@unknownuser said:
BIEBEL
Hey silver,
You should print that render on a big banner, travel to Boulder and parade in front of Googles office while shouting: "Look what I can do with sketchup, we want development NOW"
hee hee i already made a banner but no one listened lol. just kiddin, but i believe maybe someone did see this by now, now we just demands a bigger badder su7 lol. 
i feel the world trembling at my feet hee hee. Thanx a lot guys 
hee hee yea its a real rare thing. This side of the word everyone thinks skp can only do blocks and is not a gr8 program to use for nicely rendered models.. i dont think so...
This is wehre the plugin is
The cobbles thing, well theres is prob a 100 ways to do this, i just thought this is an interresting way to show how to quickly put the cobbles onto a surface and not having them perfect.
I placed mine manually, one by one, but surely there are other ways to do it, i just wanted to share this way with you guys too 
yea i kinda thought hey this is stupid till the day i came to do it. Everyone is doing uv mapping these days and since sketchup does not have it...is this the best way to create your own uv mapping. Just takes a bit of time, but sure is worth it 100%.
Now that this has come to an end, im kinda looking at more challenging things to build with su, but im still searching for something nice. 
Thanx guys for the comments so far.
Ok here are the nitty gritty stuff you requested and how things were done
(Rendered in Vray for sketchup)
I broke up the rendering process into 3 parts, the right side & water as one, the stone posts and its base as a second render, and the third is the cobbles and the left buildings
Called it part 1,2 and 3. So. Part one rendered quite fast25 to 30 min, part 2 rendered also in about 25 to 30 minutes...and part 3 rendered in about 80 hours. yea. It has to do with the displacement map and somehow it gave me uphill in the rendering time, so i just let it finished. Got all 3 parts, i photoshopped it together as if it was one complete render. Un textured, the file size was about 17mb, textured was around 82.1mb. Waaay more than i thought it would turn out to be.
Texturing this thing was also a head scratcher, i know i am really good in photoshop and post process my models normally to death, so this time i wanted to build something that i can proudly say HEY, this is all textured and not photoshopped. It took longer but this is how i did it. It was kinda like other applications work doing UV mapping, so i made my own plates. I took a face, rotated faces so that all of that specific face is flat, and use that as a guide to put textures on via photoshop.So a lot of baking and textures are overlayed ect to create one single texture. Once im happy, i took them into sketchup, scaled it till the face match exactly, and then projected it onto it.
( and i think i will texture all my future models like this )
Below is what I used mainly to build this model.
Note that all of them are resized so if you guys want a specific texture you like (which is very unlikely lol) i will post that one for you in a bigger resolution.
thanx, how can one make a file that show a range of images moving from one side to the other kinda like flash like little thumbnails. If anyone knows, i really want to know because i really want to make something like this
hee hee i have textured this just for you HFM hee hee
[color=#BF0000]here you go guys. Hope you like it
The only photoshop work that went into it was a colour correction and a bit of burning and lighting..
thanx, i have build a lot of nice stuff but never finished it, kinda lost interest or don't have the time to finish it...its actually amazing i finished building this model lol
yea im also a big fan of only using sky alone.. but i kind of like the omni and rec light also. The thing is.. but thats just me.. ive seen most professional people uses sometimes just this, omnis and rec lights. But then again, using sky, makes the model looks more realistic and not like its sitting on a set.
%(#BF0000)[STAGE 2 
LIGHTING
Hi guys. Im moving now into stage 2 of my model.
but before i start i want to know, because we are having this discussion.
What is better for setting up light. Using sketchup's sun angles,or using multiple lights
omnis and rectangulars. I am not sure what the professional line prefer to use,
skylights stand alone, omni and rectangular lights. Im just asking in general, not specific sketchup only but in the modelling industry, what will be the best results you will get 
]
yea i know. try this too
copy your site to a new drawing. rotate it to be not so steep.
Maybe you can try boxing it in also so nothing gets spilled. Try to divide the areas to controll groups and if it works, just remove the dividers afterwards. (just a thought 
)
@unknownuser said:
GreyHead"]After I rendered the cobbles I remembered TIGs Matrix Proximity script. It allows you to create an array of components with some variation in size, placement and rotation.
thanx a lot, will have a look at this looks really cool
%(#BF0000)[hee hee im am going to texture it...just need to make time for it since im doing this in evenings in my free time.. but till then here are some tips and tricks i spilled a while ago how to dirtmap models.
this model is way more difficult and could be more fun than any model i have textured before.. so i will keep you guys posted when i have something more to put on the table on this thing again. ]
%(#BF0000)[Ok ay guys, here you go..how to bake the roof.
Keep in mind, you need sketchy FFD rubie
]
hmmm bummer... so there is no work around in this.? so its no use downloading huge textures because its gonna be rescaled everery time you drag in an image. hmmm
I stand with free agent, please is there no way to do that? WE have seen amazing stuff written on rubies so far, some are really jaw dropping. Maybe someone do it for the forum? 
hi there.
Is it not possible to re write the plugin to see the mapping box,a way to scale the box or edit and maybe include a box mapping too. Similar to what max is doing.But from me to you...congrats..its super so far.
so glad you guys enjoy this...it makes modelling just more fun hey lol