Light-Up 1.7 Released

Really focussed on handling of large models for v1.7 - we're seeing huge performance increases on large models.

- Significantly better at handling large models. Both in terms of lighting times which is improved but also Tourtool which is 5x faster.
- 1-click light source placement (Alt/Apple + Left mouse click with Query Tool)
- Interactive aiming of multiple light sources (Ctrl/Alt + Left mouse button with Query Tool)
- Canceling in progress lighting
- Stability improvements and bug fixes
- IES lights look in a "Lights" folder relative to your .skp file making moving files to other computers easier.
- Honoring "Hide" for individual faces
- Stop/start animation controls
- Option to use or ignore current Selection in lighting
- Fix for FBX exporter not handling some hierarchies correctly
- Fix for weird magnifying reflections
- Many fixes to IBL calculations
- Light bleeding problems fixed in many cases.
- IES Type B light support (stadium/sports lighting)
- Saves last Capture dialog state so as to not keeping popping it up each time Tourtool is used
- Compressed texture support on graphics cards that support it

Light-Up: 30 day free trial - $149 to buy

SketchUp Models Feed

Just a note that I provide a shared page/RSS feed for the latest SketchUp models from FormFonts and Cadyou.com - it's a great way to keep updated when new models are posted.

Plugin :Cleanup - Select & Erase Co-planar edges

Cleanup is a sketchup plugin to select and erase co-polanar and lonely edges.

It is written to take advantage of features in the latest SketchUp 7.1, and does a superb job of cleaning up uneeded edges. It will work with previous versions of Sketchup, but the results may not be as good.

Cleanup is written by Thomas Thomassen - a freelance modelmaker, designer, and webdesigner/programmer located in Trondheim, Norway .

[ Cleanup is hosted at SCF | See more TT's plugins | Thomas Thomassen ]

Question of the Day

I got this request in my contacts form - I don't have an answer, so hopefully one of our fine audience members knows the answer:

Hello: I'm trying to import 3D drawings developed in Solidworks. I have the drawing in(*.eprt) format. Can you help me?

3 days left to tell Google your ideas for SketchUp.

Tell Google what you would like to see for SketchUp, and vote for the best ideas.

Product Ideas for SketchUp

Plugin Updates

TIG's TruTangents v1.6 - now supports tangential arcs (see left image.)

SCF Hosted Plugin




TIG's (also) 2D Tools reaches version 3.6 - finally tracking down and fixing a bug when opening a dialog on some Windows machines. If you were having trouble using 2D Tools Hatching, this should fix it.

Plugin: Curve Control Points

Here's a new free-form modeling plugin by kirill called Curve Control Points.

this script adds control construction points to curves, then it is possible to affect curve shape by moving, rotating, scaling of control points

Visit kirills web site, and watch more videos.

Where is my SketchUp Plugins Folder?

This article was written in response to a question asked on the Google SketchUp Help forum. I've covered this before, but it comes up often enough that it justifies another post.

A highly reliable way to find the Plugins folder is to ask SketchUp where it is located.

Type (or copy and paste) the following line into the lower part of Sketchup's Ruby Console, and press ENTER. (The Ruby Console can be opened from SketchUp's Window menu.)

Sketchup.find_support_file("Plugins")

You will always get the correct location of the Plugins folder for the computer you are using.

Using a Separate Plugins Folder

If you do not have the rights to put files in Sketchup's Plugins folder, you may still be able to use many plugins from your HOME folder, or even from a portable media device.

Using the portable device as an example, create a folder on the device to store the plugin files - "plugins" might be an obvious choice. Then, Install the plugin files to the plugins folder you created. Using the Ruby Console, enter the following text - but use the full path to the plugins folder you created: (In this example, I will use e:/plugins on a Windows operating system, but note that the drive letter will likely vary from one computer to another.)

require_all("e:/plugins")

Not all plugins will work when loaded from a non-standard location, but a good many will. And it may be possible to modify the ones that do not work to allow them to work; but that's a topic for another day.

new template

I installed a new template that will hopefully fix the comments on this blog. Also installed SyntaxHighlighter:

UI.add_context_menu_handler do |menu|
    sel = Sketchup.active_model.selection
    if sel.nitems == 1
        if sel[0].is_a? Sketchup::Group or sel[0].is_a? Sketchup::ComponentInstance
            menu.add_item("Reset Transformation") { sel[0].transformation = IDENTITY }
            menu.add_item("Move to Origin") {
                tr = sel[0].transformation.to_a
                tr[12] = 0
                tr[13] = 0
                tr[14] = 0
                sel[0].transformation = tr
            }
        end
    end
end

Sketchup 2 Kerkythea SU2KT 3.1

SketchUp 2 Kerkythea version 3.1 released. Lot's of new features and fixes:

- faster full mesh export of big models (The Church model 2.6M Triangles - previously ca. 45 min, now 9 minutes!) by Stefan Jaensch
- photo-match works now inside groups and components by SJ
- Fix for material export/import: Materials are now coloredSJ

- components exported as instances in Instanced mode (The Church exported in ca. 2 minutes!)
- ability to create a proxy object of a component

- Scenes export by Tim Crandall- it allows to render SU Animate animations
- Animation export with FULL model per frame (supports proper_animation plugin, haven't tested it with Sketchy Physics)

- Fix for wrong EMITTER values
- Support for transparency in PNGs and TIFs (Textures)

- Rendering method selection for Animation & Scenes export (custom methods can be coppied to 'Plugins/su2kt' folder
+ both animation methods export all necessary data and render straight out of SU.

- double quotes, quotes, slashes and etc, fix by Nicetuna

Kerkythea Rendering System :: View topic - [NEW VERSION] SU2KT 3.1