Thank you Gaieus! That is exactly what I need.

Aerilius. You are mistaken as you can download any building in google earth that google created...except those created via this new technique. Simply to to a building you want and when it highlights click on it... it then gives you a preview of that building in the right side of the popup window. Just click on that picture and it gives you options on how to download it. I have been doing this for several years now.. I hope the google police dont come after me

I agree John The current state of buildings in google earth is terrible. They only look good when you are looking at it 10,000 feet in the air and when you get close it look like they are crumbling. This tech should only be released when its further along. Aerillius.. I did see that 3d warehouse still has the use created buildings but they dont have 80% of the other buildings that were generated by google. You had to get those straight from google earth. I am hearing from my friend though that if you have google earth pro and turn off terrain the original google models are there and the blobs are gone. I guess its time to fork over another $400 for the pro version.

I was just on the Google Earth looking at a future project and it looks like they have removed all of models from the site that we were once able to download. Now as i see it,the building are an extruded blob! This is terrible news if you have ever used their models for surrounding context.

I agree that better managing of large models is a must! The addition of better animation capabilites would also be welcome. I dont care much about the rendering as that already works for me with Vray and Maxwell render but I do think they need to work on the ability to model more complex shapes.

As for Free and Pro, I dont really care about the free version... Let that stay as it is as you get what you pay for And if they had significant improvements i would not mind paying even more for the Pro version.

I love using sketchup as a modeling tool but i feel its starting to become stagnant when it comes to improvements. The plugnins that users are creating are amazing but is google relaying on their merits for help in keeping the program up to date?. My worry is that since google bought the program to bring in models into Google Earth, they dont have urgency to improve it as it seems to work well for that particular goal.. I am hoping I am wrong but the last several news letters show very little on what has, or will be improved upon.

Im interested to hear what others think.

Thank you

Thanks Thomthom for the excellent advice. Very helpful!

Hello All. Sorry for the delay in getting back but once i got the workaround i had to crank on another project.

Usually I dont have a problem exporting but for project i used the new feature where you can photo texture directly from street view. This saved me tons of time compared to actually going to the site, taking photos, croping, saving and importing. Its this new feature i think giving me the problem. For those of you who have not used it, this is a description from google how it works.;

"Once your model is geolocated, use Photo Textures to find and apply photographic textures from Street View to walls in your model.
Select a wall in your model to texture.
Find a photo that shows that entire wall.
'Select Region' and adjust pins.
'Grab' to apply the selected region.
Repeat until you're done."

I may have found a work around.

1. Explode everything in the scene.
2. Export as a KMZ file
3. Re-import into sketchup
4. Now export as a 3dS or fbx, or Ojb file.

Seems to work for me?

Sure, attached is a basic sketchup file with just one building. Are you able to export this as a 3ds, fbx, or obj file with textures? It never works for me.

Thanks for looking!

test building.skp

Hello Chris

Sorry, i did use the wrong term as the program actually does not crash, it gives an error message. Its the same error message everytime. It reads;

SketchUp SDK error: An error has occurred resulting in an invalid output file.
This error can occur when performing several back-to-back exports without closing SketchUp between each export. Try closing SketchUp, opening your model, and immediately exporting again. Google, Inc. is working on a solution to this error.

I have done everything it mentioned and have even created a new file with a simple plane that i texture map an image on to. Anytime i try to export with texture i get that message, no matter how many times i restart. Exporting with textures is pretty important with what i do this is a biggie at least for me.

Thanks for you time.

I did a basic model of 9 city blocks. I want to export to 3d studio to use in an animation but anytime you export with textures it crashes. It does this with .3ds, .fbx, and .obj files. Even if i take just one small 4 sided building with a simple texture i import it wont export. Does anyone know of a work around for this?

Thank you

Wow! THanks for that TIG. This will help a lot in the future. The snapping still did not work but this now at least provides me with a work around.

Thanks again

Hello TIG

It does not tell me if its a circle in the entity info box. It just says face, then the square footage of the area. It does this even on the circles that i am able to snap too. How do you go about changing the radius via the dialog box if i already made it? Thanks for your help

If i draw a circle and I dont care about its radius i can go back to snap to the center of the circle. But if i input a distance for the radius when drawing a circle, the center snap no longer works? Am i doing something wrong?

Thank you for the nice comments. I am better than I used to be but still have so much to learn.

Thanks

More past work.

Hey Richard.

No problem, i dont see it as a rant at all. I think its just a matter of personal preference. I usually give my clients the options to choose more of a straight out of the box maxwell image or one that I enhance though glow and other techniques. Its at least 90% of the time the clients pick the enhanced look.

And personally, i think if everyone just clicked render and maxwell did all the work, more and more renderings would look the same and that looses the artistry of the whole process. I also use Revit and now with its built in rendering engine, I can easily spot a revit rendering as everyone goes about the same process and the rendering settings are almost automatic. While they look ok, I will always bring them into Photoshop to give them my own artistic flair.

Thanks!

Richard.

I see your point in that when i see the images posted here they look a little washed out. Im not sure what this happened but the 24x36 prints came out great. I work on a 30inch mac screen and the color seems to translate well from my monitor to my printing company. I actually post process these images to give it a slight soft glow on the highlights. A lot of renders coming out of China do this, and im still learning the tricks. In what i do, i dont care about being a hyper-realist and am drawn more towards a final result that has my personal technique.

Regarging the brick repeating. This definitely needed more attention and i wish i could have fixed that if i had more time. I had to produce 8 renderings of that building and i had 4 days to model and render all of the images. I sure cant wait for the new maxwel release

Thanks for the info using the curves graph. I will give this a shot and see the results.

Here are a couple more images I just finished. Thanks