@unknownuser said:

Stinkie,

Ease of use is really simple. Of course it is not SU but then again it is not MAX either. After a few hours of video I was modeling quite effortlessly. Granted remdering is never a simple task but I have found Modo to be far easier than lets say Maxwell or Vray for the same results.

I have to agree with stinkie, it really is hard to beat the shear simplicity of maxwell given the quality of the results one can expect which is certainly better at the worst end then what I have seen from the best of MODO!

If you aren't worried too much about getting perfect materials maxwell really is a one click renderer, this image was rendered with maxwell as it comes straight from the box from SU with only the glass material linked all else is just staight textures painted to the SU model and it rendered in 30min on a 2.8 dual core 1gb ram! Doesn't get much easier!

The beauty I find with Maxwell is the ability to save materials to a library as opposed to the material settings being stored in SU and also the multilight feature that means you only have to worry about your camera fstop setting and all else can be adjusted when rendering has finished including varying quickly between a night shot and daytime shot!

Having tested a host of renderers I'd have to suggest Maxwell is by far the easiest to learn!

@sab said:

I am trying to simplify a very crowded colour palette so I can export and render more easily. There are 150 materials in the file, over 400 component definitions and 250 odd groups, it's a big project. Many of the components are from other projects and have different colours basically for the same thing: window componets with 6 different coulours of glass every tree component has a 2 different colours of green etc. I would like to be able to select a material in an object or on the palette and be able to replace that material in all objects to which it is applied in the project: grouped objects objects in components, everywhere it occurs. Many of the materials I can't even find when I look through the geometry.

It has been on my wish list for some time to be able to do this through the material editor! Similarly I would like the option upon importing a new component where similarly named materials are present to be asked "A material GREEN FLOOR TILE already exists in the model, do you wish to:

A. Rename the new material,
B. Replace the new material with the existing one,
C. Replace the existing material with the new one,
D. Take a coffee break and think about this for a while?

When importing numerous components that contain say "Furniture Chrome" as i often do I can end up with numerous materials named Furniture Chrome1...8 - frustrating!

The other functionality I would like to see implemented is the option when deleting a material from the material editor is to be able to select the material to be used instead of applying just the default as only allowed now!

unfortunately scott both Modo and Cinema 4d are far from free though infact at the complete other end of the scale!

If you want for a really easy to use and free renderer I'd go with stinkie's suggestion and check out Indigo. Podium could be a choice too but you'll note from the gallery the quality is rather limited but good for the price. Though if you are on a mac certainly take a serious look at cheeta. I know I'd be putting some time it with that one if I wasn't on PC!

Hey Lewis

Mate I've really only just joined this forum, the PPB is pretty much home for my SU fix as it covers a broader range of design topics not limited to SU!

I dropped in for the first time the other week from a link on the PPB and have decided to register and hang around a bit!

Must say I always find it funny how every forum I visit I get Richard as my username!! always a surprise really, make me feel important as if it's reserved - or is it simply no one wants to get called "Dick"?

Damn Lewis I saw this post heading and thought YESSSSSS! Linux-- NOOOo!

I was so hoping! Well I must say I hope google will be bold enough to rewrite the engine one day soon to allow it to run over multipro and also to hanle better high poly counts. SU has so much potential that I feel is limited so much at present given the inability with high poly count!

FINGERS CROSSED!!!!

@unknownuser said:

Richard,

When exporting are you decreasing the sliders to reduce geometry. There is no real thing you can do to bring them way down as like you said they are split into separate geometry. High poly is high poly. The more you crunch them down the less they will look like the original. I do use Onyx tree but I export out as 3ds and then import into my renderer of choice. SU can just not handle the 10's of thousands of polys for a decent looking landscape. I use a dummy object just for placement and then either remove the dummy object in the renderer or just shut it off using layers.

Scott

Thanks scott

Yes I've got the branches and trunk (only using bows and b1 branches) down to near minimum though it is the leaf density that is blowing the poly count! And yes mate I always use a dummy layer for placing landscape!

Here are the trees I've imported from Onyx to SU so far!

@mateo soletic said:

All,
Sorry for my question but I dont quite understand the point of importing High polly
Onix into SU. If You are going to render it anyway why not import it directly
into and position it into a renderer. Unless You want it in natural SU then is a different
matter, still dont see the point.
Having said that I never used Onix trees, maybe there is something I should know.

Richard, by the way nice to see You here, You have a very interesting site .

Thanks mate I'm happy to be here now too. I've been spending most of the last years over on the PushPullBar site and a lot also on the maxwell forums. I've fallen in love with maxwell!

Hence the reason for wanting more realistic trees!! I've made a good collection of light weight 3d trees using the TREE FACTORY file I developed a few years ago and should probably persevere with generating better ones with that as they really create very little drag within SU. Mind you once edited high poly onyx trees using a dummy layer can still work to populate a scene. I could drag these trees into Maxwell studio without any issues though it can be a pain there to populate without the ease of location to ground level given I don't ever have the luxury of working on flat sites!

BTW I look forward to hanging around here a bit more as I have seen now that the site has really built to a very good atandard!!!!

@solo said:

Richard, send me a tree that you have made (zip and email to my address thats on my site linked below) and I will make it into 4 .png or clipmaps for you (reason for 4 is i render them at 4 different rotated views so you have the same tree with 4 different views in order to mass if you need to without repetition)

Thanks Solo for the generous offer, I can do a good job straight out of onyx for building billboards where the image map is exported with alpha and dxf panel sized correctly as well. I am really looking to make use of full 3d trees for rendering in forground in maxwell utilising the instancing abilities. and getting correct shadowing and more realism.

Thanks again!

Guys / Gurus

I've been trying to bring Onyx generated trees into SU, the issue that I am having is that all the leaves are separate geometry and the model therefore grinds SU to a hault with a good tree having about 100,000 poly's. I can use the trees if I create a dummy tree as part of the component for positioning but it would be great if the leaves came in as components which I figured they would have!

Has anyone had any luck working through an alternative method of transfer to SU? I've have tried both DXF and 3DS input and niether produce the best result!!!

Cheers in advance!!!

Biebel

I agree mate as the abilities with sketchup grows particularly with Whaat's plug I think the Google developers need to incorporate better uv mapping tools. I'm not sure the ruby guys will pull it off in the near future but it is well over due for sure! The pads on this lounge took me ages to paint triangle sample paint to the next, grrrr! then if I double click to edit - bang all out of whack again!

Yep!!!!

I'm amazed!!! Way beyond belief!!! I have to say that is an amazing team effort!!!! Solo and of course Whaat!

Jeff (Jake) hey mate!!

i've made it here after a fair while!!

Nice to see what you are doing with MODO - I'm still working with Maxwell and improving results all the time! I've been watching a few of the MODO vids and it looks interesting and given the animation capabilities now and mocap input where axyz have already plugin peeps it really is something I now need to look at!

I tell you what I look really forward to the day someone develops a material or shader translator where materials from maxwell, modo, indigo, podium, vray etc may be coverted to other formats! It would be a real godsent to be able to use any material editor and then export your model to any renderer with known results. The library building for changing renderers has to be the single biggest drag!!!

Hey BTW have you looked at FRY, I know Biebel has been plying with it but from what I've seen elsewhere looks like he has dropped it from his workflow! (is that true mate!?)
Good to see you still so active everywhere!

And hey BTW(2) anyone interested in render quality should check out Stack Studio gallery on the maxwell forum. they have been producing a lot for Habid and all I can say is WOW WEE!!!!! New benchmark in quality!!!!! Amazing stuff!

Ah Mr Mike Lucy!!!!!!

Hope they are hanging well mate!!!

Nice model mate!

I would love a script that allows - I'll just do it by example as it is easier to explain:

1. I import a tree generated by Onyz or similar,
2. separate leaves into one group (as all geometry is loose),
3. I select one of the leaf plates and select to make a component of that geometry and search and replace all similar geometry with a copy of this new component which would be located, rotated and orientated to suit the geometry being replaced.

The aim is obviously to speed up the use of detailed trees etc imported into sketchup and further to allow the editing and texturing of the leaf plates via a component.

I certainly feel this could be a proprietary script given the great advantages within sketchup!

Any takers!!

Cheers, Richard

@kwistenbiebel said:

You also might want to check out this thread on the Podium forum about the sketchup 'Tree Factory'. I made some trees with it, but it works manually. It would be great if it was made into an automated script though .

(scroll further down the page):

301 Moved Permanently

(www.websitetoolbox.com)

Hey mate you did well to drag that up it's been around now for years, thanks for posting it it was one of the first things I ever did with sketchup and lost the tut somewhere in my system! I do remember some years ago working with one of the scripters Rick? who did get part way to making a script to automate variations of trees from those original camponents.

I'll see if I can dig it out and find who it was, might have his details in the script.

Must say with the quality of onyx's package - hard to beat that - though I would love to see someone write a script to find similar geometry within a component and make them nested replacing each instance of the similar geometry with a component.

Meaning say you have 2000 leaves each of similar geo but the location and orientation differs the script searches each instance of this similar geometry and replaces it with a copy of the first (component) and locates, rotates the new component to suit the geometry being replaced.