Hmmmmmm.....I have perfect eyesight, but that website makes me want to try it! Thanks, Ross. You da man!

@maggy said: Strange website, loads perfectly in MSIE but as HTML source in Firefox. Even more weird that if I save the html source in a note pad and then load it in FF, it loads well (except for the external elements like css and images etc.). I haven't seen anything like this before - and it does the same in Opera and Netscape, too. Maybe an MS-devoted server setting?!

How did you get to looking like that? Was it all the milk fed veal and cauliflower?

A banana...that's it. My wife makes me have a croissant every Sunday morning, to keep her company. Those things were never meant to be eaten indoors; I end up with pastry flakes all over the dining room.

Ross that is a great resource, thank you. Down 12 lbs now!

Thanks John. That was interesting. I'd bet William doesn't snore. Regards, Ross

After much soul-searching I have decided to begin my modelling career as a professional "before" model. My impressive girth as well as my photoshop skills (for the after shots) will add credence to your most outrageous claims. Dave

Ross - better watch out because the last couple of months melamine has been showing up in the food supply. Being a pet owner, you likely took notice of the huge story about a month ago where tonnes of pet food had been recalled, and was killing off dogs (mostly, I understand) and cats. The reason was that the wheat gluten that was supplied from China had melamine in it. This is a little worrysome, as wheat gluten is in many products, and I wonder how long a form of your cups will end up in my food? <I don't remember hearing that your dog(s?) had any health problems, and I would almost guess that you buy organic for them anyways?> cheers (oh and thanks for the response. For some reason, I wasn't thinking that you meant the inside of the glass closest - but yeah, that's caustics as I understand 'em. About the ground, I thought it actually looked quite good, the splotches on the right side looked like K artifacts to me though - but perhaps X was the "culprit" I had a quick question as to what a High Dynamic Range Probe is? I don't really understand how VUE (my renderer of choice) handles HDRI's - I just know it works, but I would generally insert an image for VUE to get the sense of lighting direction and brightness from - I wonder what a "probe" is? P: Shaun Tennant

Very cool stuff...but someone should mention SketchUp to him. http://steampunkworkshop.com/telegraph.shtml

Didier's script isn't supporting textures at this time. Hopefully it will someday. (SunFlow does but as noted above Didier's efforts in his plugin development are hindered by a lack of documentation on SunFlow). I don't know if there are any other routes to getting a textured model into SunFlow. I haven't looked around the SunFlow site or Forum enough to find out. If your model has colours they will work fine. I attach an example render. The model is from the FormFont Exchange. After exporting from SketchUp I edited the scene file so the glass and hydraulic rams would look shiny. [image: sunflow5.jpg] The render times for the above image was about 15 minutes. The 'clay' ones above were just two or three minutes. Adding the HDR lighting & then the glossy effect added more time. The glossy one probably took 20 minutes. If you visit the gallery at the SunFlow site you'll see the program is quite capable. Hopefully Didier's script can, in due course, develop to take more advantage of it. Regards, Ross

Some pics of the Carver Test Drive last week Great fun at 40 degree tilts around Roundabouts Mike [image: smallCarver%20One%20test%20Drive.jpg]

If you use your own r/c 4 channel transmitter that uses a USB adapter, you can download this flight simulator and use it for free: http://www.flying-model-simulator.com/ No, it's not going to have the same awesome graphics and the physics accuracy may be a little less realistic, but for building your r/c hand-eye coordination it's really an awesome program. It took me a little while to figure out how to configure the sticks to work properly with the heli program - if anyone needs pointers, let me know. Maybe this post could be cross-linked with the free s/w forum? Happy Sketching, Brad

ross, your post shows why this is a special place, a place where people care enough for the others (mostly strangers) as to go through the effort of trying to make everyone feel confortable, lurker or not. regards.

Well that clears up alot for me, I was wondering if there was something wrong withe the way i had been exporting images. Thanks for that Ross. poster-archtech

Great images, Phil. I agree with Edson...more, please.

it's a weird preference because it doesn't really change much.. it's not as if i had all of these files on my computer without their extensions showing.. everything shows .jpg, .txt, .skp, .zip, etc. regardless of my selection on that preference.. it is turned off by default and there was never an instance prior to this that made change it.. the only other file type that i've found to be affected by this is .webloc..