Hmm...this is intersting:

http://www.primatelabs.ca/blog/2008/01/mac-pro-performance-redux-january-2008/

The 64-bit benchmarks show a clean pair of heels to the 32 bit...these are the types of speed gains for which you'd gladly shell out for a new 'puter. As they state: "The 2.8 GHz Mac Pro running 64-bit code is faster than the 3.2 GHz Mac Pro running 32-bit code".

MacOS X, but still intel quad-core processors being tested, so broadly comparable. (And we don't have to pay extra for a 64-bit OS...64-bit apps are another matter, though 0

@edson said:

thank you all. at least now i know who or what the culprit is. i will try to save at a higher definition to see if it helps.

tim, my macbook pro has a GeForce 8600 GT card. i wonder if it comes with a control panel. where could it be?

Sadly, it doesn't. Even though Apple writes both the ATi and nVidia drivers for the cards in Macs, the nVidia cards don't have this facility. The ATi control panel is provided by ATi themselves to provide additional functionality over and above that provided by the apple drivers -- nVidia simply don't do this. It's a real shame.

Burkhardt --

i bought one for my mam (mother), albeit a 17" with intel graphics, and I was really surprised at how well it performs...

And as to ATi graphics with SU on a Mac...the issues so often reported on this forum don't really apply to the Mac ATi cards (Apple write the drivers, not ATi).

One very nice thing about ATi on OS X (I use an X1900XT on a Mac Pro) is that you can use the ATi Displays control panel to control increased antialiasing and anisotropic filtering -- you can't do this with Mac nVidia cards. The difference this makes to your display in SU is very marked...it's difficult to do without it once you've used it for a while.

@mike lucey said:

Hi Tim,

Sorry about the 'g', don't know were I got it Yes you are right Danaher is a Limerick name. Just looked up its meaning on the Net.

[i]'Origin and Meaning
The name translates to 'descendant of Duineachar' the Irish word for 'Manloving'.

Mike

Oo-er, missus...I think I've just come over all queer...

Edson --

In addition to what Daniel said, if you have an ATi card in your Mac, you can use the ATi Displays control panel to set various levels of Anti-aliasing and Anisotropic filtering. That might help you...

Hmmm...are you on Windows, Scott? Doesn't happen on the Mac version...

@jeff jacobs said:

@tim danaher said:

Jeff --

You forgot the most important thing about the modo-SU import plug-in: they charge $99 for it...

Tim, You never looked better!

As for the the 99 bucks, yea I don't WANT to pay for it, but if it saves a lot of time then I don't mind.

Forceps delivery. What can you do, huh?

As an aside, I recently had a look at Microspot Interiors Pro...this small firm has added native .skp import to the program (for free), and it works flawlessly...everything comes in just as it should, even my largest models. Why can't a slick organisation line Luxology get this right?

And Martin is looking into adding native .skp support for Cheetah, now that the SDK is freely available. An .skp in a Smart Folder...how cool would that be?

Cheers, Gaieus...Ha! That easy...you can tell I haven't used SU for over a year, can't you?

p.s. have PM'ed you with some questions re. the Transfer...

Aye, that'll be me...

And it's Danaher, BTW, no 'g' (Good old Limerick name, apparently...)

I must be missing something here...

I'm coming back to a model that I worked on last year...I need to know which material is assigned to the objects...Entity Info shows a colour swatch, but doesn't give the Material name (not even a tool tip, like in the Materials Palette) There are several shades of grey in the model, and it's difficult to tell which is which.

Any other way of finding out? Other than editing the colour and seeing if it changes...?

@didier bur said:

Hi,
Nice !
BTW, you did apply the same twist function to your avatar did you ?

Nah. I was a forceps delivery.

Cheers, both. Unfortunately, they seem to have only included the screenshots, not the actual tutorial PDF...

@sepo said:

Issue of 3d world? Is that 3D World Magazine?

Yes. Someone's just told me that they're downloading the tutorial, but I can't find anything on the site...if anyone can find a link to it, can they post it here? Ta.

This is a Cheetah3D render of the model that I've just posted in the Gallery section. I'm a bit unhappy about the way that curved surface are showing facets...but bringing this in as a 3ds or obj has its own problems as well....

Like I said in my other post there's a tutorial on how to build this in issue 99 of 3D World if anybody's interested.

Jeff --

You forgot the most important thing about the modo-SU import plug-in: they charge $99 for it...

Here's a fairly accurate model of the Turning Torso by Santiago Calatrava. I say 'Fairly', because I took the liberty of making it turn through 180 degrees, instead of 90.

I've written a tutorial on how to make the 90-degree version in issue 99 of 3DWorld magazine.

I'll do some Cheetah Renders of this and post 'em in the Render Gallery.

Edit: here's a link to the tutorial and files:

Redirecting...

(www.3dworldmag.com)

@wo3dan said:

Tim,

I don’t get it. You mean that when you have selected something it is not possible to click next to the group- or component- names in the outliner to deselect, i.e. in white space. That would be an immense MacDrawBack. In Windows we can.
And what would be the purpose of an empty group…… I still don’t get it.
Clicking on a special empty group in the outliner to unselect is like asking for that white space.
A group of any size that has nothing visible (and I don’t mean by hiding entities) is easy but you would still select it by clicking on it, whether in the model or in the outliner.
Dylan’s suggestion for another mouse sounds like a good idea.

Wo3Dan

Wo3Dan -- I can see you've never used the Mac outliner! OK, we can stretch it vertically, but often, my list of groups fills the entire window. No white space. Clicking in the white space to the side of a group selects that group. If we could simply click on the top-level model name to deselect everything (like you can in Windows)...I think it was CraigD who agreed this should be implemented, but that was over a year ago...

There are a LOT of problems with the Mac Outliner...but that's for another place...

Oh, and thanks for the tip, Johnny!

@unknownuser said:

Well I can fully appreciate your situation Tim, I work the same myself only able to use my right hand.
On a side note I have just recently purchased a new Logitech mouse which allows me to map 8 functions to it. It is fantastic

Yes, I noticed that on another of your posts...however – as is usual – that's a seriously right-handed mouse...I'm a lefty meself...

And don't get me started on the Space Navigator...

I posted this in the main forum, but it should probably go in here as well...

Okay, it's a bit of a kludge...

I've been messing around with texture and lightmap baking in my favourite renderer, Cheetah3D...

Then I thought, what if I re-imported the texture maps back into SketchUp? And this is the result...

Here's a video: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=h3Mp3eHtGLw

(The YouTube compression makes the shadow quality a little hard to see, but you get the point...)

The workflow in Cheetah is, choose your mesh, 'bake' its texture...you get a UV-unwrapped, rendered texture map of your surface with all shadows, caustics, etc on there... you then simply re-apply the unwrapped, baked texture in your material's Colour channel. Because it's UV mapped, it wraps itself perfectly back around the geometry.

Of course, It only works for flat surfaces when you re-import these maps into SU...you have to cut out the relevant portion from the baked texture map in an image editor, so you often don't end up with a particularly high res texture map (cf. floor texture (low-res) & Balcony floor texture (high-res))...

But this got me thinking... What if SU could bake & wrap its own shadows & textures? The shadows would then simply exist as part of the surface's material definition. Is this amenable to the Ruby approach? The speed increase you get in rendering animations is phenomenal: that 46-sec video on YouTube rendered in around eight minutes -- about 5-6 times faster than if you rendered it with OpenGL shadows.

And we'd get rid of the flickering shadow problem...

(I realise this won't work if the sun has to move in your animation)

@rodentpete said:

Does the Mac version not use Ctrl + T to 'select none'?

Gaahh..I've just seen it...Command-Shift-A - Select None...I almost never use the Menus, so hadn't noticed it. Duhhh...

It would still be easier for me just to click on the file name in the Outliner, like you can in Windows...