Heh, at first I didn't get your post, until I looked above....hahaha...you're a funny guy Shaun. Although, your avatar reminds me of an 80's song. It was about as funny as you are..hehe.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... te80ssongs
I Wanna Be A Cowboy - Boys Don't Cry
Riding on the range,
I've got my hat - on,
I've got my boots - dusty.

I've got my saddle
On my horse.
He's called....T-t-t-t-t-trigger
Of course.

I wanna be a cowboy
and you can be my cowgirl
I wanna be a cowboy
and you can be my cowgirl
I wanna be a cowboy

(woman's voice)
Riding on the chuck wagon,
Following my man.
His name is Ted,
Can you believe that?
Camping on the prairie
Plays havoc with my hair.
Makes me feel quite dirty,
Though we all do sometimes

I wanna be a cowboy
and you can be my cowgirl
I wanna be a cowboy
and you can be my cowgirl
I wanna be a cowboy

Looking like a hero,
Six-gun at my side,
Chewing my tobacco.
Out on the horizon,
I see a puff of smoke.
Indians on the warpath,
(Indian voice) White man speak-em with forked tongue.
Or not.

I wanna be a cowboy
and you can be my cowgirl
I wanna be a cowboy

My name is Ted,
And one day I'll be dead yo yo.

Wow, thanks for the great array of responses. Even though they read differently so far, they still boil down to the same. What's mine is mine and what's my companies is my companies. As Ross stated, it may not be viewed as art by others and seem rather pretentious to sign the work, but as others have stated, there are several reasons to want to do it.

I see the subject in a different light now and don't feel as bad for not feeling like I should be able to sign them.

Here's another question though...

A couple months ago, we did a charity project that some of you may have seen posted. It was a childrens playhouse and the designer did all his work on the clock, whereas, I did the modeling and color work on my own time, after work, at home and on the weekends. When I finished it, I put our company logo on it, but also put my signature on it too, as I felt this part was done by me, the artist, not the employee. My boss saw the final rendering hanging in my office and commented on the signature. He asked if that was my signature and about how many hours I put in it and if we were billing the client. I corrected him and mentioned it was on my own time and yes that was my signature. I didn't get a "yay" or nay" about it, but its what prompted the thought.

The question is, do you think that was appropriatly signed?

I have this delimma and its been nagging me for almost 3 years now.

My first job right out of school was doing hand sketched renderings. After quite some time, my boss commented on my artwork and asked me why, as an artist, I didn't sign my work. I didn't think about it, but started doing it. So all my renderings would have my "autograph" hidden somewhere in the lower right hand corner. It was there and easily read, but wasn't pronounced like the company logo.

Well, 5 years go by and I get a new job. Now I do strictly digital art and I have always felt that my art should have my signature on it. However, since starting, I have felt my boss would not agree and disapprove of having my name on it. Everything we do, is his work. There is no recognition or acknowledgement on anything, including "drawn by" on our CD's. I feel that the "company" is him, not his employees or anyone involved in actually doing the work. Not that its a big deal, as it is his company, it's hard to explain really, but it seems to be an ego thing.

I have thought about asking him if it would be ok, but I didn't want to raise any eyebrows. I have thought about alternate means of "signing" my work, without actually signing it. For example, I am working on getting my showcar drawn up in sketchup. Its a well known car, been in magazines, etc, and then placing this model of my car in the scene of everything I do. Whether they know the car or not, they will still see the repetition of it and associate it with the artist.

Anyway, I am curious what everyones take is on signing your work. Do you consider it art, or do you consider it a work project that belongs to the company with a company logo only. Or maybe both?? Give me your thoughts.

I love art and have always been very creative. Growing up I was always drawing and coloring whenever I could. My father has two companies, one was manufacturing geodesic dome homes, and the other was a custom furniture shop. After high school, I took over managing the custom furniture and learned how to listen to client needs while incorporating creativity and art into each prototype. Once the client was happy, I would send it into production. When I wasn't working in the furniture, I was helping build the triangles needed for the dome homes and getting to understand architecture, especially from a different perspective than most (building round vs. square).

After too many years of living in Wisconsin, I moved to California and didn't know what to do, so I went to school for computer aided drafting. With every project, I added my usual touch of creativity and artsy flare and the work paid off. I was hired on as a designer straight out of school to an architectural firm and have been a sponge soaking up every bit of information I could get hands on.

I started learning webpage design while still in school for fun, which needed graphics and out of that I ended up learning Photoshop by myself starting at V5. AutoCAD at V14 in school, and SketchUp at my most recent job 2 years ago.

Now I do architectural design, exterior color schemes, graphics and modeling, each incorporating the very thing I enjoyed doing when I was 5.

People ask me what my job is, and my response is "I'm a glorified kindergardner". I just hope I never grow up or grow tired of it. I am excited every day to come to work and not many people can say they love their job THAT much...lol.

Wow, simply beautiful.

I don't like the 2D people, but I think the lighting is good. It presents a nice quiet mood...like a library or dr's office hallway.

What exactly didn't your boss like about it?

Hahaha...nice. Looks like the tree from the Leprechaun movie.

I have been working day and night on a very large project lately and told my boss I just needed a new machine. I mentioned the one I have would be great as a secondary machine just for running renderings and animations, while a new one for upgrading.

I'll be looking into specs this week with our IT guy and let you guys know what I'm thinking at getting. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the tips. I took everyone suggestions and decided to do a search on Best Buy to see what comes up and here is what I found:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&id=pcat17071&type=page&ks=960&st=nvidia&sc=Global&cp=1&sp=-currentprice+skuid&qp=crootcategoryid%23%23-1%23%23-1%7E%7Eq6e7669646961%7E%7Ecpcmcat107700050034%23%232%23%23w%7E%7Ecpcmcat107700050039%23%231%23%23q%7E%7Encpcmcat107700050041%23%230%23%23q&list=n&usc=All+Categories&nrp=15&iht=n

I'm looking at the top 3...the top 2 being water cooled. I think the water cooled cards would be a big plus minimizing heat and all 3 are 768MB. Other than hooking up a water cooling system, they don't seem to have any other special requirements that would limit me in what I already have. As far as I know, I aleady have the 500W power supply, if not, that's an easy and probably necessary upgrade anyway.

I wish I were a little more hardware savvy, but fortunately I get most of the tech stuff. So if anyone wants to take a look at those cards and recommend something, or something else, I'm still open to ideas. I'm meeting with the IT guy later this afternoon so I still have some time to decide.

Thanks again everyone.

Thanks. I have read posts dating back to 2004 stating nothing good about ATI cards and SketchUp. Everything and everyone has stated nvidia is the card to use, and with the files I have open and the way I work, I would hate to spend money on something that isn't as good as what I have or worse.

I have a Visiontek Radeon X1300 512MB card and 4GB of RAM in my home computer and have not had any issues running SketchUp, but I also don't run half the crazy things I do at the office.

I do run 2 monitors at the office, which is also important in deciding the card I guess. I can't remember what they are offhand...either 21" or 24" flat widescreens, but its a lot of real estate. I'm not sure what I would do with a 3rd. I suppose a screen dedicated to WinAMP's Visualizer.

Grrrr....I hate that. Right click, select all, Ctrl C has saved me more than once.

Hey All,

I'm hoping to get some insight on this. I have been at the old forum doing searches and seeing if there is anything on the subject here, but haven't found a "this is great" response.

Currently I am running a Gateway 9310XL 3.60 w/ Nvidia GeForce 6800 256MB, and 4GB of RAM w/ WinXP SP2. I haven't had any issues since my office purchased a year-ish or so ago it and a month or so ago they asked me if I wanted to upgrade anything. I suggested maybe a better video card, but then opted to leave it alone as it was working just fine.

Well now, I have a monitor going out and it seems to be graphics card related so they are going to be purchasing me a new one. My question is, is the 6800 a good card or is there something better out there that I should look at? Money really isn't an issue, but I'm sure my boss would cough at a $4,000.00 card.

I ran the crowd test from ( viewtopic.php?f=60&t=694) and here is what I got with my 6800:

The test questions were:

1. Scene when performance while obiting becomes less responsive.
2. Scene when Components turn to rectangles when orbiting.
3. Scene transition which takes more than 30 seconds to complete.

My test was:

1. Scene 11 (Took about 2 seconds for it to start the orbit)
2. Scene 11
3. Transition to scene 11 took roughly 2 seconds.

Adding layer 11 took roughly 2-3 seconds to orbit w/ rectangles but was smooth while orbiting.
Adding layer 12 instantly turned them to rectangles on orbit but had no lack of response except when finished orbiting and coming back to people from rectangles, there was a 5 second pause.

So from reading these posts, the 6800 and my setup is pretty good. I would just like some feedback on if I should stick with the 6800 (tried and true) or go with something better like a 6800 Ultra 512MB or something else?!

Thanks in advance.

Very cool stuff...but someone should mention SketchUp to him.

Telegraph Clacks out RSS Feeds

(steampunkworkshop.com)

!dekrow taht ,parc yloH

Very nice, but always being a little ass-backwards, got any South arrows?

Very classy looking....great job.

As a customer though, I would be a bit disappointed seeing all those empty cases as I walked in. Either you were robbed or sales were good for the day.

Wow, waaaayy impressive.

I gotta agree with Tom here...733 rocks. I like the sepia-ish-selective-muted colors. Nice SD conceptual look.

I really like your "pencil effect". Is that a filter setting? It shows well on the building itself. I've been trying to achieve something similiar with dismal results. Great trees too. Nice choice of colors.

Wow, hope to see this finished. That engine is looking good.

Ugh...I feel your pain. My boss likes to "play" with models once in a while and sometimes I have to take his work and use it. Sometimes its easier to start over, but other times I just don't have the time and need to cry through it.

Unfortunately I have no good news for you that I know of. I have done the delete to default many times because I was working in the materials anyway and repainting/retexturing wasn't an issue.

Would be nice to be able to specify or have some control like in the layers menu. Seems like something easy to implement too. Same dialog box with a check for default or check for (selection).