Plugin: Fredo's Curviloft 1.0a (Beta) Now Available

A Beta (functional although incomplete) version of Fredo's newest SketchUp plugin named "Curviloft" is available.

Curviloft is "just" another mile-stone in a line of several written by Fredo; some which include Round Corners, Tools on Surface, Fredo Scale, and Joint Push-Pull.

You will need to register at the sketchucation.com forums to get the download for Curviloft (and all Fredo's other plugins.)

Currently, only Loft by Spline is functional. Caution is advised when trying the other tools.

For complete Curviloft information from the author, visit this topic at sketchucation.com.

And now enjoy some stunning multi-media:



Curviloft Preview



Loft By Spline Tutorial

Shaderlight for SketchUp free Beta Software

Shaderlight is an integrated, interactive, photo-realistic renderer for Google SketchUp. Shaderlight lets you move objects or camera angles within a scene and see the results instantly as the image refines.

Features

•  Interactive, progressive rendering that updates all changes in the Shaderlight render window
•  Zoom and pan the rendered image
•  Automatic material presets applied to the SketchUp material collection
•  Material finishes controlled via the Shaderlight Material Editor
•  Automatic lighting using SketchUp sun ,sky and shadow controlsImage based lighting (IBL) using preset or custom High Dynamic Range (HDR) images
•  Change background setting with options for SketchUp background colour, IBL environment or custom background
•  Simple quality setting to provide quick previews, or high quality final render

link: [ Shaderlight ]

Recent Render News Items

Twilight 1.4.1 released.

Twilight 1.4.1 was released with a quick bug-fix release addressing 2 minor problems in 1.4.0
 
Podium Render

Look for updates to SU Podium stable version 1.7.3 this week or next fixing problems of multiple accounts on the Mac. Also this week, look for updates of Podium V2 Beta and SU Animate with a new angle path feature.

Indigo adds GPU Acceleration

Indigo Renderer recently announced support for GPU rendering which will mean tremendous performance increases. There may still be time to join the beta team.

RenderPlus nXt Advanced Features Video

Rendplus posted a video on their blog on the advanced fetures of IRender nXt.

CoreFarm.com Launches

CoreFarm.com is a new render farm for users of Blender and Yafaray. (Also check out corefarm.org distributed rendering by the same folks.)

Eagle meets SketchUp

Jerome Lamy has written a set of tools for SketchUp and Eagle (PCB design) to automate the process of creating SketchUp models of your Eagle designs. He's started a blog about it at Eagle meets SketchUp

Plugin: Model Function

A fairly new SketchUp plug-in has become available named the ModelFunction Plugin for SketchUp.

Model Function looks to be a set of parametric tools for defining and editing paths. From the video, it appears you can define paths, and then apply constraints to the path. Then you can associate Components to the nodes on the path.




Visit [ modelfunction.com ]

Moduler 0.2.4 Released

Modelur has released (pre-beta) version 0.2.4 of their parametric urban design plug-in for SketchUp.

To make long things short, here is a selection of three most important enhancements:

* Optimizing Modelur buildings for Google Earth export.
* Invisible UI scroller.
* Automatic fixing of rotated floor plans when buildings are created.

[ Modelur Blog ]