I guess what bums me out is that I am a compulsive perfectionist and I have an inner angst when I see that awesome things other people are doing and I know that I am not in a market that will allow me to even approach this level of animation.

I am a one man operation, and I wouldn't have it any other way, so this sort of product is really beyond my reach and that is a drag. I want to be able to produce top of the line and technology has basically made it impossible for me, as a solo guy, to do that.

Oh well, I guess it's back to spending all day filling in the lines that Sketchup's dxf exports (which is very poor IMHO) left out.

I have this funny, yucky, feeling that Sketchup is rapidly not keeping up with the Joneses. What was awesome and impressive 4-5 years ago begins to pale against things that are happing now. And, unfortunately, I really think that being in Google's hands (who, let's face it, are only interested in populating Google Earth with low poly rudimentary 3D structures) will end up being the kiss of death for Sketchup going in the direction that professionals who are as interested, if not more so, in output (be it animation, still images, blueprints, etc.) than ease of modeling will need to compete in an increasingly knowledgable and demanding market

The time I save modeling in Sketchup, (whose interface and ease and speed of modeling is most excellent and satisfactory, of course) begins to look not so impressive when you start spending tons of time cleaning up dxf exports, post processing animations to achieve a professional product, not to mention having to use ver 5 1/2 the time due to export issues with ver 6.

Perhaps I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed today, but I have a increasingly disturbing feeling that two years from now, I won't be able to use Sketchup anymore because the work arounds and poor export product will just not be satisfactory for the sophisticated market in which we will be working.

Well, that is so good it is depressing.

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that native sketchup animations just don't cut it when clients are beginning to be aware of this level of sophistication.

I am putting together a large series of animation for a proposal and to say that it looks wooden and computery compared to this is a huge understatement. Between jagged lines flickering across the screen as a model rotates, and moire patterns swirling around on the roof and siding textures, and less than predictable exports (at times) I am suddenly feeling quite amateurish.

I have no idea what amount of time went into fallingwater, but I am sure it was a huge amount. Between modeling, texturing, setting all the lights for rendering, the actual time exporting out a rendered animation (had to have been weeks of rendering, probably in many passes) and post production (itself a huge and varied task) we are talking a level of product that has to be very expensive.

My concern is that clients see this sort of animation, as well as Pixar/Disney stuff and that is the level that they come to comprehend as "good" with no thought about the hundreds and thousands of hours required to produce it. So, they see a non-rendered animation with minimal effects and they are less than impressed, though the price is still not cheap as we are still talking about modeling, texturing, setting scenes, exporting, post, etc.

I suppose I am having a bit of a crisis of confidence because I just can't compete with this level of sophistication and knowing that it is possible makes me even more less than thrilled with what I am producing.

sigh................

happy birthday homeboi!

Thanks for all the help and I hope you are getting to ride enough.

Dang, I should of asked you for some models before you reappraised.

Just kidding, Edson

I appreciate your selflessness and trusting attitude and am a bit ashamed to not be that way.

I wouldn't go so far as to say useless.

You can still fly around the model and see how the design elements work, and you can still fly through the model and explore interior spaces. perhaps this helps someone decide if they like 8' or 10' ceilings.

What if you were demonstrating a landscape design, why would providing a grouped model help when editability is not the point?

Especially if I were providing a model for design considerations, while images would give some info, a model would be much more useful, but grouping and layering just gives someone the option of taking your model to someone else and cutting you out of the loop.

If the SU viewer allowed layer control (which is ridiculous that it doesn't) and there was no free SU that gives anyone the ability to make your model their own, then I would include layers in a general sharing. But since googleSU gives editable power to anyone, I see no reason to provide a "clean" model when one with no groupings/components gives them the same information while still making it very hard for them to take my model and "use" it for commercial purposes. Maybe I am just paranoid.

Of course, if I am uploading a model that I want everyone to be able to use and modify, then of course I will keep all the groupings, etc..

I am actually in a contract now where I provide the model to the client at different stages of the job so they can use google SU to explore it and make suggestions/changes. I send them a model that has most of the layers, so they can see the floorplan without the roofs, make the kitchen appliances disappear, etc, but I also completely explode the model before I send it. This gives me a degree of insurance while also allowing them to use the model to finetune their desires.

Works great.

I have mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand, sharing models with all the layers/groupings, etc would give the recipient much more control over the model, obviously, but it also shows them how I did things. Sometimes helpful, but also, sometimes, more than I would like to share.

OTOH, exploding everything allows the recipient to use the model without "using" it. For me, this is as close as you can get in SU to "locking" the model, preventing ( or at least making it difficult) others from modifying it.

Almost all of my models are built for clients and I don't share them at all, but if I did I would explode them for viewing purposes. If I were to post something, for example, here, with the express intention of providing a tool that others could use to maximum benefit, then I would go for the "perfect" model and provide all groupings/layers.

As far as workflow, using components for anything with more than 2 instances, grouping everything into it's constituent parts, and layering extensively (though I hate SU's layer system) are all basically critical to producing usable and editable models.

Excellent! Glad to help.

It is no problem working with the laptop lid closed (known as clamshell mode), AFAIK.

You should check out this site: http://forums.macrumors.com/index.php If you can't get an answer to a Mac question there, the answer is more than likely NO

Can't you just make your big monitor the default monitor under displays/arrangements? All you have to do is drag the menu bar (the white rectangle on the top of your smaller monitor blue rectangle) from one monitor to the other. That should display at the proper resolution.

Of course, then your menu bar is on that monitor always.

I hope that works for you

hi Edson, good morning.

You can mirror your displays so that both monitors display the exact same thing. You can do this either through system preferences/displays/arrangement/mirror (a little check box on the lower left of the arrangement window).

You can also just hit f7 to turn on the mirroring.

If you have your displays icon visible on your menu bar, you can also choose "turn on mirroring" from the drop down.

FWIW, I use two monitors and put everything except the working window on the small screen. Since I use a lot of keyboard shortcuts, I have found this to work the best for me, sorry you don't find it comfortable.

Hi Brad, good to see you here!

Craig may have already warned you about me

I have an uncanny ability to crash software, much to my own chagrin.

please don't kill the messanger

YAY!! congrats!

I see you married way outside your class level, too How did we get to be so lucky?

Thanks for the troubleshooting, guys.

I guess I should feel a little better knowing that it works fine on another Mac.

Thanks, Bob, for exploring this further. Weird how you have to manually browse to newly downloaded images to get it to work, while the file size is unchanging.

There is obviously a platform compatibility issue going on here. Hopefully, the Google Support team sees, and does something about this.

It is quite disappointing to discover that any SKP I might give to a client to check out in their free version (not that I ever do this but suppose) of Sketchup will not display any image textures!! That would really make me look professional. "Hey Chuck, why on earth do you wrap the model with a bunch of blue squares on a cylinder!"

I'm glad I stumbled into this here, with you guys, as opposed to out in the real world.

Is the cyclorama going to be useful for anyone, at least?

Well, I uploaded the individual Jpegs (which just happen to be 3.2 meg).

They are here: jpegs

I can transfer this skippy to my other computer that has never seen any of this and it works perfectly well, too, though it is also a Mac.

Dang, try to do right by the community a bit and it turns into a PITA: this is annoying.

Here is the link to the original file: link

You can access the file as well as the individual jpegs.

I am dying to hear Support's view on this.

Thanks.

I have started a thread in Bug Report: here

Gaieus, the link at the beginning of this thread and the one in bug reports should take you to the original skippy now. Please let me know if you are still having issues accessing the file.

Remus, that is exactly how I make these cycloramas. Generate cylinder, in this case 2 cylinders stacked as I have two rows of images, and then map each of the 18 images individually with hidden lines visible. When I open this file, I have 18 images visible in my material browser, but everyone else just gets grey and blue solid colors.

I keep hoping a Mac user will try to download the panorama and see what they get.

I have joked around with Craig before that I would make a heck of a beta tester, as I seem to have an innate ability to stumble into bugs without even trying. I thought I was just posting a component and all this happens.

Thank you sir!

I sent a PM to CraigD calling attention to this, too. I also sent a PM to Edson, as I know he works on Macs and I figured it would be good to know if it does, in fact, work on Macs.

Let me know if you hear anything.

the JPEGS are 8 bit RGB, so that isn't it.

Please see this thread here

So, Urgen, did you have to map the images onto the cylinder, or did the download just work?

I cut them up to maintain maximum reasonable resolution. This particular cyclorama is wrapped around a 160 acre site, and I wanted the exports to be a crisp as possible. This panorama started out life as a 650 meg, or so, PSD file, so I had fantastic resolution to start with and I wanted to keep degradation to a minimum.

Thanks Urgen, I hope your component works better than mine for people to download (confusedly scratches head in bewilderment...)

I am now really wondering what you could have possible done different when you saved the skippy so that the mapped image stayed correct after others download it, other than using a Windows machine.

Am I correct is thinking that we have stumbled on quite a large bug with Sketchup, where image textures can't be saved as skippys and shared between Mac and Windows computers?! Is that really what is going on here??

Because, if so, then that pretty well stinks, IMO