It's an honor to be a part of a community of people who can share their own unique thoughts and still be a welcome part of the community. We will all benefit from exposure to the thoughts and ideas and creativity etc. of the other members. In particular for me as a sole proprietor working in isolation. This is my break room. it's where I go to chat and bounce ideas off of other people.

I am a firm believer in keeping things simple. As it is we have two gallery sections.

1. SketchUP only
2. created in SketchUP and RENDEREED in a third party app

I think there is room for a third Gallery section kind of the all other option

3. Sketchup was used for some part of the image creation

I do like the idea of seeing images where sketchup was used as one component of the workflow regardless of how small. This can highlight some of the unique capabilities of sketchup. As it has been said we all use a multitude of applications in the pursuit of finding the best tool suited to allow our creativity out. SketchUP can indeed be considered just one tool in our tool belt. Let's agree to accomodate and welcome people who have a unique way to use SU in their creative pursuits.

Again Coen I would personally like to congratulate you on the sucessful creation of the SCF it has become a home for those SU regulars like myself who for what ever reason have not fully made the switch to the GOOGLE groups. Job WELL DONE. err but you may have to reign in us members once in a while.

Coen

I was simply trying to illustrate that if you wanted to have the "title" of forum represent all the intricate details of what are the acceptable methods the poster used to create the image than the title of the forum would need to be so complex. However the forum topic has a much more broad title "Renders Gallery" and it is my opinion that under that broad umbrella that that title infers that the images posted are acceptable.

If there is a guideline for the methods used to create and acceptable image than I could be wrong. If there are guidelines created and available then could you or one of the moderators show me how to access them.

Thanks

And indeed I agree that a discussion such as this is important and will help refine and shape how a community of people converse with each other. We must all agree that we are different people with different beliefs and likes dislikes etc. In a community of diverse people there must be a set of guiding principles that the moderators impose so that the majority of the community can in fact converse with each other in a recognized acceptable manner. I am simply trying to determine if you have established those principles for this particular forum and the entire site in general.

My post was obviously "opinionated" I can not separate my opinions from my comments. However I do hope that you or the moderators will have a discussion and provide the members with guidance on what are the acceptable methods behind the creation of and image that is acceptable as a post to the "Renders Gallery".

I do hope that you understand that by simply being here and giving you my opinions should indicate to you that I appreciate all of the work and efforts that went into creating this forum. I simply would not be here and would not be typing this message if I did not care about the forum.

So in a nutshell:

I disagree with those that think the methods used to create the Kapow and Phoomph images are not acceptable for this forum and if no specific guidelines exist to the contrary than they should be created so that this does not occur in the future without a documented guideline to fall back on as a reference for acceptable or unacceptable posts.

As a board member with one voice amongst many, I feel obligated to give an opinion on this thread.

A) Is there a mission statement or guidelines statement for what methods employed to produce an image are acceptable. If so can you please direct me to that statement so I can be assured that I follow your board guidelines and that all board members also have a chance to review and comply with the submission guidelines.

B) It would seem to me that the corner bar can be an outlet for or catchall for topics that are not necessarily appropriate for a particular sub forum, however in my opinion this particular post seems to be fine as a post in the Renders sub-forum, just my opinion.

C) As administrators of a (multi-user multifaceted many sided) cluster of people you must balance the need to seperate the discussion into distinguishable and distinct sub forums, while not sub dividing it to the extent that you are left with forum topics so narrow as to only include very few "acceptable" on topic posts. IE: even though this is a SketchUP forum we indeed do talk about many other subjects, and even though the sub forum has the topic of Renders Gallery, That is still a fairly Broad category which can encompass many different interpretations of acceptable posts.

In my opinion if we attempt to further subdivide the categories like this for instance

forum category:

"images generated by only native modeling in sketchup and only using a pluging renderer with no post processing"

Images generated by any combination of modeling or importing geomotry created in any other modeling app which were then rendered with a sketchup plugin and post processing was used"

Anyway you can see my point in the end as long as the poster can explain the process used to create a particular image and Sketchup was one part of that creation process, It is my opinion that that image and post should belong in a gallery subforum and not the corner bar. The "community" part ot "SCF" should be willing to allow a member to post his or her images to a gallery forum for discussion. The corner bar for me is a place to go to discuss topics that may not even be related to sketchup or at least I would not expect to see a post there where someone is sharing their creative images for review and comment.

anyway I do hope that all parties can agree that the "community" aspect of the forums is important and continue to have well thought out and meaningful discussions for the betterment of the community.

Regards

Phil

yea that's much better. Be careful with the details of the pergola. The trellis "2x4" at the long wall you can only get cedar in about 12' lengths so you will have some butt joints to accomplish that long run. Detail a scarf joint at one of the brackets and then stagger the joints so that the joints are not all at the same bracket. Also the larger top member of the brackets seems too heavy for the relative small size of the trellis members. I see why its that size to match with the other ones on the end of the building. You might look into making the trellis slightly different details than the much larger pergola at the end of the building. see attached image for a scarf joint.

HMM...DO YOU HAVE A LINK TO iRENDER...ooops darn CAPS lock was on...a leftover from using autocad. Does anyone else do that too. When typing notes text etc. in autoCAD I use all caps just to keep the text easily readable but often I leave the caps lock on and start typing in other apps only to notice the all caps was on way after I began typing...Maybe I'm just getting old and senile.

anyway I'll try to find irender and have a looksee at it.

Sorry Tom I have not formulated an opinion or reviewed the images long enough to give a pertinent comment, However the poetry from Darth brang a smile to my face So I wanted to thank them for that.

Can you explain a bit of the process for FryRender. Is it a standalone renderer? do you export the image from SU and import it to Fry. Is there a plugin for SU to work directly with Fry?

Just curious how it compares to VRAY or Maxwell

bravilor

have you worked with creating dummy components and then only replacing them with the Real detailed component for rendering. IE: say "building A" is supposed to be a fully detailed building. I would create a simple "dummy" version of that building as a simple box with the same proportions as the real building but NO detail. I would make that a component and then call the component bldg-a. Now right click on that component and do a "save component as" and save it out to the project folder as bldg-a-smpl.skp. Now go ahead and complete the component add windows textures etc. the complexity. now when all the complexity is modeled and complete, close the component, then right click on it and "save component as" and save it to the project folder but call it bldg-a-cplx.skp. Now you have two versions of the same component a simple and a complex one. Right click on the component and select reload>>>then reload the simple version while you are working on other areas of the model. At render time then you can right click on the component and reload and reload the complex version. It's kind of like x-referencing if you are familiar with AutoCAD. So for example in a particular camera view if building A is not visible than simply have the dummy version loaded. You can imagine many scenarios where you may even have a middle version created which has less detail than the complex version but more detail than the simple version for example if building a is visible in this camera but its so far in the background that all the detail of the complex version is unnecessary.

well you probably know about this method but just incase others reading this did not I thought I would post it.

I'd like to see you stop the vertical legs of the pergola brackets slightly below the bottom of the 45 degree brace. I think having the vertical element full height breaks up the lap siding and the stone base and stone cap. It'll be easier to construct and less cluttered. It would allow the awning/pergola and it's associated brackets to read as their own element and the building mass to read as it's own element.

Just my 2cents

Great start. I've done a few illustrations of auto dealerships for another architect. They are kind of fun because your working on a building which can have some clean and modern styles to them.

In college we had an expression...

Shut up and draw!.....It's applicable here. How many people using 3dMAX, 3dVIZ, Maya, Softimage, Autocad can start a 3d model at 9:00 pm for an 8:00 am meeting the next morning and show up with a completed 3d model exterior and interior on the actual aerial photograph with correct north angle so that shadows are correct.....then add to that show up with a laptop with scheme A and B and while at the meeting design Scheme c in front of the clients eyes...and then leave them with a 3d file that they can actually download free software to view.

Sketchup is this and more.

Yea I know there are people who can operate Maya and SoftImage like bats out of Hell but they are few and far between.

Well I'm preaching to the choir here but Sketchup is the software that has liberated me and given me the ability to let my thoughts flow into the computer.

I wish for antivirus software that wouldn't overtake my computer<<

Granted but the the software that you would install fails to recognize that you are an absent minded professor and will neglect to upgrade to the most recent version and thus will be exposed to all manor of virulent and nasty goose pimple inducing viruses.

I wish that the xray vision glasses I ordered from a comic book when I was a kid actually worked.

ROTFL....now thats funny. I'll store that one in my memory banks for future use.

Sometimes if this occurs and you can not eliminate geometry you can alter the camera field of view to a really low number and possibly get close enough to the object you want to edit without the nasty clipping plane.

Maybe a ruby guru can figure out a way to extract image files from the *.rpc file.

very nice work. SU is so amazing in the right hands it truly can change how we design.

no flaired walls just a camera perspective thing.

The house was designed by another designer/developer and he brought me on board to do the 3d model/illustration. As usual the design needed to be refined and consideration for the actual site need to be given to the design. Yea I should have started a new thread but this was just a response to the Too Quiet topic.

I've found that my available time for forums and extra curricular activities is very little.

The sky was just to add drama to the image I'm not skilled enough to make the shadows and the sky correspond to each other.

OK so I'll bow out from discussing my images and start a new thread.

Thanks Ross for letting me divert your topic for a moment.

Now I'll be quiet again.

Err but not for too long.

I'm Busy making a living...err well here are a few examples of what I'm up too lately.

I wish they had a plugin for SU that would work with Archvision RPC.