Wishing everyone from members to visitors a very Merry Christmas and prosperous new year

Little festive render to up the mood!

Some Rayscaper tests....

I love the Polyhaven integration to just drag drop HDRIs to switch up the lighting.

@L-i-am

Would be nice if AI tackled real world problems rather than disrupting markets that create employment.

SUbD fun with furniture

Rendered in Rayscaper

Having some fun with Rayscaper

The guys over at Lightbeans had added Lightbeans to our ExtensionStore and site.

Lightbeans 3D Texture Library | SketchUcation

3D SketchUp Community for Design and Engineering Professionals.

(sketchucation.com)

I've been using there site for a few months and the textures are high quality. If you are doing ArchViz and need access to high quality render ready building products this is a must have!

Plus it's free! They also drop new materials every week and its all accessible directly in SketchUp.

Check it out if you're interested....

From this separate thread I ended have some play time with texturing...

Modelled using SUbD, UV unwrapped with WrapR and a quick render in Rayscaper

@pixelcruncher is hard at work crushing bugs and adding quality of life stuff for the next release....

Above was 5000 samples at 2k resolution on a 4080 card with no denoising in 14.5mins

Below was 500 samples at 2k resolution on a 4080 card with denoising in 1.5mins

AI rendering has its uses for ideation.

It reminds when rendering went mainstream. Every 2 months there was new engine.

I think there's still more to come with this but its still very flaky and low res.

I've never seen or tasted Twinkies and for obvious reasons they couldn't have a brand name in the game.

Nor do I know what this even does in the game. But it was a fun challenge. The texture did all the work.

Further Information and usage instructions on Axyz is available here

Requirements

• LibFredo6: v14.5 or above Download Libfredo
• Sketchucation Tools v4.4.1 or above Download Sketchucation Tools
• SketchUp 2017 and above
• Platform: Windows and Mac OSX
• Licensed under Sketchucation SCFLicense (Free)

Overview

Perform transformation on selected objects with a Widget: Translation, Rotation, Scaling, Mirror

• Manipulates Guides, Edges, Faces, Images, Groups and Components
• Position Widget in the model by a simple Click or inferencing
• Transformation (translation, rotation, scaling, mirror) by Click-Drag on a widget handles
• Post-transformation adjustments via VCB and modifiers (copy and multiples, distance, angle, scale factors)

Documentation

Help is integrated in the extension, as a Quick Card.

Link to YouTube Playlist

Keybindings

TAB to cycle transformations
ALT to cycle global, local or current context axes
SHIFT to cycle individual centers
CTRL to cycle copy mode
ARROW to cycle nudge mode

Have fun!

Release Notes

1.1a - Fixed the issue of Divide (ex: 3/) for Rotation

If you missed yesterdays announcement from Epic with their new Fab platform...

Become a Fab Publisher to Sell Digital Assets & Files - Fab.com

Join Fab's new marketplace to create, share, and sell digital content. Get 88% revenue share and 100% until the end of 2024. Build your creative business now!

Fab.com (www.fab.com)

Part of this change means the assets currently available at Quixel for free will become paid after December 2024.

To get all 18k assets just login into your account at Quixel then visit the collections area...

Quixel Megascans

Discover a world of unbounded creativity. Explore a massive asset library, and Quixel’s powerful tools, plus free in-depth tutorials and resources.

Quixel Megascans (quixel.com)

Press F12 to open your browsers console and paste in the following js

(await (async (startPage = 0, autoClearConsole = true) => {

  const getCookie = (name) => {
    const value = `; ${document.cookie}`;
    const parts = value.split(`; ${name}=`);
    if (parts.length === 2) return parts.pop().split(';').shift();
  }

  const callCacheApi = async (params = {}) => {
    const defaultParams = {
      page: 0,
      maxValuesPerFacet: 1000,
      hitsPerPage: 1000,
      attributesToRetrieve: ["id", "name"].join(",")
    }
    const response = await fetch("https://proxy-algolia-prod.quixel.com/algolia/cache", {
      "headers": {
        "x-api-key": "2Zg8!d2WAHIUW?pCO28cVjfOt9seOWPx@2j"
      },
      "body": JSON.stringify({
        url: "https://6UJ1I5A072-2.algolianet.com/1/indexes/assets/query?x-algolia-application-id=6UJ1I5A072&x-algolia-api-key=e93907f4f65fb1d9f813957bdc344892",
        params: new URLSearchParams({ ...defaultParams, ...params }).toString()
      }),
      "method": "POST",
    })
    return await response.json()
  }

  const callAcl = async ({ id, name }) => {
    console.log(`  --> Adding Item ${id} | ${name}...`)

    const response = await fetch("https://quixel.com/v1/acl", {
      "headers": {
        "authorization": "Bearer " + authToken,
        "content-type": "application/json;charset=UTF-8",
      },
      "body": JSON.stringify({ assetID: id }),
      "method": "POST",
    });
    const json = await response.json()
    if (json?.isError) {
      console.error(`  --> **UNABLE TO ADD ITEM** Item ${id} | ${name} (${json?.msg})`)
    } else {
      console.log(`  --> ADDED ITEM Item ${id} | ${name}`)
    }
  }

  // 1. Check token exist, quixel API needs it
  console.log("-> Checking Auth API Token...")
  let authToken = ""
  try {
    const authCookie = getCookie("auth") ?? "{}"
    authToken = JSON.parse(decodeURIComponent(authCookie))?.token
    if (!authToken) {
      return console.error("-> Error: cannot find authentication token. Please login again.")
    }
  } catch (_) {
    return console.error("-> Error: cannot find authentication token. Please login again.")
  }

  // 2. Get total count of items
  console.log("-> Getting Total Number of Pages....")
  const { nbPages: totalPages, hitsPerPage: itemsPerPage, nbHits: totalItems } = await callCacheApi()

  console.log(`-> Total Items to add: ${totalItems} | ${totalPages} total pages with ${itemsPerPage} per page`)
  if (!confirm(`Click OK to start adding ${totalItems} items in your account.`)) return

  // Loop
  for (let pageIdx = startPage || 0; pageIdx < totalPages; pageIdx++) {
    console.log("-> ======================= PAGE " + pageIdx + " START =======================")

    console.log("-> Getting Items from page " + pageIdx + " ...")

    const { hits: items } = await callCacheApi({ page: pageIdx })
    const aclPromises = items.map(callAcl)

    await Promise.all(aclPromises)
    console.log("-> ======================= PAGE " + pageIdx + " COMPLETED =======================")
    if (autoClearConsole) console.clear() // Fix the issue that too much log hangs the console. Set autoClearConsole = false to keep the logs

  }
})())

Hit enter and it will begin adding the assets to your account. It can take a few mins and can run into to snags. But for help on that please visit this Github...

A script to automatically add ALL items to your account in quixel

A script to automatically add ALL items to your account in quixel - README.md

Gist (gist.github.com)

As you can see all assets were assigned to my account which saves you a ton of time!

Fun little idea I saw for a fold out step for kiddos to be able to reach the sink

Early tests using @pixelcruncher Rayscaper 0.9.6

Sketchucation Tools 5.0.0 is available
Download

Release Notes:

• New UI/UX Web dialog
• Progress and notification changes
• Licensing activation/releasing
• Improved update notifications

Toolbar icon will now indicate updates to extensions. If you do not has Sketchucation Tools toolbar enabled in your workspace it will self-enable when you have updates pending.

There's a new Quick Menu to get to common settings and features

Licensing has been integrated into the Sketchucation Tools dialog so you can quickly activate and release licenses.

Bundles now show current device and cloned Bundles making migrating to new device or SketchUp versions much easier.

Lots of other tweaks and improvements under the hood too.

The major problem for people that are advocates for using Styles is that SketchUp has now retired the app in favour of AI image generation.

I would like to see the the app open sourced because adding personally created presentation styles to models I feel is still beneficial.

SketchUp still supports Styles just not the authoring of them.

Fun with Animator and metallic materials...
https://youtu.be/Bd5_8KreTfM

@pilou I prefer to see Majid's natural talent for hand painted and sketched output than some AI generated stuff.