is impressive, no doubt. My hat is definitely off to him. Like I said in my earlier post, his animations are so good they are depressing. It just feels to me like the "bar" is continually being set higher and higher and Sketchup hasn't really improved in years. In fact, somethings have gotten worse.

I definitely think the glory days have passed us by. I'm just starting to wonder if I need to move on to softwares that are both producing high end output and are showing a track record for wanting to improve and evolve.

I think Cheetah3D, a modeling/rendering software that is mac only is a perfect example of a software developer who is heading in the right direction. He has something like 6 updates since the flawed Sketchup 6 came out, and when I say updates, I am talking about significant additions and improvements to major portions of the software. The silence out of Boulder is deafening. If it wasn't for Craig, think how silent it would be...............

And Layout is still beta?!?! I mean, I find all of this very disturbing and definitely not encouraging for the future.

Boofredlay wrote:
solo wrote:
DANG!!!

That's awesome, thanks for sharing.

The interior is amazing, wow!!

What app was used for that??? Shocked Shocked

Number 3 on the FAQ lists the software.
http://www.etereaestudios.com/docs_html ... tm/faq.htm

I never heard of it beofre... E.I.A.S.
http://eitechnologygroup.com/products/e ... ion_system

And no mention of Sketchup, as if we are already falling of the map, so to speak.