GREAT RENDER Fletch!
I visited it some time ago (I'm italian) and it is great indeed!
Meier worked very well also for the Ara Pacis museum, some years later.

Did Frolfer share the model, by the way?

+1 to Wyatt's request! Could be very useful using Tree[d] trees!

Thank you Elisei, that will work perfectly!

Ely! Seems like your version could work neatly!
..mind to share the model? please?

Thanks Pilou for your attempt, but it's not like my reference.. I can tell that because I originally tried your solution too, but it was wrong...

Why? If you go on copying your rows of metal, you will see that the holes are corresponding, while in the reference image a hole is not aligned with the hole of the lower row.. That was TOO simple!

What about making this a "MODEL THIS" competition subject?

Hi all!
Sorry to bother: I'm here looking for help..
I am now modeling a building all covered with a particular stretched metal sheet: I've lost most of my sunday trying to model a tileable component, but seems like I couldn't...

I was wondering if anyone can help me, in his spare time..

I need a tileable 3D component, but I don't need it to have thick surfaces..

I attach the technical sheet as a reference...

Thank you all in advance, guys..

I had some other minor conflicts with the embedded drivers, so I recently updated EVERYTHING in my pc. Now I have the latest for almost all my software and hardware, both drivers and software version

Hi all guys! Sorry to bother for what can seem a silly request..
I've recently updated my video card from a 9800GTS to a GTX480, all nVidia.
Strangely, the new video card seem to handle sketch models in a worse way: textures are refreshed with a little delay, the model becomes quite heavy in the turn of 5/8 MB...I guess this is something library-related: Sketchy uses openGL, the GTX480 is based on directX and CUDA chip...
Is there a way to fix this? It is so bothering that having a much better graphic card produces a worse result!

Thank you a lot for reading!

Following this with HUGE curiosity.
Can't wait to see to what spectacular plugin this will lead..

Thank you Starling for your research!
Now we can start sharing nice 3D trees!
Or at least I hope so!

Thanks.
Let's wait for an answer.

There must be some kind of hidden option or something
Let's find it out: the first one who does, gives the other a call.

That is exactly what i was about to report. But it doesn't seem to be a software bug, but a 3ds format limitation. I usually export 3dsMax models to sketchy and I remember that sometimes I couldn't, due to geometry weight (number of polys).
This single drawback is something making your workflow faulty: you cannot export ALL the trees you make.
If one wants just a simple tree, then your workflow is good.

Hi Starling!
Your workflow is much easier than mine! happy to hear this! And the result is less heavy too.
I guess I'm going to change mine with yours
I'm downloading meshlab now: importing as obj and exporting as 3ds, you say.
Gonna give it a go, definitely!
Thank you so much for such an important information!

I hope many SU users will start doing good trees and share them in the warehouse.

Sure Pugz!

Hi Gaieus. Thanks for your feedback!
I must re-warn you that the trees will be 10/15MB each, so quite unuseable, if your aim is to populate a plain SU view and keep it handleable. If you plan to make a render instead, and your app supports instancing AND dummy components, THEN it all will make more sense.

Hi all! Just wanted to share this epic first convincing tree render I made in Indigo after an export from Sketchy. The worflow is still a little puzzling but something I can stand if this is the result

The main passages are:

1. Tree making with Tree[d], a well known free tree generator by "frecle" http://www.frecle.net/index.php?show=treed.about; export in .x file format
2. Import into Deep Exploration (I used the 30 days free version n.6, don't know about other versions)
3. A little messing around in Deep Exploration to split foliage from trunk/branches
4. Exporting directly to skp format
5. Opening and preparing the materials for the render

I stumbled upon this after having read an old post by Solo (who I thank for the support, though on holiday) who suggested Deep Exploration to open .x files and save directly skp files. Leaf mapping is preserved in this last operation, and that is the main feature I was looking for.
The trees come out something about 10/15MB each, so quite heavy to handle. Indigo and SkIndigo have this super instancing tool though, which allows you to have simple sticks in your scene (very light) which will be subsituted with the Hipoly tree(s) during the rendering.

I find it to be a good way to have nice trees inside SU renders without using clip planes or postpro tricks (which give excellent results, btw, but which I hardly find to match my rendering philosophy). The only challenge now for me is..memory usage!

Here is the final result finally. Let me know what you guys think.

Thanks a lot freeagent: your Ps tips are always a pleasure to read. And to learn
Wonderful images: nothing too exciting after render pass only, but really quality images after the postpro phase. This always reminds me of the importance of ALL the steps of the image creating process. A barbaric postpro would have surely turned the starting render to something terrible.

I know, and that was clearly exaggerated.
I would have stopped that after the first three days.

Hi D-space!
..I can't tell you anything about machine(s) specs: as I said, the scene was not rendered by me, but by a kind mate over the Indigo Renderer official website. The scene is quite complex, with high (..not huge indeed..) polycount, rendered at very high resolution and containing several light sources, kept on different layers to be able to play with powers and colours separately during the rendering process. I know the whole rendering time was something about 500 hrs. I agree it is insane, but there was no way to make Borgleader stop the render