@Rich The text in your example is pure genius

I know this was already solved, but I would say that in this kind of situation (when you already have the 2 objects) I usually prefer to use Split.. so you don't have to draw the cutters just for the sake of doing the boolean and you end up with less total clicks.
Nobody loves Split.. I do.

@mike amos said:

It looks as though rendering is going through a once a decade shift, so many ?AI? render sites/programs etc are coming on stream so the next basic toolset might just include a bluddy dictionary........

How many old stle render resources will still be here within the next two years? Twilight is gone now and others like Maxwell have glacial development lead times while the current ethos appears to be constant change.

This is one of the main reason why I'm more and more specializing in very specific stuff, detailed/animated objects, custom shapes and textures, optimized models for VR/AR/realtime/web, teaching 3d for VR developers and all this kind of technical-oriented stuff.
Where i live the "classic" render market is already bloated with people working fast, but at really bad quality and underwaged, possibly cracking software and avoiding taxes in most cases.
So i think AI will make not a big difference for me (at least in the next few years), right now is a problem of those sloppy "collegues".
I'm done with that market, their analog stupidity has already screwed that well before AI was even a thing.
The only option I found to survive is doing those "hard" stuff that they can't or want not learn to do.. I hardly recall the last time I did a "classic" architectural still render

@dave r said:

Share the file so we can see what you've got going on.

Not necessary to upload the file, the screenshot clearly reveals that problem was between chair and keyboard.
Flowify requires you to select BOTH the component and the flowify rig at the same time before you run the command.
The guy has only the rig selected and not the stair component, so that the plugin doesn't work and of course ask for additional "input" (the beloved component).

@rich o brien said:

But how does SU read UDIMs? Separate maps? I know I read about this before with some other model you did but can't remember the workflow.

I did a quick recap in the thread about the Ferrari F2004, which was actually a pretty complex model.
Here's an extended overview of the full process I use to prepare the model for the cuts, the packing of the tiles and the final reload (including some tricks for unfolding flat strip throwing in a bit of Thrupaint and also to create an ID map straight in Sketchup). I'not sure which is the worst, if my english or my michrophone, but I hope it's itellegible enough.

@rich o brien said:

These are hurdles you begin encounter at higher frequencies when you push the boundaries of what SketchUp was primarily meant to do.

I push those freakin boundaries every day all day long and rarely face problems.
The secred is: good topology & good practices

@cmeed said:

my personal buttons I've created, have stopped working

I posted a workaround a few pages before

https://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=73776&start=270#p687744

@brittbliss said:

1. Must be a solid

Not really. It doesn't need to be solid, it simply has to be clean.
You just want to avoid, small triangles, folded triangles, intersecting geometry, ngons.

If you want to get serious into unwrap, regardless the app you use, I'd reccomended to practice with modeling and topology, to better understand what's goin'on in your model.
It's a bit harder to grasp if you can't model that kind of stuff yourself.

@studiospectre said:

Unfortunately my menu bar is still completely gone
I think I'll finally upgrade from 21 to 23

Naa.. It works fine in 2021 (tbh it works way better than it does on 2023 due to the 23 UI limitation).
You probably messed up the install.

Make sure to download and install this:

LibFredo6 | SketchUcation

3D SketchUp Community for Design and Engineering Professionals.

(sketchucation.com)

THEN download and install this:

LordOfTheToolbars | SketchUcation

3D SketchUp Community for Design and Engineering Professionals.

(sketchucation.com)

Reboot Sketchup and you toolbars will show up again.

Thank you so much, Fredo!

@awadrummer said:

Am I missing something? I out of nowhere started receiving the error message "This version of LordOfTheToolbars (2.5a) has expired Please upgrade to the latest version", I haven't upgraded Sketchup. I tried uninstalling and re-installing the plugin. I've tried updating the Sketchucation extension. I can't get this message to go away or get my custom toolbars back. Was there an update that wasn't posted to the site? Is there any way I can diagnose and resolve this issue?

I have the exact same problem.
I basically cant't use Sketchup without LOTT, I rebuilt my whole Sketchup interface with custom toolbar and palettes.
I hope Fredo can fix this quickly.

Cool!

Wonderful!

@rich o brien said:

2019 to 2023 you will see some notable differences.

The only remarkable ones being, from my POV, the (way) faster/more robust outliner in 2020 and the improved skp format in 2021.

@mike amos said:

Is it worth doing?

2023 is buggy as hell.
You just get a fancy flip tool almost copied from free Curic Mirror plugin, a couple of selection filter in context menu (wich is ridcolously bad compared to the free wonderful Thomthom Selection Toys from more than 10 years ago), a completely screwed interface and eventually you will have corrupted files when saving.
Let's hope they fix those things in the near future.
New interface framework and multithread saving are both (potentially) very good improvements.. and future proof, but as it is, I feel 2023 is unstable to say the least.
I stick with 2021 for now.

@rich o brien said:

Next week either the 24th or the 26th. I erased the email with the date but I'm close with those dates.

24th

Cascadeur looks really nice, didn't know it's free.
I've always used Adobe Mixamo or ActorCore Accurig for similar tasks.

For that kind of objects I would reccomend to use Vertex Tools/ Sub-d and also Artisan.
You can find plenty of tutorials on the plugins websites and also on youtube.
Depending of the kind of models you are after, you may want to also have a look into Curviloft and Extrusion tools.

@ntxdave said:

How did you animate the stuff you scooped?

I used the physics and collision engine inbuilt in 3dsMax which is called "Mass FX" (actually developed from Nvidia).
I could have done pretty similar stuff straight in Unity if it was meant to be interactive, but for plain animation, doing that in 3dsMax allows to bake the animation to keyframe when you are happy with the simulation, so that is way more consistent and lighweight compared to have the simulation running at runtime every single time you hit the play button.
Basically it works in this way:

_ you set up the colliders, there are 3 main categoryes which are static (quite self explainatory), kinematics (the ones which have an arbitrary animation, in this specific case, those are the bucket and the arm), and dynamics (the ones wich are not animated by themselves but reacts to gravity and collision with other dynamic and kinematics objects, in this case the trash objects)

_ you set up all the additional simulation parameters such as gravity (also some wind if you want), density/mass of the objects, friction, bounciness and so on

_ you hit the simulate button and go grab a beer

_ you come back with your beer, change some parameters, hit the simulated button again and go grab some other beer

_ repeat the previous step the required number of iteration to make the simulation work properly

_ when you are completely high, the beer is finished and the simulation is working properly (or at least you think so) you can finally hit the bake button and make it into a persistent animation that you can safely playback and export.

@rich o brien said:

Wonderful. Color grading makes it pop! Is it a LUT?

Thank you! Yep there's a LUT applied amongst other fx.
Basically I worked on the colors in 2 steps.. the first step was done on the single clips to balance a bit the exposure, shadows and hilights and have them a tad more consistent between each other.
In the second step (the one in the screenshot) I created a nested timeline to grade all the balanced clips at once, converted the color space to Cineon Film Log (to make the Davinci inbuilt LUTs work properly) and then applied a DCI-P3 Kodak 2383 D55 LUT.
The other two nodes before and after are to slighty balance it and bring in a bit more of contrast and detail.
The last node is for Cross processing.. used the red channel curve to slightly bring down the red in the dark and slightly up in the light (to get a bit of greenish tint to the shadows and a bit of warm in the hilights).

@rich o brien said:

I love the mounted camera showing the hinge operation. The DOF really did lead the eye in.

Actually there's quite a bit of action goin'on in the hinge zone, there are the steering pistons pushing and pulling, the cable flexing and twisting a little, the transmission rod rotating..
I initially didn't plan to animate all of that, but looking at the animation you could clearly see that something was quite off (at least my OCD noticed it, so I fixed all of that).. but is the typical kind of stuff that you tend to spot only when it's off, when is working properly you can barely see that.. you know..
So after all that hard work I decided to set up a dedicated camera to make that at least slightly noticeable LOL.

@rich o brien said:

Take the rest of the summer off

Actually I fear that I'll spend nearly the whole summer fighting with this stuff, because the deadline for the complete video will be around september/october..
But it's all good, will be fun to do this, lot of action going on, different vehicles and machinery and also particle systems, gas flowing into pipes and more fun stuff