I went to the mountains for 3 days and the thread took off. A few responses:

@plot-paris said:

...some suggestions, that in my eyes would improve the interface:

• add sliders to change reflectivity...

OK. One of our developers did this last week, so we need to spend some time on it, testing, etc., but for a v1.1 at some time this would be good.

@plot-paris said:

• either directly apply the changes to the material or add an "apply-button" so that you can keep the window open...

Is it really a lot of right clicking? We are looking at ways to make this even easier though, and the apply button is one possibility. Thanks.

@plot-paris said:

• I don't know if this is possible or if it meant an enire rewriting of the code - but I do like the ability of several other render engines, to apply a "light-attribute" to a material, meaning, that in order to create a light, I simply apply a material to the model of the bulb and define the ammount of light, this material emmits. thus I can easily influence the quality of shadows (crisp or soft) by changing the size of the light source (wide surface = soft shadow). in my oppinion that is easier to understand.

Essentially using an area light to create softer shadows. I get it, but I don't recommend it. Area lights add A LOT to render times. I expect we'll add area lights and several other forms in a Pro version, and maybe basic area lights in this version. I believe a better way to go might be to give you an opportunity to change the softness using a slider. Need to think more about it.

For softer shadows using Cloudy or or other conditions certainly add to that, but you tend not to get them in direct sunlight but see them more often with indirect lighting with higher quality settings. Maybe we should revise those presets.

@plot-paris said:

and if you add image-support, you can even iluminate an picture (like a computer screen )

You can do that now. If you bring in an image, you need to use it as a texture, then you can set the texture material property to Glow. If there is text in the image (or a certain left-right orientation) then you'll need to pay attention to the normal. That's the only place in the product where you need to worry about flipping faces.

-- William

@ Plot-Paris: thanks for your feedback. We do apply a basic bump (on an autogenerated bump map) and matte finish by default so that in many cases only a subset of materials need to be edited, and not faces, which keeps the tweaking down. Designed this way to speed up workflow for novices or for those who are used to the workflow while they design. Changing from another renderer might take a different mind-set I suppose.

Regarding the preview update being slow -- thanks for the feedback. We're just done an update today and we changed the material preview to use a secondary thread so it’s fast now on most dual core machines. (Although for multithreading rendering you need the full version. There is a 30-day trial of that if you prefer.)

We don't perform a progressive scan, so instead we chose the three options for preview renders, standard and presentation. Maybe next release, again thanks for the feedback.

For a quick look at the more positive experiences I'd say check out http://forums.idx-design.com. We've also got a couple of quick videos there that can give you a good feel for the how-to's in < 3 minutes or so each.

@pugz1983, it depends on the type of metal you're looking for. There are two material finish selections for dull metal and polished metal which I often apply to a solid color, like silver. If there’s light hitting it you will see a nice specular effect, particularly on curved surfaces. For metal materials such as those supplied in SketchUp you may want to use the default matte finish. We don't have anisotropic shaders in this version if that's what you're looking for.

Diabloho,

Thanks for the heads up that IDX was crashing for you -- I assume that is the free version for PC. A few users have had that problem and we're expecting a fix to be released later today if you're interested.

-- William

Track marks on the carpet is a great idea. I'd love to see it.
-- William

Thanks for the heads up -- it should work with SketchUp installed elsewhere, so we'll look at that.

Jim, glad you're giving it another look. TurboSketch is about 18 month old technology, so Renditioner should do better for you. Regarding speed, the full version has multithreading, so is a lot faster than the free version for dual core and beyond. (From 40-80% faster depending on cores.)

But the free version has an unbeatable price.

Hi Malaise,

We haven't seen this issue come up in installation yet. For support issues I'll suggest to anyone to look at our forums at http://forums.idx-design.com. We use some elements from SketchUp 6.4xxx, but that normally doesn't stop an installation, or most functions when using 6.0. Have you installed SketchUp to a different location than normal? (It shouldn't be a problem, but helps me diagnose your issue.)

Another question: in your plugin folder do you still have "utilities.rb" and "examples.rb" and their subdirectories? These are SketchUp files we use. If you don't have them I would suggest either re-installing SketchUp first, or if you have access to another version with them, copy those files/folders to the plugins directory.

c://ProgramFiles/Google/GoogleSketchUp6/Plugins

If you still don't have success, a response from our forum is usually faster. Ou s'il soit meilleur, un email serait bienvenu à wmanning @ imsidesign.com
William

Looks like you've found the two versions there. First is a free version that doesn't expire and is valid for all commercial and personal use. Two limits to functionality: no multithreading, and a maximum render size of 640 x480. The second post refers to our 30-day trial of the full version with multithreading and 16 megapixel max image size (4096 x 4096) for when you need quality printed output. There are trials on the PC and Mac. The free version is PC only until we release an update to our Mac version.

Enjoy it.

A little late to the thread, but Alan, thanks for the links, I certainly enjoy Dawkins. But seeing as how Cornel doesn't, maybe he'd like this show covering a court case in the US on Intelligent Design theorey in the schools. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/program.html

Another overview of the advances in the subject matter.

William

Magnifique!

Good use of depth of field. I also love the subtle reflected light coming from out of scene.

William

Yeah... sorry about that. I believe we'll be adding alpha support soon...

If you like artistic views you might try using filters in Photoshop or the GIMP. Just take the image you have above and you can see different artistic styles. You could do the same with output from a render engine like Podium that Remus recommends, or IDX Renditioner. They both work right inside SketchUp and are easy. You can use that output or even try Photoshop filters on it if you prefer non-photorealistic.

I recommend experimenting.

Add my thanks, and a table to Northern California.

And a partridge in a pear tree... (Christmas carols seem appropriate with all these gifts.)

William

Very nice lighting on the model. The only suggestion I have is to ask: should there be a door knob? Great work.

I didn't make the Tuesday dinner, but did get to see Todd's excellent presentation of Ruby scripts today (Wednesday). In a short amount of time he covered a very broad number of scripts and did demos of quite a few given the time... Thanks Todd.

And yes, it was a good excuse for a party as the band played, the beer and wine flowed... I'm sure it was only a warm-up period for many people who this evening are glad there is no live coverage of the after-party.

I heard no announcements beyond the contest Lewis mentioned. Details are to be posted Friday.

And for a good laugh, if you do a Google Search on "SketchUp BaseCamp" you will find this advertisement from someone willing to sell "the advanced Sketchup knowledge that I will learn" at BaseCamp! http://orlando.craigslist.org/egr/696480489.html

Thanks for the welcome. I hadn't noticed the Portugues pages yet, but I will try as I learn more of the language!

From the Las Angeles Times: "Um, for Malkin -- who is beyond clueless -- the kaffiyeh has been worn by many a Parisian grad student and dozens of celebrities -- including Colin Farrell, David Beckham, Kirsten Dunst and both Olsen twins.

The scarf even showed up on the Balenciaga runway (right) and later sold for more than $1,000."

That's terror: $1,000 bucks for a scarf...

Hi everybody, I'm William Manning. I live in Sonoma, California (wine country), and work with IMSI/Design running their plugin division, IDX. IMSI did the TurboSketch product then got busy with other things, didn't update it when necessary, and didn't support the customers well, so a big part of my job has been changing the culture completely, and I'm the guy to go to personally if you have any problem that isn't resolved quickly.

About me... fairly new to 3D modeling. I have a fair amount of AutoCAD and TurboCAD experience though. Love SketchUp. I use both the free and Pro versions on Mac (PPC, and Intel) and PC under XP, Vista, Tiger, and Leopard (but not all every day).

I've been in the high tech world all of my adult life. Lived in Paris, twice. And Brussels for 4 great years in the '90s. I've forgotten all the Flemish I knew, but still speak French and Italian. I'm studying Brazilian Portugues (and the cello).

I just hope I can contribute positively with all these SketchUp experts around, but I have learned a lot about rendering and have access to a lot of very knowledgeable people...

Cheers!

Hi everybody, I'm William, and I'm running the plug-in division at IMSI/Design called IDX. I'll put in a proper introduction in the Newby Forum (although I've been here off and on for several weeks). I'll try to be informative here and not do an advertisement, but forgive me if I cross the line...

I'm new to IMSI/Design since the TurboSketch product came out, but I can tell you that we have changed the management and the culture around the product.

A little naming history: evidently the TurboSketch Studio name was only meant to be for a retail bundle when we brought the SketchUp free version and our first renderer to the US retail market. At the time of the launch the plugin was planned for stand-alone sales as "IDX Rendition" then we got word of another product being released by that name (TurbobSketch is even listed that way on the SketchUp Plugins site which I hope will change by the time you read this). By default it was called TurboSketch. We're not changing the name to hide from a past where we dropped the ball for support and didn't follow up when we needed to with updates.

In a moderate defense of my collegues I must say that TurboSketch did do a good job in some environments, for what it was designed to do, and truly has a simple UI. 4/5 review from Macworld, 4.5/5 from Architosh (Tim Danaher: http://www.architosh.com/features/2008/reviews/turbosketch/index.html). But it was also marketed as Mac universal when it had huge problems on the PowerPC Mac as opposed to Intel-based Macs. And the activation system was horrible and wasn't replaced when it should have been.

Not so IDX Renditioner. The Mac version goes far beyond TurboSketch in quality, speed (faster plus multithreading), and in lighting control. The PC version, out today, also outshines the old TurboSketch. Both allow for 16 megapixel image sizes. My renders on the site aren't great (I've only been doing 3D modeling for a short time) but the video shows the UI reasonably. Enough advertorial.

Sorry about the length, and Coen, sorry about the advertorial. I hope it was more informative than crass marketing.

And @ Chris & Stinky: I lived in Belgium during 4 of the best years of my life!

Cheers,
William