Kim - for an smoking infant you make nice car renders. The paint is cool and looks especially good on the sample.

Regards, Ross

I'm very much enjoying this thread. Great to see where you guys work and especially nice to see so many work from home.

Eric -- would you believe those rings are crop circles left by alien visitors? Okay don't believe it. I mow from the trees out in growing spirals. I like the pattern and it makes mowing over an acre of lawn a little more enjoyable. Practically every house here has a lawn tractor -- we need them as large lawns are common.

I work from a home office I share with my wife. (Yes, we are together nearly 24/7/365 but I have to say that is a good thing). We live in a fairly rural area not far from our island's major city. Most of you probably wouldn't even call Charlottetown a city since its population is under 40,000 people. Anyways, where we live/work is a place called 'Mermaid'. It isn't really a town, just a geographical area. We look out on a fairly wide (but short river). We are near the mouth of the river so it is tidal. I attach a panorama showing the view from our home. The panorama was taken from the deck that is above our small office. We have the same panoramic view from the office -- just from a lower angle.

Regards, Ross

Hi Mike
There are numerous styles (like the ones I distribute via FormFonts) that have a pencil look. They are typically monochromatic. If you are handy with Photoshop (or other editors) you could probably merge a pencil-styled export with a colour version of the same drawing to achieve a coloured pencil look. If you are interested in a monochromatic look - in a single colour other than a graphite one - then again you could manipulate (photoshop etc) a graphite-styled render to look like it was drawn using one coloured pencil.

I attach another way. An image was exported from SketchUp. It was then processed with the PhotoShop-compatible filter from LittleInkPot called 'Sketcher'. The result (monochromatic) was then merged with a copy of the original export to produce a pencil crayon effect. The 'Sketcher' plugin is worth the money in my opinion. Sorry but it is for Windows only. http://www.littleinkpot.co.uk/

Regards, Ross

I would think its a relatively simple matter for Google to hire a bunch of people in India to watch every video submitted and flag the questionable stuff themselves. The professional crap-screenig reviewers could likely learn to watch videos at two or three times the usual speed. No doubt Google are reluctant to appear to accept any responsibility for what is on the internet or their own servers.

So why doesn't Google do that -- you know, clean YouTube up? I think it all revolves around risk assessments. If they publicly accept responsibility for controlling content but something bad slips through they could have more legal risk than if they had never accepted the responsibility in the first place. Accepting a responsibility to clean things up is a likely a huge step for Google to take as the problems are much bigger than YouTube. Fix YouTube and people will also be clamouring to have Google Search results cleaned up more too.

Things could change at anytime. The current controversy in the media might cause Google to reassess the risk of doing nothing. Imagine if a family of an injured party sues Google for hosting a beating. A jury might easily be convinced to award many millions in a judgement against Google. Google need to assess the risk of doing nothing against the risk of doing something. Add in some pressure from advertisers and public opinion and I think we will eventually see YouTube cleaned up by Google. They will feel they have little choice.

Regards, Ross

PS -- I think ModelHead misunderstood Graig's comment.

I found this an interesting thread with lots of interesting info. I thought I'd add a couple of points...

The SU export option to set "ppi" is a mac-only feature. On a pc you just set the size of the output in pixels.

The idea that you export large and then resize the result down in other software is used by many of us.It should however be understood that doing so will visibly scale down your lineweights in the process. The result is that the lines can look much finer. That can be a good thing. Many new users notice that in the gallery forum that others seem to get higher resolution images than they themselves typically get. The down-sizing of exports is typically the reason.

The effect of down sizing on lineweights can also be a problem. Many people when they read advise like has been offered in this thread make the mistake of thinking 'bigger is better'. If you export a huge image and then resize it down relatively small the resolution of your resized image will be very high. That is fine if you have a very high resolution printer but if you don't or are viewing it on screen, then what can happen is some of those lines may have become resized so thin that they can't be displayed or printed. 'Bigger isn't alway's better'. If you want to export an image for use in the gallery forum with its maximum of 800x800 pixels, then doing a 1600x1600 export from SketchUp and resizing it in half will work well -- affecting resolution in a way that will make your 800x800 appear more crisp and smooth. Exporting at say 3200x3200 and then resizing to the 800x800 is just overkill and unnecessary.

If you are using sketchy line styles in your SketchUp model it can be very difficult to achieve satisfactory export or direct printing results. I tried to give an explanation and some advice in this thread: http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=968

Regards, Ross

I can't understand why putting some visual screening at the side of your deck would be against any local by-law. I'd suggest taking a print of your drawing down to City Hall and calmly talk over your legal privacy options with a Development Officer. You can get an interpretation direct from the horse's mouth. If you aren't happy with what the horse tells you then go visit the Mayor. If you aren't happy with what the Mayor says then run for Mayor in the next election. Run on a platform of "Privacy for the People". You will likely win and then you can do favors for all your friends. Life will be good.

Regards, Ross

Yes, that is weird!

I wonder if it were developed in a less literal way could it still retain enough essence to suggest the idea without looking like it belongs in a theme park as a hotel concept. The section with the high clerestory windows looks good. The part that is hard to take seriously is the over-the-top truck look.

I don't understand why I have that reaction to it. I suppose we are trained to think in terms of designing tasteful things. Doing designs that are intentionally kitsch is rather foreign.

Regards, Ross

Very cool work Coen. You should work for NASA.

Regards, Ross

Ivica -- the zoomed in views look even better than the overall scene. They imply more of a story happening there.

Coen -- Yikes! I hope your infection isn't itchy! I hope you are fully recovered soon.

I think it looks cool too. Nice reprieve from the hot summer weather many of us are experiencing.

Is the look of falling snow derived by modifying my Cat Scratch Fever style over at FormFonts? If you do some closer shots the Blizzard style, modified or unedited, might offer some possibilities.

Regards, Ross

Thumbs up man!

I like your composition. The texturing looks good too. I like how the grass looks but they'll be needing to give it a haircut soon. At the scale/resolution I'm seeing it, the roof texturing looks good.

Regards, Ross

Thanks Tom for the additional zoomed-in images. It does make it more clear on the differences between your original images that was not so apparent with my 1600pixel wide screen resolution. Actually all your images look good. The DWC is effective but the non-DWC certainly isn't problematic. I suppose the DWC technique does make it all more seamless.

Regards, Ross

Hi Boof
I see the wobbly edge and the slightly differnt saturation but I still don't see Waldo in either. I'm getting tired of looking.

Regards, Ross

I think it is an excellent visualization too.

What I don't see is what's the difference between the second and third images? With my lazy eyes (not in their "Where's Waldo?" mode) the two images seem pretty much the same.

This project reminded me of the first 'important' visualization job I did when on a student work term way back in 1985. It was long before computers came into the picture. (The office still used carbon paper and IBM 'Selectric' typewriters!) I was given a picture of a student residence on a historic campus. The project was a proposal to convert the attic into more residence rooms. I was asked to show how the building would look with a bunch of dormers added to the existing roof. The goal was that the building would look like it always had dormers. The black & white picture provided came from a publication so it had been half-toned. To do my visualization I lightly drew all the dormer outlines in pencil on a photocopy. I then used typist 'white-out' to paint out the roof areas where the dormers would be and then made a new photocopy. I then used the old Pantone 'letra-tone' sheets to apply various half-tone patterns to add dormers to the picture trying to make them look like they were always there. The result was surprisingly effective. When the university President saw the image he did not recognize, until it was specifically pointed out to him, that the dormers had been added in. He immediately gave his approval to the project. I was hooked on the power of effective architectural visualizations.

Regards, Ross (feeling old now )

AcousticGarden - you are right about the curbs. If I had spent more time on it that would have been one of the next things I'd have worked on.

The thing is you can always add more & more detail but it has to stop at some point. The architect I did these for was paying by the hour & needed them quick for a meeting. I had sent him a work-in-progress view and he responded that there was enough detail and to proceed to give him the several views he needed. Its the ol' "good enough" philosophy. Much of my modelling is that way -- I stop when the client feels it visualizes what they think is important. I may not always agree but that's how the cookie crumbles. Sometime I really would like to do a portfolio-type piece and take it to more of a "personal best" kind of level. I've never done that before as almost all my modelling has had time or budget constraints.

Regarding those windows -- My client wanted the smaller sections at the bottom of those large windows. They would be operable with fixed glazing above.

Regards, Ross

You guys are correct about the bus colour being too bright. I should have caught that -- don't worry - heads will roll in the quality control department! (I'm the head of quality control since as a one-man show I have to wear all the hats).

Here in Canada we use the same traditional school buses as are used in the US. They are the same traditional colour too. BlueBird is the big manufacturer of school buses. I went to school in them years ago, my kids do the same today. The pics at the BlueBird site show the traditional colour.

Regards, Ross

Dylan -- the architect I did the images for prefers the non-watercolour ones too. I'm glad because there's a lot of work to produce several watercolours. Not so hard to do each one but hard to do them as consistently as is required.

In the Materials/components/styles forum I will post the alpha-transparent sky I typically use. I'll include some tips on using it effectively.

Regards, Ross

Thanks Guys!

Here in Canada we drive on the right like the USA. That parking lot is for buses only -- and has space for 16 school buses. There will be two rows of eight. The school will have separate car parking & drop/pickup areas. Here on Prince Edward Island almost all of our schools are 'Consolidated'. What that means is a series of regional schools were built to replace the old one & two-room schoolhouses that used to be common here 50 years ago. With the consolidated schools kids are bused in from more rural areas. Many kids have a 45-50 minute bus ride to get to school. The new school in the drawings is in a town but few of the students actually live walking distance to it. More than 95% will be bused.

Regards, Ross

Thanks guys. I kinda like having the bus there --- it makes it very obvious that it is a school. I don't remember where I obtained that bus component. It may be from the vehicles Brandon posted at the official SU forums.

For my client I provided a series of SU exports that I processed only by sharpening and adding texture. (Both those tasks were done using the free Microsoft Photo Editor that came XP Home Edition). I attach the one that corresponds with the digital watercolour. The sky is a transparent png backdrop in the model -- I like that approach because I can alter the colour right in SketchUp just by changing the SU sky gradient colour.

Anyways I find this simple, fast, way of post-processing fairly effective. Do you agree? (I may be out to lunch -- perhaps it doesn't work).

Regards, Ross