@l i am said:

Cool metaphor "watching a sinking ship":thumb: 👍 👍 😎

Thanks! 😄

You could try it with advaced camera tools. There you get models of your cameras so that you can scale them with the model i think.

Thanks Rv1974! I didn't think of the toggle north tool.

How would you use TIG's 45 degree shadow plugin for this purpose?

Yep, I agree with Thom and most of the comments here.

I have had mine for years and only use it for positioning 'cameras' and for getting the view out of walls/tables/the floor when it gets stuck.

It is also really fun in Google Earth!

@edson said:

with the huge amount of plugins available for sketchup the only remaining problem, in my opinion, is sketchup's difficulty in handling high-poly models.

one alternative for the unhappy user could be bonzai3d.

Bonzai was ready to capture some SU users, then what happened???
Dead? No updates! What?

@pieterv said:

I don't always understand how other people are managing there lights. Like, when you have a look at this image in attachement. (made by http://nemostudio.pl) you can see that the sun is casting bright rays of light on the floor in the living room, but at the same time all the rooms in the appartement are lit very evenly and diffuse.

I think this is a very special example and not comparable to your situation. I would say that this is lit without ceiling/walls with one or two emitters in front of the windows to simulate the sun.

When you look at the next two images of the interior renderings section on this site (http://nemostudio.pl/wizualizacje/wizualizacje_wnetrz/ ) below the one you posted, you will see a similar situation like the one in your renders.

Listening to the various comments, I have applied multiple changes and I think I was able to improve it. (less light comming from the front now and a couple of other tweaks)

project_3d_grondplan_resultaat_003_doorsturen_01.jpg

@ Boofredlay:
@ cadmunkey:
@ Tomasz:

Thanks a lot! 😄

I have an app that supposedly works well with illustrator. It has different end caps. I wonder if you pm me the eps, I can run it through. See if it works to save you time? The effect might be lost on translation. IDK.

I have found a solution to my problem and I've written it down in this topic: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=16015

Aha! Thanks! I will try this. Many thanks! 😄

Pieter

Well, it does appear darker to me in the SketchUp viewport as well -- I think somehow the texture/UVs have been scaled down by the ThruPaint plugin in that area.

Best,
Jason.

Thanks for the tip man. That's a great plugin. Fredo is the man. 😄

@pieterv said:

In the first render the two sides of the road were two components that I flipped along an axis (mirrored)

Thats what I meant. After mirroring explode the component or the group and group it again. The texture on the flipped side can have some artefacts. So the workaround you mentioned is right, although you can try this out just with the flipped component.

Ah yeah, that's easy with some TT plugins...
😒

That may be a good idea too, thanks!

@unknownuser said:

Very cool. It's very interesting how you can change the actual material beyond just the color. Do you guys find that you use this very often? Although it seems like a very powerful tool for certain circumstances I can't imagine using it for most renderings.

-Brodie

I have used it twice already, for a furniture catalogue, I needed to show the different variations of materials/finishes of a particular set and instead of doing four renders I just did the one and changed mats afterwards, came in handy and definitely something I will use in future as the need arises.

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

Trouble is that there are some severe limitations to the materials in the Ruby API. I'm trying to find functional workarounds.

Remarkable result! 👍