Hi folks,

I'm making a 3D horse and thought it would be fun to have the eyes follow the camera. Which is kind of spooky but works, so I thought, how about having the ears follow the camera/player as well? Trouble is, horses, though they try with all their might, can't swivel their ears 360º, so I'm wondering, is there any way I can make only the ear on the side of the horse currently facing the camera swivel? I thought of having two components, one that faces the camera and one that doesn't, but that still gives you the 360º ear problem. Can follow-the-camera be constrained only to certain angles, as one does with a lawn sprinkler? Any ideas?

Thanks,

Fa

That's helped a lot! Thanks so much!

I know it's only trying to be useful. But when I try to draw a line, especially with the freehand tool, I want the line to go from the point A to the point B I want, not this nice handy line over here, or this other axis, or New Jersey. Is there any way I can turn off ... whatever feature it is that keeps hijacking my lines? Does anything I just said make sense? Thanks,

Fa

That's weird, I use a Wacom Intuos tablet and the only problem I've had with it, SketchUp or otherwise, is my cat Harry chewing through the cable...

Hi, folks,

Has anyone else noticed SketchUp being ill-behaved after updating their Mac OS? SketchUp has occasionally crashed on me before, but now it's crashing regularly. I'm also having problems with copy-paste, or with clicks on a tool in the tools palette apparently not being seen, whether I use the stylus or the mouse (I usually use both at once). Any ideas?

=Fa

Hi, everyone,

I was wondering if any of you have tried importing SketchUp models into Flash. Looked on the web for info about the feasibility of this and the results were inconclusive. I've been using Flash for years and I have to say, Flash at its best is only mildly annoying and at its usual has cost me a great loss of hair, but I already have quite a large game written in ActionScript and would like the use SketchUp graphics with it. Does anyone have any input on this? Or can you talk me out of it? I really don't want to write all that code again.

Thanks,

Fa

Ah! Thanks so much! Not quite there yet, but at least I know what I need to do from here!

I'll definitely check out that plugin. I seem to be collecting plugins these days.

-Fa

Hi folks,

I'm still buzzing about with projected images. I've gotten them to work fine with birds and dolphins, but I'm having a lot of more difficulty with cats. Specifically, cat faces. I'm including a my latest file for you to chuckle over. On the sides of the cat, the texture maps just fine, but as you can see (please ignore my messy body shape for the moment) but the face... there's the problem. The image is stretched over the front of the face and the eyes are in the wrong place, as you can see. (later: tried to upload the file but apparently it didn't work. The cat is here: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=c8f21db5d8baba8fca2ed12df13a916a&ct=mdsa)

I tried to get around this by taking a picture of Dave face on and using that to build the face, but alas, I could not get the projection to work, again because SketchUp seems to want the projected image to be more or less perpendicular to the surface onto which it is to be projected.

I can see only a couple of ways to deal with this. One is that, as I do with the dolphins, I can use a drawing rather than a photograph and tweak the drawing so that the face will look right-ish, but I haven't a lot of hope for that. The other option I can see at the moment is to hand color the face once the model's done, and that kind of defeats the whole purpose.

Does anyone have a suggestion for getting the face correct here?

Thanks much,

Fa

No, all the furniture is in a set of small files. The problem seems to have narrowed itself down mainly to working with pieces where there are three straight sides and one curved one. SketchUp crashes as soon as the skin is drawn.

P.S., Chris, hope you're okay. Airport got hit hard.

Thanks everyone! I've brought along what Flash skills I have. This is infinitely more fun than Flash. But so is falling off a cliff.

Chris, I'm on 66 between Hygiene and Lyons. Good thing we're on the side of a hill, the water came up to the foundations of the house but no further; the garden and pasture were under a couple of feet of water, though. I did find, however, that the "Colorado Flood Mud" makes a very decent pottery glaze!

Hi, everyone,

I'm trying to make an office chair as part of my Science Fiction Town (it's a long story) (actually, it's a whole series of long stories) and making plenty of use of the Soap Skin and Bubble tool. Problem is, for some reason, it seems to crash SketchUp rather more than I can cope with. I find myself having to save my file after each separate step in order not to lose anything. It seems to crash one time out of, say, five on this particular project, right after it does the skin. Has anyone else had this problem? And has anyone any tips?

Thanks,

Fa

JQL, Just got a chance to try your method (I tore down the whole building; it got messed up after a cat knocked a huge cup of tea all over the keyboard, the tablet, the mouse and...

It works a treat!! Thanks SO much!

-Fa

Hi there,

Wanted to show off a dragon I did yesterday. Could be better, but for a first attempt, I'm happy with it.

The lighting stuff isn't included, no. You have to buy it separately. But lighting effects are my thing.

SU Pro is, indeed, totally worth it, just for the lighting plugins! But alas, gotta pay for digging out from this flood first.

JQL, what you've posted looks intriguing! I've downloaded your samples and will study the procedure, and let you know how I fare! Thanks so much for all your effort!

Yeah, that's what I thought. I'd thought of Dynamic Components, but I don't have the pro version. Yet...

Thanks, Dave and Cotty! (Smacks forehead with hand). All those years of working with Flash have addled my brain.

That seems to work fine for solid colored things, but still leaves me with a problem. I've made, for example, a couch, using Soap Skin and Bubble to get nice gushy cushions. If I recolor the couch with a pattern, the pattern is all screwed up. Is there any way to make sure the pattern is painted on correctly even on a soap-bubbled surface?

Hi, everyone,

This has probably been addressed before but I'm still unused to SketchUp terminology, so I may not be searching for the problem correctly. Anyway, here goes.

I am modelling a small hotel. It's got several rooms, all in different colors (the green room, the red room, etc). I have made a set of furniture for the rooms, which should structurally all be the same but should be colored to match the individual room.

What I want to know is, is there any way, apart from "Make Unique," to re-use all the furniture components but with only the paint job changed? I am trying to do everything I can to keep the file size down as the model, of which the hotel is a part, is already 17 meg.

Thanks in advance for your help! And if there's a proper way to ask this question, please let me know.

-Fa

Thanks for the advice! Box, your suggestion gave me an idea. I drew that texture in GIMP on a transparent background, so the texture probably varies in transparency. I drew this one on a white ground and carefully cropped it in SketchUp, and sure enough, it works. Here's the result.

This is exactly what I wanted. I guess I'll have to redraw the bottlenose skin.

Thanks!