Hello everyone,

I have a problem. I am working on a big project and I think I am starting to reach the bounderies of what Sketchup is capable of.

You can watch it in a larger resolution here: http://users.skynet.be/fb517223/sketchup/mega-resultaat-004.jpg

I want to make this even more complex and I am not sure if it is going to work. I devided the image above into 6 different peices and rendered them seperatly at a resolution of 9000 x 6000 pixels. After this had been done, I merged the 6 peices in photoshop tot get the final result you are looking at (I needed the big resolution to print it on a 114 x 74 cm paper).
I didn't use any textures on this model so far. It took a pretty long time to render it and I am not sure if it's still going to work if I am going to add more detail and maybe even textures.

So my question is: Looking ahead, what could I possibly do to enlarge the render capacity of my model? Should I try to export it to another program like Kerkythea, Blender or 3Ds Max to render it there? Can these programs handle larger files?

I should also note that I have a computer that is capable of running Windows 7 64-bit and that I am currently running Windows 7 32-bit. This is a summary of the specs of my computer:

Operating System
MS Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit
CPU
Intel Core i7 920 @ 2.67GHz 44 °C
Bloomfield 45nm Technology
RAM
4.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 540MHz (7-7-7-20)
Motherboard
Intel Corporation DX58SO (J1PR)
Graphics
SyncMaster @ 1920x1200
1024MB GeForce GTX 285 (nVidia) 49 °C
Hard Drives
293GB Western Digital WDC WD3000HLFS-01G6U0 ATA Device (IDE) 32 °C
977GB Western Digital WD My Book ATA Device (IDE)

Yes, you are right. That's what my perfectionist brain can't handle.

First of all: Thanks A LOT Fredo, for your very handy plugin. Thanks to your plugin I was able to make things like this: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=29881 Without your plugin this would be very difficult to make.

I would like to continue on something that has been discussed earlier:

@unknownuser said:

@plot-paris said:

I've got one question though, that I wanted to ask you for quite some time now:
when I transform a polyline (or now just a series of linesegments ) into a Polyline Arc Corners, sometimes the distribution of vertexes is a bit strange, showing some corner with very high polygon detail, leaving others almost unrounded... is there a way to influence that? like to tell the plugin to distribute the vertexes evenly per corner?
[attachment=1:tyktxzq2]<!-- ia1 -->bz_round_corner-problem01.jpg<!-- ia1 -->[/attachment:tyktxzq2]

The number of vertices for the rounding is based on the Precision parameter given on a Full Circle basis. So for Precision = 24s, you'll get 24 points for 360°. Depending on the arc angle of the rounding, you'll get less or more points.
Is that the explanation or do you see another issue or bug?

Fredo

I think I experience the same thing (see attachement): There are more vertexes towards the end of the curve. The main problem with this for me is that I have to put in a lot of sides sometimes (like 60s) untill the big part with the least number of vertexes becomes smooth. Is there something you can do about this? Or is there just no other way?

Thanks in advance man!

Pieter

Ok, thanks! Maybe my question was a bit silly, but I was just afraid that after filling my model up with colors I would come to the conclusion that I have made them all too dark or too light. I can't help it, I'm too much of a perfectionist.

Okay, thanks for the reply! Does it also depends on the position of the sun? I have the impression that when the sun stands very low, there is lesser light. What would be the best position of the sun for initial testing purposes, do you think? I don't know yet what kind of light I want to use for my model...

Hello,

The problem that I have is the following:

When I render my model with V-Ray, I have different results in terms of brightness depending on what my settings are in V-Ray. But how do I know if the "original" colors I have used in Sketchup are not too dark or too light? Is there some "standard" way I can render my model in V-Ray so I know my model is OK in terms of brightness?

Thanks in advance!

Pieter

P.S.: My monitor is calibrated.

@earthmover said:

A paintbrush tool to apply materials while dragging across multiple faces. It would be a big help when applying projected textures with hidden geometry turned on for things like rounded corners and SDS meshes. With SU's poor UV capabilities most of us end up projecting multiple facing textures to organic geometry to fake it. The one click per face or drag select methods are a real pain with a lot of small triangles.

I definitly second that.

@Thom:

Aha, so that's the reason! Interesting.

Yes, that's what I mean. When I apply a material for example, I can not use Ctrl+Z to undo it. When I move one of the sliders to change a colors saturation for example, I can also not undo the change I have made.

Interesting, so I'm not the only one with that problem. hahah

I think the standard browser is not a very good one. Your idea looks very promising.

Cool, sounds very interesting and promising!!! I have two suggestions, but I guess they are probably not possible. Anyway:

• A BIGGER color wheel then the standard one, which is realy not handy.

• The ability to use "Ctrl-Z" in the materials section!

I am talking about the in-model materials. (The reason I want to manage them in a better way is because I have a very large model.)

Hi,

Maybe this is a stupid question, but I have been looking for an answer and I was not able to find one.

I want to manage my materials in sketchup in a proper way so that I can easily find a certain material when I need one. For example: I want the materials that I use in my streetcar and the ones that I use in my roads in a seperate collection. Otherwise they all end up in the same "collection" or folder and it becomes hard to find the one that I want to edit. How can I do this please?

Many thanks in advance,

Pieter

That's hard to say in fact, because I didn't work continiously at it. Let's say I worked a couple of hours every day on it for about four or five days. I find it hard to make an estimation though.

Hi everyone again!

After some testing I have figured out what the best way is for me to make roads that bend an go up or down at the same time.

I mainly use two plugins:

Fredo's BezierSpline plugin: (Of which I only use the Uniform B-Spline tool because of the smooth results for this purpose.)

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=13563

and Wikii's Follow Me and Keep plugin: (to make a road out of the curve)

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=16465

This way I was able to make the following interchange:

I think the main drawback for the moment is that you have to devide the curves you make with BezierSpline into really a lot of sides until they get smooth. I can be wrong, but it also appears to me that the sides are not equal destributed along the curve.

@Dabbig:

Thanks, that might be usefull too one day!

Ok, fine, that's interesting, I beleive you, but that changes nothing to what I've said. On top of that: Why would I be not allowed to post a topic about this? I was just looking for an answer and I have found one.

That was not the case. The little differences were there before I set the preciion to 6 decimal places. I have only set it to 6 decimal places when I was trying to find the source of the problems. Then I discovered the little differences. I normaly do not set the precision to 6 decimal places. (Why would I, when I am working on a model with big buildings etc.?)

Hi TIG,

The end of a long and hard week or not; I don't like it.

First of all: I am not stupid. The bigest units I use in my model are centimeters, so I don't care about this kind of accuracy. The only thing is: I was thinking (and I am still thinking) that these little differences can cause problems with pushing/pulling, etc. I was looking for an answer and I have learned two things:

• The little differences and the problems are caused by the big scale of the model.

• In order to avoid these problems caused by the big scale I can work with linked components outside the main model itself.

I have contacted google about the issue and this was their last reply:

@unknownuser said:

Thank you for the extra details. I just chatted with some of the
Engineering team, and it sounds like the problems you've described (extra
surfaces, problems snapping or using Push/Pull) are related to the width
of the model. Basically the larger the model gets the less precise
SketchUp can be with each individual measurement.

My suggestion would be to create many smaller components for different
sections of your model. For example each of the side towers and the middle
tower would all be separate components. Since you can save components as
distinct SketchUp models, you could work on each model independently, thus
avoiding the scale issue. When you go back to your big model you can just
updated that component reference and it will refresh with the changes you
made in the separate file. This is similar to working with XREFs in a CAD
application.

Hopefully that makes sense and will allow you to work with a wide model
while still maintaining smaller details.

Does anyone know how to work with these "component references" (if that is the right term)? I have searched for it on google, but I wasn't able to find it.

Hey Jim,

Just to be clear, by NURBS you mean tools like bezierspline?

Hey Box,

I am trying the Bezierspline tool and it looks very promising. I will try to post some examples when I'm a bit more advanced.

Thanks a lot!!