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Ok, I'm horrible at jokes, but this one had me laughing for half a day and the only one I can ever remember. I heard it on a local radio station's Monday morning "Joke that could get me fired".

What did the banana say to the vibrator?

What are you shaking for? I'm the one she's gonna eat.

A) I agree, the animation needs serious help. It sure would be nice to have more control through each point. My biggest problem is, when going from point A to point and then to point C, the variation in speed if the points are at different lengths. I know I can export the 2 seperately, but it sure would be nice if I could specify transition time for each one instead of global.

B) Mateo, your new avitar makes you look like Simon Cowell...or are you really Simon Cowell and you are trying to look like Mateo....hmmmm.

Yes, I will be putting the blade on some time this week when I get a free moment and I'll let it render over the weekend. I'll post an update when I have it.

After looking at TomislavM's wickedly bad ass X-wing, I thought I would post up my light sabre I worked up last week. I've had the schematic for it for quite a few months but never had the time to do anything with it. Well, one bored Friday leads to an entire day spent on doing it up. I have also been trying to render it up in Kerky, but still working on the little LED lights. Lighting is something I have never touched, but this little object has actually been great for material and lighting testing.

So here it is...first in straight SketchUp form, and then a couple renders.
Not what a jedi wants to see. New materials added in KT, lighting added. Too bright, will be reducing the wattage in next version

First KT render, nothing adjusted, materials from SketchUp.

Straight SketchUp, lines turned off.

Verrrry nice! Love the attention to detail! I'm more of an Imperial fan, but I can apprecite a well done X-Wing too.

I've been looking into doing some SW action lately. Last Friday I was bored at work so I found a schematic of a light sabre and did up the whole thing. It turned out pretty well too. I was going to wait until I finished a "good" rendering in KT, but maybe I'll post what I have now after this bit of inspiration.

I agree, your work is fantastic. I found your work in the warehouse and after downloading a few of your files, was amazed at how you used difference materials and linework to produce the images you show. Very creative and imaginative...I am a definite fan of what you have done!

I agree, this is really wonderful. My only comment, is the moon. I see the feeling you are trying to acheive with it, but it's not working. It draws my eye away from the architecture. Maybe not so bright, or some cloud cover to dim it down a bit might help...but again, that's just a personal preference.

Overall, simply fantastic.

LOL...that's called a theft deterent - one of many located on the car. No steering wheel = harder to drive away. Special unique locking pins prevent other steering wheels being put in its place, even if from the same company/brand.

As for the speed thing...I really don't know. I have the car built to look fast, run fast and be fast, but I just cruuiiizzeeee in it. Although, I did, just this one time, put it down as I saw a ricer (slang for a wanna-be import tuner) about a mile up and as I went by him about 140mph (speedo goes to 160), I looked in my rear view mirror only to see a nice gold colored car with interior lights going crazy. So I pulled over and waited for him to catch up...and he was not very happy with me. Luckily for me, I was going faster than he could even determine and I wouldn't admit guilt, so all he could do is yell (and he was literally yelling at me like I was his kid) and look the car over for something stolen.

I haven't ever run it with the nitrous though...but to turn it on, you have to turn the bottle on, allowing gas to the engine. You can then purge (you might see people doing this by spraying up in the air)it at this point to get any air out of the lines to prevent hesitation. Flipping the switch ("go baby go" on Gone in 60 Seconds movie - highly recommended by the way, not only for the hot cars, but Angelina Jolie is fiiiiine in it ) putting the petal all the way to the floor opens up the solenoid to inject the gas into the air intake and mixing with the fuel. Mine is set for 60 additional HP per "hit". The injectors are replaceable and can be adjusted from 25hp to blown motor.

Yea, I love the sleeper look as well. A great story...

I went to my son's daycare to pick him up and this little girl comes up to me and said "My daddy likes your car and saw it in a magazine". I said oh really. Just then her mom came up and the little girl says "hey mommie, it's HIS car". She then turned and smiled and said she got home from work the other night and her husband was looking through a magazine and shouts out "HEY, I know that car, it's always at (whatever their girls name is) daycare". She said he couldn't believe I had all that in there and that he actually saw it in real life. Pretty funny stuff.

I can't go anywhere without people wanting to take a look. They are blown away when they really see what I have inside. Almost 10,000 watts of audio, Playstation 2, TV tuner, DVD, CD, Navigation, 5.1 surround processor, the works. Drive-In movie theaters never sounded so good.

Yes, that is nitrous there...and my arm fits perfectly over the top of it. My hand rests right at the valve and is actually more confortable on the bottle than without.

WOOT...a post I can actually be a part of and talk for days on...the second love of my life...my realistic dream car...my baby.

Been featured in magazines and is still a daily driver! In the process of putting in a new twin turbo 500+ HP engine. Hoping to run the dyno closer to 600HP though.

Having my nose to the grindstone on my own project, I sure have missed a lot of great work, including this one. Impressive is hardly descriptive enough.

Wow, first time seeing this...really impressive. I love the creative feel to the overall setting. This is quite refreshing to see, let alone know its being built, as I've grown numb to the cut and paste architecture that has taken over.

Great job.

That is really impressive. Amazing amount of detail. Roughly, how much time do you have invested in that? Have you tried rendering any of it?

I've been wanting to do something like that just for the fun of it on my own time as my company at most does massings with minimal details.

No kidding...Madison you say?! I'm a cheesehead myself, even though I have relocated to Cali a number of years ago. I used to live just east of Oshkosh in a little town called Wautoma....population 1629.

Thanks Craig. I have the same story as everyone else..."SketchUp has really done wonders for my career" If only I could corner the market...
Eric, you actually downloaded the animation? HA...wasn't sure if anyone would bite. Yea, its pretty cool and was part of a powerpoint presentation I put together. The final is going to show the final site map and then zoom in to each product location model complex and rotate. However, I was playing around with Google Earth and found out I could import my site map into there and get the same effect, but with a much greater radius obviously. I am going to see about placing my site map and then putting models in. I just don't know how well GE can handle that many models. It's all in testing for now though..hehe.

As for the colors, I was told those are "standard". Even though I'm not in land planning, I do a lot of his graphics and see the same colors over and over again. I looked at your image and tonewise, yea, pretty scary how close they are...haha.

Gosh, I miss this place. Well, I really should get back to work.

Thanks...I tell ya, I miss hanging out here every day. The bad thing (is it really that bad though?!) is that I'm the only one in the office with photoshop/SketchUp skills. Great for job security, but bad for crunch time. So all of this work is being done from the ground up by myself.

It's a good thing I love what I do and where I do it. Sanity was something I left behind years ago, so no hope there. It's probably best that way...it helps expain away most of my problems...hehe.

As for reaping rewards...I think Uncle Sam smacked my hand pretty hard on the last paycheck. 80 hrs regular time and 65 hours overtime/double overtime sounds like a good paycheck in theory...

Ah, I remembered I had some of the attached stuff semi completed.

Site Topo Fly Around - http://www.gbh-p.com/Oak%20Knoll%20Topo.zip (84MB) This really "WOW'ed" the client for as simple as it was.

A few more for now.

Ok, so I've been gone a few weeks. Blame it on my boss. Blame it on the overbearing client. Then explain it to my family who has all but forgotten who I am.
I have been working 7 days a week, 12-18 hr days for the last month straight. This project is going to kill me and I have SketchUp to blame. The client likes what they see, and wants more, more, more. By Sept. 19th, I should have 960 units on a 200 acre site completed with multiple product types ranging from institutional, mixed use, and residential from 15 DU/AC to 2 DU/AC. Granted, most of the site will be basic SD type models, but for each of the product types, we are going to show a "model complex" with detailed models.

I've been working on the models and have yet to start any of the final site work. Preliminary work included the complete site in SketchUp with a hand drawn site plan laid over the top for our proposal. This is now going to be redone with cad lines and probably try something in Google Earth as well.

My EID meeting is this Friday and the final city meeting is Sept 19th. Next week I'm taking a much needed vacation to the sunny beaches of Monterey (California) so I can get reaquainted with my family. Smile

For now, I leave you with some Estate product that is being proposed for a ridge line with million dollar views (as well as million dollar pricetags).