Mate glad to hear you don't normally use such effects! I know exactly what you mean about noisy renders being a Maxwell user (bring on V2!), to denoise I normally use the denoise PS filter and then sharpen. Seems to do a fairly good job! Mate your plants are always great! Did I say bastard?

Sorry not so seamless. Seamless (almost) is a difficult thing. [image: QVwD_rusticTest.jpg]

Generally the PDF should be fine, unless you run into issue with font not on printers machine that may not be included in the PDF. But when exporting from InDesign you can package fonts with the file or with PDF export. I agree keeping it Vector (PDF) is better than raster. You can always have the printer run a test of early version to test the workflow. And you could always dump to raster at the end and just swap those links into InDesign in place of the PDF's. By the way a great workflow from Layout>PDF export is into Adobe Illustrator. It brings in Layout Layers (but doesn't not keep the SU layers of any viewports). You can do offset lines (someone mentioned this as LO feature request in a different post), you can use any of Illustrator's pens for very cool line styles. You can turn layers on and off, add text, make last minute changes etc. Then this cal all still be linked into InDesign to layout the book.

And another! [image: bath4u.jpg]

@david57 said: Looks very good. Thanks mate! Update added, much happier now!

Is the project stopped? any improvements?

@honoluludesktop said: Richard, "low transparency to soften", nice tip for a beginner like me to explore. Is that why some of the bunches of leaves in the center of a cluster look diffuse? Maybe that's the way it looks when the edge between the leaves and sky is well integrated. This got me to thinking that for the sake of the perspective, perhaps the reverse is better. Diffuse at the more distant edges, and sharper on the surfaces closest to the observer. Have you tried it that way? I could cutup the tree into sections that can be blurred, or made a little transparent to achieve the desired effect. Best perhaps for mid-range 2d veggies? BTW, do I misunderstand this post? What is a 3d billboard tree, as vs a 2d tree? Sorry mate, I thought I had replied earlier! I didn't play any further than this test given the results of billboards (yes same as 2d, just a commonly used term for same!) in rendering just has trouble compeating with 3d so I dropped the tests, though I did some later tests just using the map on a sandbox tooled single mesh and bought forward and back the obvious parts of the plant, I do this with a few plants I use to get better sun shadow response and it worked ok on the tree too. Cant find the tests now!

@thomthom said: Not sure how things work in Maxwell, but if you use V-Ray for Sketchup, which runs from within SU and doesn't export anything this is a good aid to set the HDRI position as there are no visual aid provided. VfSU simply asks for offset values. Mate maxwell is the same, studio (the standalone app) will allow you to position your background visually, though reflection, refraction and illuminaton channels are all by trial and error and lots of both! For many the best way to avoid the excessive testing is to use a chrome sphere in the scene to replace the subject, run a test to see on the reflections where the location is and then adjust to correct, delete the sphere and unhide all other for the render, to get the reflections good enough to see this can take some lengthy render times! I'm just reversing this process to speed it up and get accurate results first go!

Mate I think the two most important processes are to get two differing sun shadows - you can test this in SU by bringing your first image in as a watermark! Then the other is ensuring your light effects added in PS post pro match closely the sun directions from SU! Also obviously the choice of line type and density on at least one of the SU exports!

Richard The movie won't open for me. What codec did you use to compress the movie?

@linea said: Richard I first looked at this thread last week, i really like your technique, I've been copying the style a bit for an animation at work. Black is the new black. Thanks mate! I posted a video to the gallery here - I was digging through my HD the other week and found this old animation I did which gave me the idea for the style of these posted images. http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=16735&p=132320#p132320

Richard I am interested in your tutorial. Thanks agrazdi

PushPull does use the Unit Snapping length, if it is set and so it will snap to the distance set there.

@pbacot said: I'd say the amount of detail is already more than enough and small discrepancies would be unnoticed unless you were doing a shot from the POV of someone actually standing on the roof. But I suppose an OCD tendency is what drives this sort of craftsmanship. This stuff is incredible. Like rocket science to a newb like me. Do you have to just guess what sort of shape the 2d image will make, rendering it over and over until you get what you want? How do you also add color and texture or is it all in the map? Mate you are probably right about the OCD!!! It isn't the case of too much trial and error, although the capping was certainly a lot of that! For the second test the map took about 20minutes to hand craft. As what I wanted to achieve understood. It is just the case that if you have a displacement map grading from 0 (full black) to 255 (full white) and set the displacement to 10cm (the white) you can actually make the height of any point relative as a percentage of the height = the percentage of the grey! Meaning in that case an area with a height of 5cm would be painted 127.5. In the second test for example to gain the tile proflie I start in PS with three squares and using the gradient fill grey the first 50% to 100% top to bottom then the third square 0% to 50% top to bottom and the centre square diagonally from 0% to 100%. then just merge these and transform width to be half the ridge and half the valley of the profile, copy and flip to few times to fill the tile. Merge these and you have one tile then just copy to fill the map! Done! The greyscale displacement map pushes the surface up and down the a colour map is used which drapes the tile colour onto this surface, I use the same map in that case as the bump map to add some fine texture to the tile finish!

really interesting feature Solo. Do you have a rendering where you've used that ecosystem? -Brodie

@plot-paris said: sounds pretty advanced, the stuff you are producing there (even if I can barely see the effect you are trying to create - may be my badly calibrated monitor though ) and now I fully understand why you prefer maxwell's external material management to indigo's "all saved in SketchUp" approach. to set up this multilayered material in in indigo would be near impossible. Richard, I am truely impressed how detailed your knowledge of material-compositing is. I would love to see some more of your tests! Thanks plot (again!!) Mate I'm not so good with complex materials though have some idea how to use the editor long hand to get the result I'm after. Yes regarding Indigo's approach! This material has 4 layers to achieve the effect I'm after (the one you can't see!!;) ); Layer 1. Colour Map / Clip Map 1 / Bump Map - Diffuse. Layer 2. Colour Map / Clip Map 1 / Bump Map - Reflective. Layer 3. Colour Map / Clip Map 2 / Bump Map - Reflectance. Layer 4. Colour Map / Clip Map 3 / Bump Map - Reflectance. All said if Maxwell wasn't an unbiased Physically based renderer then nearly all of this could be done via one simple layer. So its a bit of a catch 22 - you can create amazing materials though sometimes like here you need to go to a lot of trouble to create alternatives to produce an otherwise rather simple effect.

Thanks mate appreciate your support! I love using the wire trees, I'd love to make some other types of model scale trees though find it hard to note any other good examples!

Funny with so many years past since using PowerPoint to compile this, I'm beating my head as to how I did it, not working it out. Must have drunk way too much coffee that day! Though it's nice to look back at some of my old architectural design works.

Very impressive, you've got me ideas for an easiest way to broadcast some animations. Thanks for sharing. MALAISE

This it? http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?p=15472#p15472