If you are wanting to zoom and pivot from a fixed position, as you would a camera on a tripod, you should look at the Advanced Camera Tools that come with Sketchup Pro. ( In the tools menu) Once you create a camera, you can look through it and pan and zoom from that point. You can use the arrow keys or the look around tool to pan, and either change the fov with a right click/edit camera, or using Option and the arrow keys. The center mouse wheel and the field of view command from the camera menu will both move the camera and mess up your shot, so don't use them, and make sure to lock your cameras when not adjusting them to avoid accidentally moving them. If you don't lock them or remember to exit them when done, (right click/done) they will follow you around in a very annoying fashion.

Ok great, thank you!

Pilou, you are right! haha, thank you!

If it is already colored you can actually edit the color in the materials list and change it. Yes I know, the color gray is now yellow or something like that.

change color.png

Google 'smoothing groups' (soften edges controls in Sketchup). It has nothing to do with Post.

Thanks a lot! That looks good. I'll download it now and have a go!

Thanks all. I bought the smustard one and it didn't work! $5 wasted! haha. But sdmitch your plugin works great, thank so much.

S

"do you export pdf or eps from SU on your mac?"

Like I wrote, I was refering to Illustrator files. If there´s was any difference with other software I don´t know. Skylabridge wrote; "I have a sketchup file of a fairly complicated building that I would like to export as a 2D graphic to work on in Adobe Illustrator. I need to get vector line quality results". Both .eps and .pdf will open as vector (=vector quality) in Illustrator.

Yeah, hard to give you a good answer...
I have tried many sketchup renders : kerkythea, podium, maxwell, twilight, lumion, v-ray...
They are all fine, but i prefer v-ray. I have the feeling that i can more control my architectural renders. But parameters are complex. Podium and Kerkythea are easier to handle.
Besides, Kerkythea is free.

Sorry this has taken so long to report back. In short the answer was that I could only render reliably at 9999 x 9999 pix. I couldn't get to grips with splitting the image using camera tools. I ended up enlarging the renders in perfect resize and got pretty good results from this.
😄

Rather than use Model Info > Statistics > Purge Unused... try purging in steps.

Purge Styles from the Styles Browser dialog.
Purge Layers from the Layers Browser dialog.
Purge Materials from the Materials Browser dialog.
Purge Components from the Components Browser dialog.
Purge Layers from the Layers Browser dialog.
Purge Materials from the Materials Browser dialog.

The reason I suggest you do the steps is there's less to process each step.
You need to do Layers and Materials twice, as there might be Layers and Materials only used by unused Components, so after those Components are purged they become purge-able too.

Yes that does help! I thought it rendered it as a 3d object and couldn't work out how to save it!! Haha. Hopefully I'll have more success now! Thank you

Jim has a ply importer here somewhere...

You want bricks? Here ya go

g 1.png