inspired by Fred's various sculptures (which are really superb! thanks Fred and keep posting), here now a freeform of my own creation, using Subdivide&Smooth.
for rendering I used Indigo.

the sculpture is named: "Bartels-Inspiration"

the tree shadow on the right half of the building (first photo) - amazing!

only thing that is not entirely convincing is the palm tree on the very left.

wonderful work. would very much like to see some more images...

impressive, your demonstration what is possible with a pure SketchUp render (and PS of course) - no additional renderer needed.

I really had to look twice to notice that you added something. it simply looked so "in place". compliment as well for the architecture; perfectly blends in to the context.

dear Fred,

again, I really like your sculptures.
but I will be honest, I am not very fond of the texture. I would love to see this with something more "dreamy" (perhaps with some transparency maps, like you had before or simply something more abstract).

but as always its a joy to see one of your new objects - truely inspiring!

this would indeed be a nice tool. then my suggestion for this tool would be unnecessary...

but even better would be a script that lets you adjust the segment legths of several selected faces or edges.
the workflow would be like this: you select the faces in question and simply type in either the desired number of segments (for example 25) or the length of one segment (for example 56mm).
alternatively you can rightclick on one of the faces and choose "adjust segment lengths".

of course there are difficult questions to be answered first, like: what happens if the desired segment length doen't fit into one of the curves? is SketchUp then allowed to change the endpoint of one curve (and therefore the startpoint of the neighbouring curve as well) sligthly to get the same segment length throughout the selected geometry?
the very first and the very last point of the overall selected form have to stay put, so that the connection to the rest of the model is not broken...

your cars get definitely better and better - I really like the third one

yes, a "zorro freeform" tool would be great - along with the ability to use zorro in parallel projection.

oh yes, and in addition to the freeform a "zorro polyline" would come in handy...

and now lets get really high-spirited... a ZORRO BLASTER

(the selfmade form sticks to your cursor... and then you blast the hell out of your model )

indeed, nice desing.

I especially like the trasparent pig in the first image

at first, thank you all very much for your comments (it is a great thing to post something before going to sleep and finding a wonderful discussion about it in the morning )

yes indeed, the blended materials would be a fine thing.
I have to rethink the interface though (when I have got the time). the linked materials should not appear among other materials - that confuses things. they sould be shown directly below the preview thumbnail, thus instantly being identified as linked blend materials...
what you say about the slowdown, kwistenbiebel, is absolutely true. it is already annoying enough sometimes. but for that we have the ultimate formula: SketchUp 7

the components window need rethinking too. it has to be as simple as possible. perhaps SketchUp should remember which subcomponents are used more often and auto expand their parent component. others that are not used anymore (for example an oldfhasioned window with glass planes as subcomponents) will stay collapsed...
(@chrisglasier, your namesets may come in very handy when needing a neat workflow from design to production. but I am looking for a completely embedded interface, that does not change much in the way the component editor works. we simply need some means to order the mass of components in large models. if you import a component, you can choose to hide or show it's subcomponents already. however, an optical representation of which subcomponent belongs to which parentcomponent is missing...)

however, I am completely satisfied with the way, layer grouping and scene grouping could work (in the above image).

@lewiswadsworth said:

...pretty soon SU will be as complex and unwieldy as a parametric modeler, or Blender. Capability should not be confused with usability.]

I completely understand your fear. that is why I tried to think of a way to implement additional control over different functions by sticking to already known systems (the tree structure as we know it from the outliner; the grouping command for creating these structures, as we already use it in modelling).

there is definietly a lot of rethinking necessary in some places. but thats what this thread is for.
and it already started!

I love SketchUp's ability to create tree-structures when creating groups and components within other groups. the outliner gives an easy overview and a lot of control over these structured models (except for allowing clicking into the name tag of a group/component for renaming, like it is possible with layers ).

however, this idea of a tree-structure could be used in many more tools...
(another faked interface... again? sorry guys, I couldn't resist )

the image is rather small, so let me explain the ideas:

Scene Hierarchy
you can group several scenes. they are now only visible, when the parent-tab is active. thus you can handle much more scenes without cramming your screen (this is especially useful, if you have different options of a building).
to group the scenes you either use the right click context menu or simply the same shortcut, you use for ordinary geometry grouping)

Layer Hierarchy
the same system works for layers. simply group several layers. if you switch off the parent layer, all sublayers become invisible (that doesn't affect the visibility setting of the sublayers - meaning, that active sublayers are still active, when you switch on the parent layer again, inactive sublayers stay inactive).

Blended Materials
you can blend materials by simply dragging one material thumbnail onto anoter (I am not sure yet, if this action changes the material to which the other one has been applied to or if a completely new material is created - probably the latter).

if the parentmaterial is active, all the blendmaterials are shown below. if you now click on one of the linked materials, you get blend settings (where you can specify the percentage of blending for this specific texture).
changes to the linked material dont affect the original material (that has been dragged to another one). however, if the original material is changed, this affects the linked material as well - does that make sense?

while a linked material is active in the material-editor, you can apply it to any face in the model - the material will not be applied to the geometry, but it will be displayed and the UV-sets are saved. this is an easy way to check positioning of blendet materials (this is Whaat's method of UV-sets in indigo, only with an easy to use graphical interface).

the parentmaterial, when applied to geometry, is shown as a merge between the linked mats (see image above)
(hey, Whaat. did you read this? )

Nested Components
if you have a big model, with lots of components, you can easily loose your overview over all the objects in the component-editor.
therefore we now have nested components. for example, you create door-, and window-components. then you make the building a component as well - that automatically hides the door-, and window-components in the component editor. they are only shown, when you click on the little plus button in the top-left corner of the building-component thumbnail.

in addition to that a selection of favourites would be of use, either automatically managed or by manually placing components. this is especially useful, when you reuse the same window in different buildings.

this was a lot of information in one post. but it would mean a lot of improvement for SketchUp as well

I would be delighted to hear your opinions, further suggestions and critique to this ideas...

cheers,

Jakob

but I look five years older with a short beard (something essential when negotiating a payraise...)

@silver_shadow said:

...a lot of baking and textures are overlayed ect to create one single texture. Once im happy, i took them into sketchup, scaled it till the face match exactly, and then projected it onto it.
( and i think i will texture all my future models like this )

but only until Whaat finds an amazingly easy way to use his texture mapping with multiple UVs, with a workflow as easy as SketchUps push/pull tool

(of course you have to go back to indigo then (with a bit more than 80 hours of rendertime) - or wait for v-ray to copy indigo )

Jakob

ps: let me say again, how impressed I am with your model, and especially your render! it is truely amazing and makes me proud of SketchUp (even if I could never have done this...)

pps: the only thing that wasn't entirely convincing to me in your render was the water. but you can change that in 25 minutes...

yeah, that is the last barrier of privacy.

you know each other very well, know every freckle of her body, have been sharing a bed for years. but you are never allowed to so much as glipse into her handbag.

allthough I had a girlfriend once, who didn,t mind me looking through her handbag, when in need of a tissue. I was utterly embarrassed and felt like an intruder...

well, that would be wonderful.

but I assume (having not a clue of ruby scripting), that it is very difficult to compare geometry. because that is what you had to do, if transforming several identical groups to components.
it gets even more complicated, if the instances (of the groups) are rotated or even scaled...

but it would indeed be one of the most useful rubies.

thanks, remus.

my brothers and me (we lived in a flatshare, studying in the same city - cool, isn't it?) only used it for nibbling in front of the television (scooping the sweet compound with tablespoons). not a single blot was wasted on bread!

ok. lets revive this thread.
here an image that proves my liking for everything that is remotely related to chocolate... (the image was taken about two years ago, but my face looks still pretty much the same (except for the beard )

oh, cheffey, I am flattered
no, I am not working as interface designer (if I would, I would redesign SketchUp to look like the iPhone ). I am a mere student, currently working in london.

my only goal is to give our beloved Ruby Gods ideas for their amazing plugins (well, if the Google guys were inspired by it and we find some nice new tools in SU7, I won't complain )

wow! a hedgehurtle!!!

a bit of playing arround with freds sculpture and indigos proxy-funktion...

so this is "fred x 555"

dear, DavidBoulder. please don't read the following! I want to spread some rumour about you...
if you do read this, please do not comment - I want to keep my believe, that my guess is true

so, here we go:

DavidBoulder does not give any information about himself, no name, no place of residence, nothing.

David is obviously his first name. but Boulder, Colorado is the location, where the Google programmers are working on the new SketchUp version!

David seems to have spent a great deal of thought about the photomatch tool in SU.

he refers to the new SketchUp version (what could be in there...)

@davidboulder said:

I'm hoping to not find the need for this in SU7, and also hopping for mostly automated calibration as well. Maybe also option for telemetry based solution to work with non-square and non-adjacent geometry.

regarding all this information my conclusion is:

David is working on the new photomatch tool for SketchUp. he is (indirectly) asking for help at SCF, for new ideas, wishes and possibilities.

so everything we post here, will be found (if possible to achieve) in the new SketchUp release! so lets put all our desires (like a flexible multi-pin photomatch system) in this thread, with loads explanations as how to achieve this (to make Dave's life easier)...

oh, I love spreading unfounded rumour!

sorry DavidBoulder, I just had to...