Posts made by pmiller

You should take a look at Form Fonts. Alan Frazer has made an enourmous collection of 3D people, in just about any pose you could want. Subscription is worth the cost many times over, plus zillions of other high quality components

Demonstrating that native SU plus some photoshop work is the way to go -- you can produce 20 or 30 stunning images in the time it would take to one render. Very nice indeed.

Still one of the best videos on the subject:

Bravo and thanks for that one Alan, How about this:
Youtube Video

I had this happen once with a laptop -- it was the inverter board. A simple thing to replace if you can get the part.
http://www.laptoprepair101.com/laptop/2009/05/04/how-test-lcd-screen-inverter-in-laptop/

Try hooking your laptop to an external monitor. If you get a normal screen, then it's the inverter board.

The Canon deal from Walmart sounds great.
Check out this link and the review:
http://www.imaging-resource.com/WB/WB.HTM - Dave's picks site (look at "mid size" cameras

and:
http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/SX130IS/SX130ISA.HTM

Thanks Alan. I have used BuzzPro 2 for years and agree with you about it's magic. All should check it out -- this used to cost a couple hundred dollars as I recall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplane_camera
Ub Iwerks, the creator of Mickey Mouse actually made the first multi-plane when he was Disneys partner.

Explorer replacement? Honda or Toyota -- good for 250 K miles at least. And they never let you down.

Since I have retired I don't use SketchUp much anymore, but I visit the forum everyday. Starting way back at version 2, I was inspired by the work of Alan and Grant Marshall. In my mind, their contributions to the community were beyond compare. I shamlessly copied Grant's watercolor technique -- the best ever by far. And made use of Alan's models and techniques everyday. And had the privilege of actually meeting Alan at BaseCamp 2005. If we had a SU hall of fame, they would be at the very top.

Me too. They were beautiful

Layers in SU are NOT like layers in CAD. In SU layers only control visibility -- they do not separate geometry. ALWAYS draw on Layer 0. If you want, say, to make the floors appear one by one in a buildup. Group the first floor, THEN move that group to Layer 1, Group second floor, then move to layer 2, etc. Make scenes where the appropriate layers are hidden or revealed as you move from scene to scene.

DPI properly refers to the number of dots per inch that a printer can muster. The more the better as the printer must 'dither' the primary colors (usually 4 but up to 9) to achieve the gamut of 24 bit images. PPI is the number of pixels per inch -- an arbitrary number that tells you how big a pixel will be. PPI and DPI are often confused and used improperly -- they are not the same. Photoshop allows you to set the PPI number when you print (play with the print size dialogue in Pshop and you will see the ppi number change). The default 72 ppi dates way back to original Macintosh 9 inch screen when the size of the pixels was about 72 ppi and dot matrix printers were 72 dpi (whence what you see is what you get). For scanning the proper term would be samples per inch -- the higher the better and bigger image.

How about posting the dwg file so we can have a go at it.

You can also make the topside surfaces transparent -- allows you to look from above through the grid and eliminates ceiling shadow.

Or, if you are careful about consistent inside face orientation (as you should be), just make a style in SU where the inside faces are black. Voila, your section cuts will appear solid black, not hollow.

Simon,
What a wonderful thread you have started. Many, many thanks.

Further to Jean's good advice -- just keep trying SU. It will take a few models and some trial and error, but it's orders of magnitude easier than other 3D software. It's been a long time now since I started on version 2 but it took me a couple of months to get "expert", by which time it became second nature and most of my modeling was done with keyboard shortcuts. You too will reach that point, just be a little more patient.

@anssi said:

What do people do to make their computers crash? I have not seen a bluescreen for years. I knew how to make my old Windows NT PC crash (opening a text file from an external UDF rewritable CD drive did the trick) but since then I have not seen a software-induced crash. Failing hardware can cause crashes, but in that respect PCs and Macs seem to be equal.

Anssi

Good question - I haven't had software crash ever that I recall, just hardware problems.

You might also look at the m6500 -- that'll get you to 3K in a hurry. I have m6400 and it's quite a machine.

@imabzeous said:

i mean to print on architectural scale like 1/4 1/2 etc, in ps i dont kno whow to do it

helppp

I assume ps means photoshop. Here's a method:

1. frame your model in SU with a line only rectangle of some known size (in feet) -- bigger than the model extents.
2. Render with the frame turned on (you can render exact same view with it off if it's on a layer)
3. In PS, measure how many pixels accross on the rectangle -- you will know how many pixels equals the distance
4. In PS crop to the rectangle lines
5. In PS use print with preview (after figuring out how many pixels wide to match the scale you want -- simple math)