Thanks guys. All of this really helps. Its tough though, because a lot of my research will be from interiews and ovbservations, but that isnt necessarily enough for my professor. Im still looking for concrete data and contacts. Im not expecting anyone to just hand me over an answer but I was just looking to see if anyone had some of those things, but what you guys are giving me so far is really helpful. Here is my abstract for the paper if it helps to better understand the project....Thanks again guys and thank you in advance to anyone else that gives me any further help

abstract:
"This paper will study the dynamics that go into designing a contemporary nightclub that has the capability of being marketable year-to-year. It will explain the necessities of a functioning nightclub and explore innovative ways of employing new technologies into a design. The paper will answer the following questions: what is the typical life cycle of a nightclub and how can that be increased, how can modern technology be incorporated into a design, what type of atmosphere do customers anticipate, and how do the sensory effects created by the environment influence their experience? The methodologies used to examine these questions will be observations, interviews, surveys, and scholarly literature. The information from evaluating these questions will help determine a successful nightclub design."

Yeah very nice output for just sketchup...but I would like to see it rendered as well. Good work

I know this may not be the right place to be talking about this, but I know that many of the people on here are architects and designers so here goes. I am beginning my last year of school and I am starting a senior thesis that is on nightclub design. I have been doing lots of research and it has been a challenge. I am looking to find general information about night club design, but I am also looking for the current trends in nightclubs and I am limited to only experiencing nightclubs in Pittsburgh, PA. I want a larger, more global view on how nightclubs are in other countries. What are the trends? What is the turnover rate of nightclubs and is better to have a themed design or not? How does the physchology of sound and light work with people and the design of the nightclub?

These are some of the questions I am asking myself and if anyone can give me insight, opinions, references, or anything that I can use...please...it would be so greatly appreciated. I ask on here because I know there is a diverse group of people that give great insight and I do not want to limit myself to only what I have experienced and see around me, because believe it or not...Pittsburgh, PA isnt necessarily the most bumping place for nightclubs THank you in advance for any help.

Very nice renderings nomer...I was a little suprised to see that they were podium renderings, very impressive. How did u get the soft shadows in the first few images? Didnt think podium was capable of handling that, but I may stand corrected. Great work

Vray is a rendering plugin used for sketchup. It is similar to the vray plugin for 3d max but a little toned down from what I understand. But you can use SU materials or you can use vray materials...whichever ones you use, you will still need to tweak them cause they need different characteristics to look like what you want. I usually combine the two. Just google vray for sketchup and u will find out a lot more about it. Try checking out podium too...much easier to learn at first.

The cables were actually just modeled with the follow me tool...i drew a path, which took a fair amount of trial and error due to all the different curves, and just used follow me to extrude a tube along that path. Fairly simple if you have patience with the path you drawing. But thanks for the comments

Ok my last one.

All sizes | Simple Objects 7 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

The safest and most inclusive global community of photography enthusiasts. The best place for inspiration, connection, and sharing!

(www.flickr.com)

I really appreciate all the info about the rendering engines and with all the input ive received, I have a good grasp on what to possibly use, but im a little more interested in the programs that take those scenes and puts them together?

For instance, Biebel and anyone else that feels they can answer: what did you use to put your paperclip animation together? Were they adobe products to stitch and add the music and other imagery effects? The programs after the rendering engine are what im wondering about. Which ones are worth the time and money?

Ok here are some more simple renderings. I had some fun with sub+smooth and different textures. Hope you like them.

For Full Sizes:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27604581@N02/2764771233/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27604581@N02/2764772747/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27604581@N02/2764774167/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27604581@N02/2765622040/

Yeah first priority would definately be getting a beast of a computer and I my first engine for animation would be vray and I would probably just forget about an unbiased engine. But this link is what im looking to do and it is very common if you can get a client that wants to spend the money on a walkthrough...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWZTUIr6aM8

I dont see why sketchup couldnt handle something like this, but I could be wrong? Im not looking for animating figures and all that. My primary goal is a camera walkthrough/simulation of a space and building where you take the frames and stitch them together and there you go. But I guess what wanted to know is what programs would you use to stitch them together...I would want to add introductions to the animation, music, scene transitions and stuff like that. Thats where the adobe products seem to come into play. I just dont know which ones are worth the time and which are not and thats where I guess I need the guidance. Because like I was saying before, when you look at some people's animations, they have stitched seems but then they will take one frame and zoom in and out of that single frame and manipulate it with what I assumed is one of the adobe products? That helps turn a 30 second animation into a 45 second animation and it can look very nice. You do that a couple times and you have a longer animation that is actually worth presenting and not this 10 second one that took days to render. And I can try to learn a little bit of these programs like flash, after effects, and illustrator without necessarily even having the computer to do the animation yet. I can learn how to add music and scene transitions and when I graduate and get the money, I can get a big boy computer and be a little ahead or idealy Id like to have a job and let them pay for it all. Either way is fine but im just trying to learn as much as possible before I graduate. Then on top of that there are all the lighting effects in some of these programs that can help with enhancing the animation. I just always am asking people that are experienced about how they see the market and this forum along with the rendering forums really help me get a grasp on what is worth knowing and what isnt....its a great help and I always get great advice and i apologize if im being "that guy" thats asking a million questions. But, with that said, thanks again for all the input, its really valued.

Rufy: in the environment settings, I inputed a HDR in for the background and GI and make sure under UVW u check environment and then let it run

Durant: Thanks for the poetical feedback....I hope I get what you were trying to say, but none-the-less I love football, even if it makes me a cavedwelling, drone sitting in front of the tv, drowning my brain with beer. I think you will find plenty of people on here that enjoy doing that from time to time, if without the football part. But I enjoyed the wise words . Ill be careful

Honestly both. I may be wrong but I see some of biebels stuff and it looks like a mix of 2d and 3d. It seems as though a lot of people will take a single rendered image and manipulate it a little bit for part of an animation and then another part will be the 3d simulation. It looks like a nice way to create longer and sometimes more interesting animations without having to do a million scenes for a model to produce a 30 second animation. I guess im looking to know how to do animations that are professional and suitable for architectural illustration primarily...and maybe toss in product illustration (but that seems to be a similar process just different modeling and rendering techniques).

Yeah I was affraid everyone would tell me that about computer power. Im debating getting one built but im still a poor college student. Thats what makes fry even harder to buy, cause I dont think they offer a student discount...I wonder if there is anyone to ask on their forum about that? But I have been running vray on my computer and that alone takes patience...even podium does with my wimpy computer. And as far as vray is concerned, you all are right. It took me reading through the manual a few times and just playing around to get a little bit of a grasp on it, but to me, once you get a hold of what to touch and what not to, workflow really moves fast. I would even argue that it can be quicker than podium at times (but I think v2 will change that). I found that messing aruond with the material editor first and then the rendering settings was a very sensible approach to learning the program. The encouraging part about fry and having a slow computer is that I believe you can pause renderings and start them back up again. That will really help so that it wont imobilize my computer for days. And I did just download the demo and it actually is for an unlimited amount of time and did exactly what I thought with the output limitations and stamp. But please anyone keep commenting on this topic if you want to because all the information that I can get, the better.

But I do want to kinda go a little off topic and I think this may be an appropriate place to talk about it since a bunch of you are already involved with the post and I dont think I should start a new one. Anyway, If I wanted to do animation...how would you rank programs in order what I should try to learn first. Obviously I have to deal with the rendering engine first but what next? The adobe products seem to be the way to go, but which ones are relevant. It seems that flash, illustrator, and after effects are all good ones to help enhance images and animations...am I wrong? I just look at the capabilities of each and they all seem like they do different things but also work together and when I see plugins like Knolls lighting effects, I just cant even begina to think about the endless amount of options for illustration. But thank you in advance to anyone insight guys...you have already helped out a lot. Now to play with fry and hopefully my computer doesnt die.

Thanks guys for the feedback

Bubba: Yeah the Steelers are gonna have a tough road ahead of them. Going into the season, they statistically have the toughest schedule...its brutal, but it should make for some good football to watch. And the Panthers to me are one of those teams that if they are good...they are great and are right up there contending for the super bowl, but look out when they are bad. They just need to get steve smith on the field and out of suspension...but I guess he is going to miss the first two games right? Oh and about the segments, I completely agree...is there a ruby or tool out there that will add more segments to something like that?

Getting in the spirit of the upcoming season, heres one more. Hope this doesnt piss anyone off. But anyways, HERE WE GO STEELERS!!!

Ok where to begin here:

First thanks for all the input guys. You gave me a lot of good insight. With taking all that in, I guess my next concern is the time it will take me to learn. I know plenty of you commented saying that fry and maxwell can be easier but just looking through the manual, it looks like a lot more options than even v-ray. I could be wrong but it is going to be a lot to take in. I guess the only way for me to find out is by downloading the demo. Im just concerned with only having a month to play with the demo, when it just might take me a month to read the manual?\ and I go back to school in a week . I dont know if I will be able to get comfortable enough with it in a months time to get a good idea of its capapbilities and if it is worth purchasing. I wish they had an unlimited trial with a stamp on it to prevent it from being used commercially. And my final concern is my computer...it is a single core laptop with a 2ghz processor and 1gb of ram. Ive been able to get by running v-ray and podium on it without too many problems, but is it even worth it to try and run fry on there? I mean thats part of the reason it takes me so long to learn these programs, because I need to wait an hour just to see what happens to an image when I make on little tweak...it really slows down my learning.

Im actually not quite sure what it is. I just saw it on http://www.archive3d.net/ and decided to render it and try to get better using HDR and Depth of Field with vray. But thanks guys for the feedback.

He is my attempt at a simple rendering. It was a nice change to do work with just a single object for once instead of having to have to deal with a whole building or interior. I hope you like them. Also there was no post processing involved.

full size links:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27604581@N02/2759105931/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27604581@N02/2759949078/

Im by no means a pro with vray but I am getting comfortable with it. I love the program and it really has helped me sell my ideas but there were some scenes that I did, that took an entire day of just experimenting to get somewhat close to what I was looking for. It is frustrating with some of these rendering programs like podium and vray (sorry if that sounds like a knock)when you keep having to experiment because you dont know what to expect sometimes from the model and meterials. It can slow workflow down significantly at times. But I guess that should be expected. Also it seems like vray and others dont always have the exact answer, there are always work arounds that you have to use in order to get the desired image. Fry and maxwell dont appear to be that way, is that correct? I mean it may go along with the whole being unbiased? I know the render times will be considerably longer for fry and maxwell than podium, indigo or vray but the idea of knowing what to expect without having to do test renderings is very intriguing; especially when you want to consider animation because you can in theory, and catch me if im wrong, just set up a model and the scenes and let the computer go. The biased programs would constantly need to be checked for each scene to make sure everything is acting correctly, especially the lighting, right? And where does the market stand with each engine, my initial impressions were that vray was the most popular...does this hold true? Or are fry and maxwell just as popular? At least in the architecture and design world?

And stinkie, would you say that it shouldnt be too complicated to learn a program like fry or maxwell if you are fairly comfortable with v-ray? And I want to try indigo, just have not had the time. It looks fairly intuitive and can produce some very impressive images.

Biebel:I already use podium and it as great app. i, as well as probably you, am just patiently waiting for v2. would you say that vray or fry produce better images and which one do you think has a steeper learning curve? You seem to have mastered both and can produce great stuff in them. And if you were to need to produce final imagery for a project or presentation, which engine would you run it through? And where does the market stand with each engine, my initial impressions were that vray was the most popular...does this hold true?

Yeah ive been reading about fry and maxwell and it seems to me that since they are both unbiased that they are more accuate and thus there is less trial and error. Too some people, this made the workflow and learning curve easier than a program like v-ray. Does anyone here familiar with either find that to be true? It also seems from first impression that fry may have less bugs, but that may be completely wrong. And how long has fry been around? Anyone else (Biebel) that would like to chime in, please, input is greatly apperciated. And im also hesitant cause I am only running a single core laptop with 2ghz processor and one gig of ram... its depressing, i know.