Thanks Dave, that was the word I was looking for. Do you have an wood cornice models. That I could retexture with stone?

I was wondering if someone would have a model of a stone crown molding (I am not sure my terminology is correct so see the link and give me the proper description) that would go above a dentil molding on the restoration of an old Chicago style hotel.

See the model in the hands of the director of community development at:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=333&t=44234

Good karma to anyone that could save me hours of modeling and check with me on how I could possibly return the favor.

Disclaimer: I am not practicing architecture, but I came up short on a photo prop and am building one out of thin air.

The building model is? You guessed it SketchUp.

The rest is none of your business. And my wife was assisting me on the photo shoot.

We just started moving into a new house. The interior is all Saltillo tile and I think the dog equates this to rock and thinks he should christen each tile.

Using 123D Catch from autoCAD I was relatively pleased with the elephant which is fairly complex form so I thought I would test a simple case like a box for dimensional accuracy and I ended up with some surrealistic and cubistic, but not rectilinear results. I would love to sit down and wrestle this thing to the ground but I am moving down close to the Mexico border and also have an important photojob to do and need to sell the Phoenix house. When and if things slow down I will give this 123D thing another run.

I am using Twilight to render these images. When I set "two point perspective" I can't get the image into the view. In other words it is not rendering the scene showing on the screen. Offsetting the SU image does not seem to work.

So I go to 3-point perspective and look what happens to the store fronts in the bottom 1/3rd of image. Looks like California during an earthquake.

Here is the original SU file. No distortion in store fronts or upper window sills.

My questions are:
How do I center my image when rendering in 2pt perspective?
What is going on with the distortion?

The front texture was added in PhotoMatch and the right side texture was not.

Has anyone see these problems when using Twilight Render?

@bjornkn said:

Looks like a relative of Zorro
Is it the UV mapping that messes up the texturing?
Strange trunk/model BTW.
Have you also tried other "3D scanners", like http://www.agisoft.ru/products/photoscan/
Or Photomodeler Scanner?

So far I really prefer the results that can be had from tgi3D Photoscan
I love the way it combines full control with "shrink-wrapping" meshes.

Being in the pockets of Autodesk (or should it be said the other way around?) isn't what I want the most
It is very sad how they have bought most of the 3D competition
Good to know that SketchUp is "safe" now;)

It is an elephant not a fox.
Not sure if I understand what you mean by messed up texturing as more than one rendition has been posted. On the first post there were not enough photo samples from enough angles. This last piece was not the original app, it was the prodeuct of that app exported to SU. The only purose was to show how the trunk looped around and reconnected.
Don't blame me for the quality of the Thai sculpture.
I just tried the AutoDesk tool because the beta is free, but will look into the agisoft

I trimmed some of the foliage and change the angle so you could see how the trunk reconnects to the wall. If time allows I will do more experiments with metrics tomorrow.

There is a hole, albeit a small one, behind the trunk.

There are 3 levels of detail (mobile device/standard/detailed) The image I showed you was the mobile version. Also more original views help with ambient occlusion and greatly enhances texture detail. I think part of what bothers you is the sculptural technique of molding the tusks to the trunk to make sure physical support is created (IE no thin parts sticking out on their own). If you used multiple radio triggered cameras you could capture a live elephant in quite a bit of detail. As to accuracy of dimensioning I suspect it is quite good where you have hard geometric edges to measure to. Remember, if you import the mesh into SU you will need to scale your object using an actual ground truth measurement manually taken for the actual scene at the time of the photograph. Once you do this all other points in the mesh will scale to the same degree of precision.

I call your attention to the void created by the trunk loop and remind you that in the real object the tusks are molded into the trunk for support. The original (real) object is just decoration and not a highly detailed piece of fine sculpture.

Also once imported as a 3D object into SU and then taken to a render engine, shadow which I was avoiding in the capture would be reintroduced enhancing the sense of depth.

Hussel see the elephant sculpture on the following page: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=43928&start=15 . Just a handful of photos of your coin from multiple angles and you can create the mesh at the press of a button with "123d Catch" from AutoDesk.

On the left is the mesh and on the right is a random angle of the 3D object.

I am redesigning my house on the fly to get it ready for sale and doing all the craftwork involved so I have not really been able to experiment very deeply. What you see was created from just three photos taken about 50 degrees apart. From what I can see on the web many of these projects might use 30 or 40 photos to avoid ambient occlusion. The mesh you see above is an image display option. The full image has the UVs on the mesh' So far I have not been able to get SU to open the DWG file directly so to get it into SU I have used TIGs OBJ2SU plugin which does not seem to bring the UVs along. It seems like you do not get to own the mesh directly as it may only live on a AutoCAD server out in the cloud.I think the project file only consists of a URL pointing to the autoCAD server. So if you are not online you may not be able to rotate your project in time. This is just one of many things I need to test at this point. However by exporting to OBJ then you can pull the mesh into SU. If it sounds like I am rambling I am a bit sleep deprived. However I am excited by the ease of use and the potential. With synchronized camera you could even still capture a moving object. Give me some time for moving and testing and I promise to show more of my research.
The three original source images were captured at a hotel dock near the flooded Chao Praya River in Central Bangkok in late October, 2011.

On an archaeology related note. I was baby sitting for my daughter and her husband because they were going to see a Harvard Club presentation called "Mayan Apocalypse 2012: What to pack." It was a serious presentation but the presenter just couldn't resist the title.

@jga said:

Sorry, never installed it, but it could be a newer version of AutoCAD DWG that SKUP can handle.

Installed it and it is amazingly simple. I was even able to export as object file and import that into SU via TIG's OBJ to SU plugin. Also made an animation but I don't have the right codecs to get the animation working. I dont know as much about UVs as I should so proper texturing is a hang up. Biggest problem is lack of proper documentation.

@jga said:

For software, AutoDesks 123D is worth a look
http://www.123dapp.com/catch

I just downloaded this and gave it a try. Have you exported to a dwg mesh and tried to import to SU? I tried and SU said it could not open the dwg file.

Yes beware of the slides of March. They seem to be installed on solid concrete. Sort of a postpartum form of birth control.

BEWARE THE HIDES OF MARCH!
Julius Caesar Act 1, scene 2, 15–19

Have you tried going to google earth and grabbing vertical views to set up your base model?

I believe 2D representation will eventually go the way of rock painting. We live and experience in a 3D world. You can't escape the fact that 2D is a lower bandwidth form of communication which implies our knowledge of the world around us is constricted by the use or 2D representation. Up til now we did not have the tools for 3D virtual representation. As our computer tools improve so will our repressed ability to fully exploit 3D virtual documentation.

In terms of a holistic understanding of our environment we are on the verge of great and valuable advances. Just think how much progress we have made in earth sciences since the introduction of satellite imaging. Three-D capture and presentation is the next step forward.Think what books were like before books with picture or images without motion or films without 3D. From here 3D documentation seems like a great leap forward, but as soon as we have it it will become the norm and no more remarkable that the telephone or the pencil.

How are you attaching the leather on the first stool? If it is a row of tacks, do you drill small pilot holes? I have trouble driving brass tacks into oak.