[JDHill]

Hi Francois,

The organization of the export is by layer & type, like this:

Code: Select all

Layer 0
   Layer 0 Components
      <Component A>
      <Component B> 
      <Component C>
         <Component C> face 1
         <Component C> face 2
         <Component C> face 3
         <Component C> face 4
         <Component C> face 5
         <Component C> face 6
         <Component C> face 7
         <Component C> face 8
         <Component C> face 9
      <Component D>
         <Component D> White (m10_t0)
         <Component D> <Beige> 2 (m11_t0)
         <Component D> jean blue (m15_t0)
      <Component E>
      <Component F>
   Layer 0 Groups
      Group A
      Group B
         Group B face 1
         Group B face 2
         Group B face 3
         Group B face 4
         Group B face 5
      Group C
         Group C <Charcoal> (m12_t0)
         Group C <Charcoal> (m12_t1)
         Group C <Burnt Umber>1 (m14_t0)
      Group D
      Group E
Layer 1
   Layer 1 Components
[etc...]

As you may see here, you can decide whether a component or group should be exported using triangle groups, or have its faces exported separately, either by face, or by material. This is set individually, using the right-click menu for the component or group.

There are some caveats though, due to SketchUp's concept of layers -- where parts of an entity in SketchUp can be on different layers, I can't accomodate this in the export. Also, where in SketchUp, instances of a particular component can be on different layers, in Studio, instances are not in the node tree, and are instead attached to the mesh they instance; so, the layer in which the component appears in the MXS depends on which component instance was exported first, and which layer it was on.

So, it will work best, if the layers are set up accordingly in SketchUp. I only mentioned materials by layer to say that it will be working correctly.

I am going to do testing here in this forum -- as soon as a few more things are finished, I'll upload a build for you to try.

[fv]

great to see you are trying to get it right as much as that.
I am sure your plugin will provide for more efficiency exporting organized parts of the model.

I will test your beta version as soon as you load it up. Hoping your beta will be a lot more stable than VfSU. A useless version I lost 450 euros on. When you start up SU you can go for coffee while VfSU loads... and then when you model anything substantial the VfSU crashes SU. I find it hard to believe there is a special index for Vray for SU at the Sketchucation forum while Maxwell does so much better these days.

To get back to your speed improvements. I export these days without any material settings. Export is already as fast as I need. Exporting any model to Studio is faster than saving the file in SU. Your improvements must have to do exporting with materials assigned SU. I am not sure if I want to be doing that again. But for most I am sure it is going to be a big difference.

Good luck with the progress,
Francois

[numerobis]

Using a model you sent me (an office building complex), the plugin exports an MXS in less than half the time SketchUp takes to save the document -- about 13 seconds on my Q6700 quad core. 9 of those seconds are taken by SketchUp writing its texture files to disk. During export, the plugin uses a maximum of 120MB of memory; for comparison, the old plugin takes about 50 seconds and uses about 800MB. Exporting a single-sided, triangulated OBJ takes about 9 1/2 minutes and uses about 121MB, even though the file is written sequentially.

WOW!!! This sounds incredible compared to the old plugin!!! Can't wait to test it!

9 of those seconds are taken by SketchUp writing its texture files to disk

would it be possible to add an option to disable texture export? I'm only using referenced MXM's with external textures, so these exported textures are useless normally.

[JDHill]

I could disable texture export, but then you would have no UVs on your model.

[numerobis]

I could disable texture export, but then you would have no UVs on your model.

oh, that would not be good...
I thought you could only export the UVs.
So I think having this extra folder with textures is great!

[Richard]

Material by layer is handy for clay type renders where you want varied material colours

[messire]

Beta
Yes could deal with a beta version
We've finished a bunch of competition so i'll have more time to test things either on the mac or on the PC before the summer is here

Nils

[fv]

so you did not win any of those....

[messire]

well
not yet!
we are waiting for the results!
I'll post images of what we managed to output from SU after they are all judged

N

[fv]

my best images over a period of 2 year so far are for a government organisation that are never allowed to be published.
The rest is not really worth it to post (clients don't have the budget) ...

[JDHill]

Francois -- further optimizations result in your office building scene exporting in 11 seconds using a maximum of 52MB of memory with color-by-layer, and 12 seconds using 95MB with normal textures/materials. This was done while fixing a long-standing issue related to component instances being exported in the wrong positions, such as might have happened when using this Fur Maker plugin.

Here's a quick test I just did using that plugin:



- 1 patch of grass with ~200 blades
- 8191 instances of this patch

This exported in about four seconds using color-by-layer, using about 5MB of memory. Turning off color-by-layer makes the export take about 13 seconds, though I am looking into what I might be able to do to minimize this.

[numerobis]

WOW!!! very cool!!!

so... can we have it?!?

[Richard]

Yeah come on JD now you are just teasing us mate!!!

Seriously I'm getting darn excited about the plug now and even more so about the future of the plug!

When you consider that strength of the plugin with the strength of maxwell now in speed terms (assisted now very much with hardware developments the future is looking pretty darn good!

[JDHill]

No, I'm not trying to tease you, just showing you some of the progress. On that, here's another quick version of that scene which was rendered with the grass blades on a hidden layer -- I think that's the option you asked for. So, in the group that's being instanced those thousands of times, I put the blade faces on a hidden layer and added just a few simple marker lines to show basically where they will be located when the scene is rendered.

[Richard]

JD can the layers from those hidden be selected for export?