'Walk the earth...' I hope someone up there will give him a piece of soil to keep on walking.

lol later they will come up with something that will communicate with your brain to make you actually feel everything

I'd tend to agree with Aidus about the user manual. There's a Maxwell manual that's a couple hundred pages w/ an index and a SU plugin manual that's probably 20ish pages. Other than that I don't know of any really great tutorials to take you through all of the basics of the program (the Think website that Stinkie gave has some good individual tutorials though). The good thing, though, in my opinion is Maxwell has done a good job of avoiding the typical rendering language that can get a bit complicated. Most of the settings tie back to real life science and physics so if you need to know what something is it's usually pretty easy to find out. Instead of relying on one sentence to tell you what a particular camera function is and does, you get endless sites which can explain what a diaphram is, differences between apertures, focal distances, etc. I find it pretty intuative in that sense. When it comes to material creation, there's some technical stuff but the manual is quite good at explaining those aspects. Often times you can get by w/o having to know too much about the more complex settings by using the default materials and changing the maps or downloading materials from the maxwell website. -Brodie

No worries Kwisten. I think people don't realize that software isn't the only side of our business, so once you realize how much those other parts actually contribute to ASGvis as a company it does make a little more sense. I know that you're waiting for more from VfSU, and we want to get to being as on par with VfMax as we can. We have the opportunity to do so with the current state of the V-Ray SDK and the new overhaul of the Core will only make it easier for us to add the features we need. As to a V-Ray studio, that's something that's in the ChaosGroup's ballpark, not ours, and something that they really don't have too much of a interest in. Even if down the road, the different V-Ray plugins wind up relying on rendering through the V-Ray StandAlone (which is pretty much a commandline renderer at this point), it will be the responsibility of each of the plugins to generate the appropriate scene file and there really wouldn't be much of a chance to modify or adjust that scene before it would get rendering through the standalone.

really cool

I want this: http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=8547&p=51051&hilit=pixero#p51051

this is definitely quite the list.. i might just have to utilize it too, if no one minds. and for the record, i too like modelling from plans/elevations...not sure why, but it can be 'fun'... its probably a good chunk of my workload, too.

Here's my attempt. May add a different one later, I'm not entirely happy with how dark it is. Sketchup and Kerkythea with flames added in GIMP. [image: 1KC4_candlesf.jpg]

I'm all for some new SciFi flicks, there haven't been too many good ones of late. But then, I consider good to be like "Serenity" or "Alien". That "District 9" movie seems to be a mashup of "Independence Day" and a few others. Doesn't mean it'll stink... I'll reserve judgement.

hmmm, not sure, I would'nt try it however as I believe it's specific to the GTS.

Well, the mac did not run windows, and my setup twice as fast. Btw, PC's are not Windows machines, MS doesn't make computers, and a PC will run other kinds of OS. If a Apple is faster then the equivalent PC, it must be something found in the board bus, or some other aspect of the design. I did not get far enough to verify Apple's bios support for the Virtual Machines I use. In any case it didn't seem worth it for me.

Glad it works now...I think 3D Connexion did a poor job - or no job! - of informing users of the new update, so they are to blame too.

[image: OiZx_im1242469150.png]

the founder of HDRI http://www.debevec.org/

You can select once all plant-components in the scene, made in SketchUp, then in the material editor (Basic mode) check and mark "Use color map" them by double-clicking in one window (invert mask, if necessary), then on the context menu RMB or in Edit menu select "Replace by (keep proportions)" with Alpha Plane, then in the menu "Orientation" enter 90 degrees (Pitch). Then the only piece mark that it is Billboard, Adjust plane proportions and Keep vertical should marked too, it is possible in a single window, not closing after each point. It turns very quickly, I also use a lot of plants in my work [image: 8381b5e0de4bt.jpg]

Great work solo! I, like many others, am still waiting patiently for your SDS modelling tutorial. I hope it is still in the works. We all have much to learn from you!

Solo, Check out this youtube tutorial, it's not exactly what you were looking for but it's a good alternative way of approaching DOF.......hope this helps.....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDzNJYi6Bok zzzSPUzzz

All those characters are from Looney Tunes, except the Grinch, which is a Dr. Seuss character. Kinda odd. But I agree with Teezer - people who get upset with this sort of thing are too sensitive.

awesome post, thanks for the help! upping the subdivisions fixed the issue for me

Nice texture Thxs