This is basically my first render... the car is a WIP, between me, Mr Planet, JaViXP and Rogue; see what you think:

Cool

I thought of that... it should be possible to make the geometry at the first frame, then move each point to the desired position every frame afterwards... but, well, I need to find out how

(I don't really see the point of making a group, when you can just use emitters?)

Huh... did you change anything in Class Extensions for the latest release? Maybe it's something buried away, only just exposed, or files not opening in the correct order? I guess I don't really know what I'm talking about here, but maybe they should try an older version?

I'm optimisticly expecting improvements in Su's rendering, given the topics of the last survey... but that's just silly ol' me . Multi-core certainly seems to be expected, so maybe all's not lost

Undefined 'parent' method? That's quite worrying, isn't that part of SU?

I suppose you can set velocity and torque to 0 when teleporting? So, it doesn't always have to come out with the same momentum?

All this is really cool... I think you're gonna run out of features for SPIV

EDIT: Are you going to switch to Newton 2.0? I understand the beta is out... multi-core and speed optimizations sound tantalizing

All this stuff is SO awesome... when you say linear/angular damping, will that act like a basic kind of air resistance? And what I'm really interested in, is if you set density to 0, what happens? Is it truly 0... i.e no weight or inertia? As long as it works ok as a noCollision object, attached to something else, then it's fine. Then with the torque and velocity; can you set them at runtime? And can you retrieve the object's current torque and velocity?

And, out of interest, isn't it now possible, with a few workarounds, to copy/paste and emit complex (jointed) objects? Just automatically connect each object with script at the beginning of the simulation, and do the same thing with emitters (if we can set an emitted object's script field...?)

The cloth is effectively a 3x3 grid... so, 18 polys. Think that'll run at a reasonable rate? (And could you direct me to a basic API tutorial? )

Ages ago, I found out you could make hinges springy. I think it was:

• Set a min and max
• Set accel and damp, like a spring
• Use 0.5 as a controller

Nothing big, but it's a good mod (People can finally stop complaining!!)

After you download this, look at http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=2089b6db29e339096cd8ad826e9017b8 ... it's one of my models that gets MUCH better when you can use the joypad-only features

Oh, and you'll be able to play the normal version of MotorSketch. Not that there's much difference.

+1 vote!!

If they add anything like what I'm talking about, it'll only be in the pro version; for people like yourself, that's not a problem, but I can't really afford to spend that much on software. I'm very keen on it being real-time, mainly because I like SketchyPhysics, and it really annoys me that I can't make my games bigger, faster and better looking; with the current effeciency, shadows, and even lines need to be turned off to play at a reasonable framerate, on what is essentially an ultra-low poly model. I guess effeciency is what they'll be focusing on, but that'd make it more of a 7.5 release; they'll need good new features to back it up. I'm wondering whether organic modelling will play a role, and maybe a bit of object-based animation...?

There was mention of the graphical capabilities in the survey (I forget which one)... they had options for reflections (Maybe real-time?) and 'improving the shadows', which most people think meant 'fixing the shadow bug'... but I hope there's more to it than that

That's pretty cool, but I've seen it before and won't do what I want

I'll probably be able to make this work, I know it's possible to draw lines from point to point. I just wonder if it'll make the faces, and how I can smooth them...

...to create very simple geometry on-the-fly, with no modifications to SP's code? What I mean is, say in my cloth model, you could draw lines between the pieces every frame, to create a face. Paint it with a material, smooth it, and you have seamless cloth!

Like LittleBigPlanet!! That'd be pretty good

The goal here isn't something so external, and I don't want to make a picture, or spend hours creating a video; LightUp scores slightly under the mark for quality, and it looks like it just bakes shading into the textures (Not real-time). What I'm talking about is a direct adittion to SU's renderer... it's always had a stronger focus on appearance than other programs, why not take it a step further?

Even if vastly increasing the quality isn't an option, the effeciency is still awful. At the very least, the technique used for shadows could be updated, to allow soft shadows and multiple light sources, and, well, run faster. And would changing how individual surfaces are shaded really be so hard?

I'm still asking too much, aren't I? Oh well...

The SketchyReplay toolbar lets you record the simulation perfectly; the animation is saved within the .skp file, so you can access it later. Just press record and play the simulation. When you click reset, a popup will ask you whether to save the animation; click 'yes'. You can then select 'Play animation' to view it, click again to pause. You can also rewind, and skip back to the beginning.

I love Goulash! The proper kind