in user interface and the way you work - absolutely !
in joy and happiness when you create in Sketchup - definitly

No doubt you are correct but everyone thinks you are bashing the other products. Everyone takes things so deeply and literally here and that it is really spoiling the fun.
I get you completely. Maja and many other industry standard software labels have remarkable powerful capabilities but their front ends are obsolete. You would like to have all that power with less learning curve.....simple...and a reasonable observation.

30 hours is a lot of time IMO to achieve a good result.

I will look forward to seeing the finished animation......some day.
Hopefully the results will be posted here.

...there ya go.

Somebody noticed "it is pretty weird in here"..

@unknownuser said:

absolutely the best interface at 3D modelling

He said it was the best interface!
Not the best modeller.
and in the context of "fun" which is the important criteria here
if you deny that statement you must never have any fun at all.

Once upon a post there was a handy solution to the origiinal request...

@unknownuser said:

Ok, let me tidy this thing up, set up an animation plan and I'll get back to you.

...but from the very next post forward it went very bad. All the chatter in the background seems to have spoiled a good thing. At least I would have enjoyed creating a little animated piece for you. It has been a while since I made that kind of offer.

Once upon a time my suggestion would have prompted others to try their own hand at an example with their own tools. As you know....a picture...a thousand words,,, and so on.

That didn't happen.....things have changed.

There is a lot for you to learn to pull off this animation whether it be Lumion or Blender. To suggest 3 days is going to get you satisfactory results is not realistic.
Anyone who has created the scene you have described and animated it, including water effects will say that it is very advanced and tedious work.

If it does become a priority for you to complete this work I still offer free Lumion advise when and if you buy a licence. I have no affiliation to Lumion. I just enjoy unusual projects.

@unknownuser said:

Do you see that in the same way?..

yes, pretty much, and it is altogether pretty weird in here to.

Something was sent to my PM but it was just a mess..like the front end of the PM system itself. I didn't even see a "reply" button..lol...so I am responding here.

I don't think you can send me a file bigger than a flea so don't worry. There is really no need to send me the file anyway....cheers!

@unknownuser said:

I bet you could learn it in a day and have a great result in 3.

I made a mess of the URL and as you know we can't edit here in the fish tank so here is another attempt

http://ibuildmodels.com/JMC2/cannington_downtown.html

Iteration is my middle name.

I work for an firm that does storefront restorations. We take the present building and peel back the layers to find the original. Every window, door, every brick for that matter is reviewed and iterations are developed until the owner is satisfied. Here is a link to some images in process and being traded at the moment. I have completed more than 50 in the last year and I have a list of 29 and counting to complete.
[url][/http://ibuildmodels.com/JMC2/cannington_downtown.htmlurl]

I'm happy to take back the offer. As you can see I have my hands full.
Cheers!

@ashscott.... I wasn't kidding in case you thought I forgot.

Beautiful render. Some really thoughtful detail.

...if I may, I will not hurt to ad some imperfection.

@unknownuser said:

You're diverting this thread to something very ugly...

Freedom of speech does offend doesn't it....

@unknownuser said:

ducks and heads for cover

Hey, have heart, we are still a minority but hopefully these types of events will pound people into understanding that religion is "extremely" dangerous. These people are a peak into the advanced evolution of a religious mind. This is where all the doctrines will lead.

I moved from the city into the country. I have a 70 acre piece of upper woodland forest in Ontario. I moved here to get away from a world out of control. I am off the grid and we (my family) are set up here to defend ourselves against very distinct threats. People selling religion and people selling medicine.

These things are aggressively threatening my freedom.

The collateral advantage of this adjustment is being able to turn off the media.
We are so happy to have found some peace and some truth, finally!
The world we were living in has neither.

@unknownuser said:

Just wondering if people could suggest a good place to find Sketchup plugin developers

There are local developers (sketchucation members) here that have been writing ruby code since somewhere around 2007. The problem is not finding, the problem is choosing. If you are a Sketchup user it is easy. You are probably using plugins built by developers capable of writing an application for you. Just pick your favorite author and then enquire.
I'm not sure how the independents feel about taking time from supporting their own creations to build one for you but some will.

Finding someone with experience in your vertical business place who writes code is the key. Ruby experience is essential but experience in your application area will make the job less of an experiment.

Beautiful! thankyou!. Hopefully this will eventually replace 20/20 which is way over priced and difficult to use.

Not sure if this is unorthodox but I also paint a face with just plain color to get rid of material mapping.

Then it sounds like you need to do some group exploding to get rid of the old mapping.
As in your example above, you should be able to sample any one of those groups and use that sample to align all the others.

Open the group you want to edit. Take a sample with your eye dropper of the closed group next to it that you want to align your material with (mapped in the direction you want). This way you get the texture direction from the group already mapped properly instead of the default direction.

Same thing as ...positioning your material on a face and then sampling (eye dropper) from that face when ever you want to map a texture to another face in the same direction.