@mknorr said:

In the photo match tutorials I have seen, the photos have always been absent of trees, power poles and wires etc. During my time modeling my city, Wollongong, NSW, Australia, I have found this rarely happens.

There's a judgement call here. By all means get rid of cars and people. Trees, bushes, etc. are sometimes OK. It depends on how close they are to ther building wall. I've learned to think more about the final model when I'm shooting photos. So, for example, I sometimes take pictures on Sunday morning when there are fewer cars parked. Also, I wait a few seconds for pedestrians to pass befor clicking the picture to save editing work later.

Tom

@gaieus said:

And yes, if you want to be a "perfectionist", you sometimes spend more with the textures than the model itslef.

I completely agree with Gaieus. I usually spend more time in Paintshop than in SU.

When I'm building models of my town, some of the streets are very narrow, so it's impossible to get more than, say 3 or 4 meters away from the building. I use a mosaic approach, i.e., take a lot of small photos, correct for barrel distortion and perspective, then fit them together in one bigger image. I often need to use the clone tool with low hardness to clean up the edges of the constituant images.

Hope this helps,
Tom

Ward,

I'm glad that hlped. My model of Leominster, Herefordshire, is coming along. I think there are now about30 buildings accepted in GE with at least that many either waiting in the cue on 3DW or taking up space on my hard disk.

Tom

.... or here's another one for Featured Modelers:

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/cldetails?mid=e014072e8d6463df85c8113b62bb1aa&prevstart=0

Tom

Hi Ward,

Is this what you're looking for?

http://sites.google.com/site/3dwarehousemodelfeedbackissues/

Tom

Just in case anybody else is having problems with this, I found out something else: Even if the Upload button is gray, after I've filled in all the boxes, I go back to the Title box, click in it and hit the return key. Presto, the Upload button turns black and the upload works.

Tom

OK. I've got it working again. In case anyone else has this problem, here's what I did:

1. In WinXP, open control Panel and click to Security Center
2. Click Internet Options.
3. Choose Trusted Sites
4. Click on the Sites Button.
5. Type in the box "http://sketchup.google.com". The click the Add button.

It worked for me.

Thanks to all,
Tom

Hi all,

Guess what: See thread below. Once again, I'm not able to upload models to 3DW. When I click on the share model button, The 3DW Upload window opens, but the Upload button at the bottom is gray and can't be clicked. The Title, description, etc. work OK. It's just the Upload that is blocked.

What's going on here?

http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=15291&start=0

Thanks,
Tom

Norbert,

I tried it quickly and it did not work. It could be an error in my coding (I'm not much of a programer!) When I have a bit mor time, I'll work on it and let you know.

Tom

Hans,

Here's how I do it:

1. Make sure Hidden Lines is turned off.
2. Make the pipe, or whatever, a group.
3. Make the flat surface a Projected texture.
4. Sample the projected texture.
5. With the Paint Bucket tool, right click on the pipe and click Edit Group.
6. Click on the pipe with the Paint Bucket.

Done.

There is one issue that can sometimes be a problem. With any curved object, the object only gets painted from one direction. So, the sides of the curved object can look a little funny. You can work around this by dividing the curved object into several groups, move the flat surface around the object and paint each group seperately. By experimenting with this method, you can get your curved objects looking pretty realistic.

Tom

Cool!

@n lindenthal said:

my question is, how it is possible to load my own building (kmz), when it does not come from database by google, but from my own database.

Hi Norbert,

I think you can run the GE Plugin on your own computer and access .kmz files directly from you own hard disk. I played with this when I was experimenting with the Plugin.

On the other hand, if you want to run the plugin on a site that is available to everybody on the web, you need to house your .kmz files on a site that is also universally available, i.e. 3DW.

I suppose (although I haven't tried it) you could build your own web site that held you models and code the plugin the access this site for the .kmz files.

You might find more answers on this forum:
http://groups.google.com/group/google-earth-browser-plugin/topics?pli=1

I hope this helps,
Tom

I noticed that the .kmz & .zip files were a lot smaller. Maybe they only contain the details of the visible model.

Tom

Hi,

I followed Gaieus's advice and it worked!

I had to create two files, one for each of the visable models, although they were all contained in different layers with the same terrain. One possible shortcomming: the file size in GE seems to include the hidden layers, so each model is roughly twice as big as it would be on its own. But it sure made the sllignment a lot faster and easier.

Tom

Thanks, Gaieus. I'll try it today and let you know how it works.

Tom

Hi all,

A technical question: I'm building models of the town where I live. One of the issues is matching up the walls of adjacent buildings. I've been putting .kmz files into my GE and then fixing problems. Sometimes this takes several iterations to get right.

My question is: if I use one Scene from GE to build two or more seperate models (each with its own file)and then upload the individual models to 3DW, will 3DW recognize them as seperate models or will it replace each one as the next is uploaded?

Thanks,
Tom

Thanks Remus, Gaieus.

...learn somethin' new every day.

Tom

@db-3d said:

Also, always delete the bottom face, avoid creating your own terrain and us .png textures as often as possible. You'll save a lot of time modeling high levels of details if you just use a png instead. Attached is an example where you can see the difference.

Dan,

I usually use .png files when I need a tranparent area, but otherwise I use .jpg. In the attached screen dump, the image on the left is .jpg and the right is .png. I can't see much difference in detail. Both images are 455 X 284 pixels, but the .jpg file is 91.4 KB while the .png file is 249 KB.

Could you explain a bit more the advantages of .png over .jpg.

Thanks,
Tom

@chris fullmer said:

Many people have said that SU7 runs a little faster than SU6. There should not be any XP conflicts. Also, you can keep it on your machine simultaneously with SU6. So don't go deleteing the old version, leave it on. You can always delete it later if you feel like sticking with SU7 only. So go ahead and install it. You'll probably be happy you did,

Chris

I'm running SU7 under XP - no problem. I think it's a lot faster. I have one big model (3MB) that's very slow in SU6 but quite lively in SU7.

Tom

@eduardonl said:

Are you using textures from sites like CGtextures?

Eduardo,

Mainly, I'm doing it the same way you did this sample. Since I'm taking my photos from the ground, I often can't get good pictures of the roofs, chimneys, etc. Then I use textures from CGTextures for roof tiles and bricks.

Tom