This thread needs to be a sticky. It is absolutely fabulous! I'm trying to think of some future topics!

Rick

@unknownuser said:

Hi Everyone,

I just wanted to clarify how to get copyrighted material removed from the 3D Warehouse. According the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)

Dumb question - does the DMCA or other treatises really take into account that ebay and the internet (for that matter) are international, and some places will/do not recognize these?

Now, believe me - I am for doing the right thing, but I know that in past and pending cases that lawyers have to jump through international hoops to get things resolved. Litigation can take years.

Rick

Thanks all for your suggestions. I guess a picture is in order here.

The landscape was not derived from sandbox tools - the client wanted to clearly see the contour graduations so that is why I chose this method. But editing that is a mess, IMO.

The hard sloped area is the point of contention. He has a beautiful vista looking out over a river and wants to maintain that visibility but also does not want his little kids rolling down the hill to their death

We are experimenting with various scenarios to show the client. 2D plans just do not do this any justice and he was very pleased with my feeble efforts thus far in SU.

So, that is my dilemma.

Thanks again!

Rick

So I have this beautiful landscape model that was started from AutoCAD polylines and heavily massaged in SU. I have added trees, walls, buildings etc.

NOW, the client wants to see the same thing except for a large area that the slopes need to change to accommodate some existing features. I know I will have to add a retaining wall, which will be a lot of surface editing and re-tweeking.

My question is - what is the easiest way of modifying parts of a well-developed model? I really do not wish to start over with a new surface because the original AutoCAD polylines converted left a lot to be desired - thus the reason for my heavy massaging.

Any thoughts/ideas will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Rick

I can sympathize with you. On a project I'm working on, I'm battling the magenta 'perpendicular' inference with the red axis inference. In the view where I have to be, the two are very close. So zooming in really does nothing for me either. The only way for me to combat it is to orbit slightly to avoid this situation.

As I come from a CAD background, a wishlist item for me would be have a hotkey to turn on/off various inferences.

Rick

@mike lucey said:

Great picture Jim. Looks like you are left-handed? I wonder, out of curiosity how many design people are left-handed?

<raises left hand> At least we're in our right mind!

Rick

Hi all,

I have a surface created from imported AutoCAD lines. I push/pulled all the lines up to the proper elevation. Now I am asked to make this surface exaggerated so that the the contours look greater than what they actually are.

Right now the contour interval is 1', which on a large scale, looks relatively flat. Is there a ruby/method, etc. that will allow me to pick the entire surface and push-pull to achieve, say 5' intervals.

This will achieve a much hillier plan, but the contour elevations will be able to be seen by the client.

I hope I'm explaining this correctly.

Thanks,

Rick

Ah, that's the beauty of a wireless house. I have the laptop set up in the living room to work. When my wife wants to talk about stuff, I keep on working, politely nodding my head like I am listening (I am, well half the time). I do keep a little notebook open to jot the important things I'm supposed to remember. Then when I'm done for the day, I'll check off the 'honey-doos' and I'm not in the dog house!

If I could find a job that I could just do SU, I would think I have died and gone to CAD/modeling heaven. It's almost too fun even when I'm designing and doing tedius work. 2010 will be the year I start playing with the rendering side.

Rick

Like everyone else, I cannot open it either. Mine is on a Mac though. Java did download an update/addon. I then got the Icevision screen (black with a withe grid perspective) and an error window popped up with:

Application Error - Unable to launch the application
Name: ICEvision
Publisher: Ice Edge Business Solutions
From: http://icevision.ice-edge.com

Pressing the Details button tells me that there is an unexpected exception: java.lang.NullPointerException and a bunch of code.

Pressing OK closes the app.

FYI,

Rick

(this is the second time I typed this as the first time, Sketchucation and my Safari threw up, but that is another post)

Is there a way of adding tooltips to a ruby? The reason why I ask is because I have amassed quite a number of rubies and if I don't use a lot of them regularly I forget what is what.

I don't want to upset anyone, but some of the names given on their rubies well, are confusing to me. Like I said if I use them regularly, then I do know what they are. Some direct examples in my plugins pulldown are: Contour Lines, Contours, and Lsystem.

What I propose is that if I can hover over the plugin ruby name, a tooltip will appear that gives a short description of what the ruby is. Or even the bottom of the screen will tell me what it does, or a text box will appear, something. Is this something that is doable? And if so, is the code easily modified so that a layman such as I can change it to add it?

Thanks for your consideration.

Rick

@jean lemire said:

Hi Rick, hi folks.

Make sure that, when importing the CAD file, you uncheck the option to preserve the drawing origin.

With contours, there is a great chance that your drawing end up many miles away from the axes origin of SU. This can create problems.

Just ideas.

I beg to differ, but if you have an imported plan and later you decide that you want to import more then preserving the drawing origin is imperative. For example, I import the contours and get them the way I want them in SU. Now I want to import roads, fences, etc. Without the same drawing origin, then it is almost impossible to line up things properly. At least that has been my experience.

Rick

Hi all,

I've been playing quite a bit with importing DWG files into SU and have come to the sad realization that SU does not handle DWG import too well. This is dealing specifically with importing polylines with Z elevations (contours). Here is how I arrived at this conclusion:

1. In AutoCAD, I assured myself that all polylines had a Z elevation, were contiguous, and if they were a closed polyline, it was indeed closed.
2. I imported the DWG file into SU. SU reported back 2 layers and 276 poly-lines imported. Everything else looked normal. Ok so far.
3. Upon closer inspection, I found that the lines start overlapping each other. Even though they are on different Z elevations and even in AutoCAd they clearly do NOT overlap.
4. One would have expected that the closed polylines would have meshed together, but no dice.

Now here's where it really goes off the edge, IMO:

1. I draw a large rectangle down at elevation zero and drape the contours to the rectangle. Why? because I want to push-pull the contours to their respective elevations and have a 'stepped effect' like Donna's model (see the forest thread).
2. I connect end contours with other edges to hopefully have it close and create faces - nope.
3. Again, upon closer inspection, I see that since I have draped, i now have open areas where I clearly didn't have them in the other situations. Almost always they are small little openings that cannot been seen without zooming way down into the model.

I know thre are rubies to fix some of this stuff, but I am wondering why it is this way in the first place? Maybe that's the reason why Google dropped dwg in favor of Collata?

I also read somewhere that if I enlarge my AutoCAD drawing, say 100x (scale up) and import it into SU and then scale it back down, it may help with this situation - but I haven't tried this yet. The ability to semi-accurately read in files form AutoCAD is imperative to my line of work. But I'd like to have it without lots of hoops to jump through - pipe dream?

Anyone have any ideas?

Rick

@escapeartist said:

Merry Christmas!

I rendered these Pfeffernusse today:

[attachment=0:285v4hx6]<!-- ia0 -->pfeffer.JPG<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:285v4hx6]

Using Hand 2.0. The textures a baked, and I just need my Confectioner's Sugar 1.0 plugin to finish them off!

too bad you didn't use the add-on smell.rb and taste.rb. That way we could all enjoy them too.

Rick

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to all on SCF!

Rick
York, PA

Very cute! Oh, you would think that there would be more Noah's (sharks) swimming around with all those Roo's around (free lunch)

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to you.

Rick

Teofas,

I absolutely love these renders! At first glance it looked like a quaint victorian interior. On further inspection, I see that is not the case, but is sort of a mix of old vs. new. But it is blended so well that I don't mind.

Haven't seen any of your other renders, but this one is simply stunning.

Rick

Hi all,

Wondering if anyone has played with taking a large 360 degree panoramic photo and laying in a model as a background? I have been working on improvements to a proposed site and the owner would like for me to pan around and the background picture would follow suite.

I hope I'm explaining this properly. He wants to see how his changes will impact critical sight views such as the river (desireable), modern landfill (not desireable), etc. I told him it would be real easy to do static views, but he wants more.

If anyone has done this, please point me to a site where I can view the ani and/or the model to see how it is done or tutorials.

Thanks!

Rick

I like the colors alot better with v2 - more vibrant, however the grass doesn't look as nice as previous renders - is this because this a v2 work in progress like the trees too?

Rick

@david57 said:

Messing around with another model.

Looks cool - I'd like to see the floorplan/inside. The structural engineers aren't going to like you.

Rick

@unknownuser said:

it's just that right now we are in the process of moving and building a new home.

Wait! Where the render of the new home?

Rick