Daniel Tal wrote an article about Shaderlight in the latest issue of LAM. You can read it here: http://www.zinio.com/reader.jsp?issue=416152063&rf=usa_clt_lam&o=ext

Hey Chris. Yes, the tcs file comes from tree[d]. I'm not at my computer right now, but from what I remember it's a series of rgb values that I believe tree[d] uses to compute the color variations in the leaves. It would be great if you are figuring out a way to use that data in SU. Let me know if I can help.

Yeah, the process became more complex than I had hoped. But since no on has written the "Make High Quality, Low Poly 3D Tree" Plugin I couldn't figure out a simpler way.

In case anyone is searching this thread later, I posted a tutorial here: Tree[d] to SketchUp Tutorial

This is a tutorial I put together to describe the process of exporting a 3D tree from Tree[d] tree generator into SketchUp and reducing the polys to create a more manageable component. I hope it's helpful.

Tutorial_tree[d]2SketchUp.pdf

That actually makes sense. So if I broke that same area into smaller imports, and did 8 or 10 instead of 6, do you think it would work better? I'll try it tomorrow and see. I was surprised Terrain Reshaper didn't work too. It cranked forever and then gave me a distorted mesh in certain areas and messed with the GE texture. I probably could have remapped the texture, but I just now thought of that. Obviously I need to play with this some more. I'll look into what you suggested and let you know if it works.

Chris, I did try that and it erased more than I wanted.

Yes, grid lines would be very helpful. Thanks for the assistance with this.

Hey Charly. Yes, that does work. I guess that type of manual clean-up is the best I can hope for. Regarding your contour question, do you have the latest version of Contour Maker? It's likely your terrain is below the axes. The previous versions didn't read elevations below that, but the update (v1.6) does.

I don't have those programs. I have Civil 3D if there's a workaround through that. But I can't imagine that there's not a way to do this in native SketchUp, or atleast with an existing ruby. Surely the SU + GE compatibility isn't limited only to small sites.

I do use 8. The vertical overlap isn't the problem; the horizontal is.

You can see in the image in the background, I have a single image and mesh. In the foreground, where the meshes overlap, I have crazy triangulation. When I run Make Contours, it interpolates contours based on all the meshes so I get 2 or 3 sets of the same contour line. I need to merge the images together and delete the overlapping geometry. Is that possible, or will I need to bring in new GE data and pay closer attention to where my overlaps are? Is there any trick to minimizing/eliminating the overlap that I don't know about?

I've imported several large areas of GE terrain imagery - around 2000 acres. That amount of area required 6 separate images, each with their own triangulated surfaces. Is there a fast way to simplify the overlapping terrain data, so I have one large surface instead of six small, overlapping ones? I'm tried some clean-up scripts and Terrain Reshaper, but so far nothing seems to work.

I love the fur plugin! Thank you for this update; a preview is such a great idea. Is it possible to simplify the toolbar/menu options to eliminate the PC or Mac buttons (depending on what system you're running)? I'm on a PC and I have tried deleting all reference to the Input Box at the end of the script, but I get this error:

Error Loading File fur_en.rb
C:/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 8/Plugins/fur_en.rb:2083: syntax error, unexpected '}', expecting kEND.

Obviously there is something else calling on the Input Box references.

You need Shape Bender by Chris Fullmer.
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=18210&hilit=shape+bender

Yes, that's the idea.

I'm stepping into an area that I don't fully understand, so hopefully this question makes sense. I would like to import an obj with vertex colors turned on. I have a tcs file that I believe contains the vertex color data, but the obj and mtl don't appear to reference that file at all. I haven't found much searching Google for the tcs file format. Is it possible to import vertex colors into SU?

Thom, that sounds like it would work great, and cut several steps from my current workflow.

I don't know if it fits Thom's original idea for this plugin or not; I'll leave that for him to decide. But what I would like to have is a tool that would, based on a selection set, calculate the range of area values, ask me how many intervals I'd like to set, and then replace all the components in a given range with the resized component. So if I had leaves that ranged from 30 to 80 square inches, I could set 5 intervals and it would resize the components based on that 10 square inch interval, so a component with an area of 42, would get "rounded down" to 40. There might be other ways to do the same thing; this is just what I was hoping I could get CC to do for me. Even if I could select components by those area intervals, it would be a huge help.

Then no, they are not identical. The length and width of each component varies. The ratio of l to w is the same (hence the square). I guess I thought the tolerance setting could be used to adjust how the similar components were replaced. I can use the component browser and replace components manually to simplify the model, but it would be great if there were a way to automate that process.

[Edit] Do your Selection Toys select by component area? That would definitely help if the tolerance method isn't possible.

Thom,
This is a very useful script. I'm trying to understand what the tolerance setting does. I have a 3D tree with leaves (a simple square faces with png texture) that are all components. With a tolerance of 0.01 I was able to reduce the number of instances from over 3500 to 905. I'd like to be run the script again to further simplify the model, but I continue to get 0 changes. The tolerance settings don't seem to have any impact, even though the faces of the leaves vary from 36 sq. in. to 80 sq. in. Any ideas? Or is this something that will have to fixed in the next update? (I hope there is an update coming)
Wyatt