Nice. It looks like a ceramic piece (a bit of bric-a-brac for shelf display).

Here are the results from the fact checkers:
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/factchecking_debate_no_1.html

I watched the "debate", but I found it terribly annoying. Politicians annoy me in general, and I'm not happy with either of these candidates.

Here are two pictures. The first one is a screen shot of my VERY FIRST SketchUp project. It started when the original free version was released, and I've been fussing with it ever since. This version is as of the beginning of Summer, 2008. It depicts the upper hillside that is the south yard of my house, and it's a personal terracing project that I've built almost entirely with railroad ties:

The white ones predate the release of SU free. The brown ones (and those with photo texture) were placed after SU free became available. The blue ones are still in the planning stage. I've only been able to work on this on the weekends prior to this year, but now I'm semi-retired, so I'm working on it during the week as well.

Here is a photo of the project as of yesterday, Tuesday, 9/23/08:

That's me in the photo, chipping a paver. I'm filling in the flat terrace patio area with concrete pavers, and it's going really slow. I probably have another few weeks before it gets too cold to work outside for more than an hour or two, and another month could see the whole thing buried in snow for another season.

I just thought you might like to see what's been keeping me from playing with SubSmooth as much as I'd like...

Fun stuff!

Very nice!

A couple of general tips I wanted to mention.

Simplify. SubSmooth works best with the fewest possible lines and shapes in the proxy. The cat's body started as a simple box shape. Adjust the shape by dragging intersections with the move tool or resizing specific polygons.

Exaggerate. SubSmooth will reduce the size of the proxy when it's executed. The shape will be smoothed (of course), so obvious bulges that you put into the proxy will be reduced as well.

Avoid using the SU curve tool or the circle tool in the proxy. These tools will create too many segments, and the result will not be good. SubSmooth will make the curves for you.

And I forgot to thank everyone for the encouraging comments. Thanks!

Ok, I get the impression that you guys think that I'm modeling the proxy as one piece, and that I know what it's going to look like when it's SS'd. Not quite.

The parts that look visually simple (the body, legs, tail) are actually fairly easy and are drawn in place. The more difficult parts with finer detail (the head and paws) are drawn separately. The cat's head is obviously the most complex piece, and I worked it up as a separate unit:

The above image shows the proxy, the SS'd head, and a painted version that I'm not very happy with.

I don't use the more elaborate proxy-from-group method that's so impressive in Whaat's demo. I fuss with the proxy as an ungrouped drawing, select the whole thing, SS it, then UNDO the SS, make adjustments, SS it, UNDO, etc., until I get a decent result.

When I was reasonably happy with the result, I moved the proxy to the working .skp file.

If you'd like to fuss with the cat's head, here's the .skp file for the above image:

CatHead.skp

Note that the eyeballs in the proxy are already SS'd and grouped, while the rest of the proxy is ungrouped. To SS the proxy, select the whole thing, then unselect the eyeballs. If you check the painted head, you'll notice that I intersected the eyeballs and removed the excess geometry. I did that by ungrouping the eyeballs after I got a good SS result with the head, selecting the whole thing, and doing an intersect selected.

To add the head to the body, I grouped it so I could position it easily with the rotation capabilities of the move tool, then ungrouped it and drew in the necessary lines to connect it to the neck. With the head in place, I could then continue with the process of tweak, SS, UNDO SS, tweak, SS ... using the whole model.

I've been busy with late summer outside work, so I haven't had much time to play with SketchUp in the last month. But it's been raining for the last two days, so I fussed with this cat a bit and decided to post it as a WIP.

He's either trying for a slam dunk or leaping at a hummingbird. I haven't decided yet...

Just damn!

Wonderful work, Silver. I can certainly see the hours in the details. You are an inspiration to us all...

"An hour and a bit longer..."

Hell, that would take me a week, and I'd have thrown it away and started over three or four times. You are the speed master, for sure!

Very nice! It's like an Aardman piece -- I kept expecting Wallace & Gromit to show up...

That's pretty nice! I like the non-uniformity of the color, and the slight visibility of the pattern repeat makes it look freshly mowed.

Looks better than my side yard...

Just Damn! That's an interesting project, and a wonderful execution. Recluse that I am, I even like the location. It does have internet access though, right?

@mike lucey said:

.... coming up to 58, I'm doing a lot of thinking lately
about 'What's it all about?'.

I was talking to my accountant yesterday and getting advice
on planning for retirement. He was a bit shocked when I did
a quick calc 'I'm 58 this year, 7 years to full retirement age,
plus a further 20 if lucky. That leaves 27 years in total, all
going well!'

Since you're 58 this year, that means that your full retirement age is 66. Just FYI.

I'm 66 this year, and I've been getting SS checks since January. If I live as long as my father did, I've got 18 years left. I expect to see great advances in health care technology, so I may live as long as my mother did (94).

In any case, one of the most important things you can do for yourself is to exercise regularly. If you don't have a regular exercise program, start one. Most of the physical deterioration that we consider "normal aging" is actually caused by inactivity.

As far as death itself, I'll quote Woody Allen:

@unknownuser said:

Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon.

You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?

It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens.

@solo said:

Here's a square one.

Now that would be a nice design for a garden bench, with the end pieces serving as impromptu table surfaces for snacks and drinks. I'll bet Joe Wood could whip one of those up in a jiffy...

Very nice, Roger. I like it...

I usually visit TalkGraphics once a day, though I don't post there regularly. Its primary function is Xara Xtreme discussion, and XX is my favorite 2D drawing application.

My avatar was created in Xara3D, and animated in Xara Xtreme...

TalkGraphics.com

TalkGraphics.com is a place for like-minded individuals to chat about graphics software, website design and more.

(talkgraphics.com)

@ross macintosh said:

In the area where I spent many of my formative years growing up there was a campground known as 'Dunromin'. For most of those years I assumed it was owned by a family named 'Dunromin' or something like that. At some point, the "DUH" slap-myself-upside-the-head moment, I realized that the name comes from "done roaming". In that moment I felt pretty darn stupid.

Along those same lines, when I was a kid (early 50's -- I'm a geezer) there was a character on the "Time For Beany" show called "Tearalong, The Dotted Lion." The "DUH" slap-myself-upside-the-head moment came out of the blue one day at work 15 years later!

Fun stuff! Do some more...

Very nice bit of work. I love mechanical drawings...