[fv]

This must have been asked many times before, at least I know of a few times in the Sketchup board.

I just visited the Felix render web site and saw that by using Felix you can exchange polygons on a specific layer by instances provided by Felix or just your own. Felix replaces polygons by specified instances, scaled or rotated at a cetain randomness as I understand. Ideal for trees, cars etc.

The way Felix handles this kind of instance placing in a model looks great. I just wish I could do someting simular with Studio. Or is there already a way to do this with the current version of Studio.
Francois
OSX, Sketchup, Modo.

[Mihai]

You can't do this in Studio, I think this kind of functionality would be better handled through the plugin.

[fv]

I don't think so since it seems very difficult to get this done by the plugin according to for instance JDHill.

If Studio could do this it would change a lot in favor of Maxwell. The praise Felix gets for its use of this kind of feature is very justified. It makes it possible to render more photorealisticly using modeling applications that normally can't render high end images. Since large amounts of detailed geometry once placed in Studio do not slow the whole process down as much as it would placing the same kind of geometry in the original modeler and export it from there to Studio.
Felix also has the well conceived option to randomly scale and orientate instances.

I have a feeling its not all that hard to do in Studio. Replacing polygons on a layer by specified mxs geometry as instances.
Studio is a perfect tool for this since we use it often to assemble geometry from different sources.
Francois

[JDHill]

Francois, as I've written before, though it would indeed be difficult, that is not the primary reason why I will not implement this in a plugin. The real reason is that it would provide no actual benefit, from a rendering standpoint. It would save no memory, since as I've pointed out before, the external files you would be referencing would still need to be brought into memory during MXS export, in order that they might be merged with the MXS being written by the plugin.

Let me put a simple label on what you want: you want MXS-referencing to be added to the Maxwell MXS format. Additionally, you are talking about instance randomization and such, but those things are not at the core of your request.

That is what he is looking for, Mihai, and it is not a functionality which a plugin can invent; it has to exist in the system. The reason why he wants it is because SketchUp, though already containaing a fully-featured instancing system, slows down when high-poly instance definitions are loaded. He wants to work with things (it is not really so much a question of rendering them) in SketchUp, without ever actually loading them into SketchUp. A plugin can't do that for him on its own.

[Half Life]

I think every Sketchup user wants that functionality -- Sketchup just doesn't handle lots of high poly objects very well and Maxwell certainly does... external referencing to a MXS file in the same way we can externally reference to a Maxwell material would dramatically empower the user to maximize the potential of the software pairing.

Best,
Jason.

[JDHill]

Sketchup just doesn't handle lots of high poly objects very well...

Yes, and I hope that for every request we have here for working around this via the plugin and/or Maxwell, that there are one thousand requests to Google to compile a 64-bit version of SketchUp, and to make any necessary display performance improvements related to the use of instances in SketchUp.

Were those things addressed, we would not be having this discussion. And I have come to learn that it simply cannot be the mission of a render plugin to improve core functionality of host applications. Where it is even possible to do so, it is still a bad strategy: any work done is liable to be invalidated at any time, when the host app decides to fix the problem where it actually exists, and I happen to know this from experience (I think I have previously related the situation which occurred in the Cinema plugin, with respect to its custom 'instance' object, which was rendered completely superfluous by improvements in the next half-point release of Cinema).

[Half Life]

Oh, I agree completely... but if you listen to the Sketchup people there is no benefit to be had going to 64-bit (or multi-core for that matter).

Whatever, that is what it is... Sketchup will remain low-poly until Google Earth goes high-poly and that isn't happening anytime soon.

There are some great things about the software but the core of what it does is not particularly render engine friendly... which is why I find Maxwell Studio so indispensable.

Best,
Jason.

[fv]

Well, I think a rendersolution like Felix got it alright.
In archviz photorealism deos not only depend on your materials or unbiased rendering but probably as much on instancing trees, plants, grass, cars and people. Sketchup certainly is a troublesome app for placings those in a model. At the same time its about the most used app in archviz beside AutoCad according to CGarchitect.
If it is a seriously difficult task to implement Felix funtionality for instances into Studio than we should maybe forget about it, but somehow I think its actually very easy.

I have totally given up on Sketchup as far as future developments are concerned. Since it has been taken over by Google I might as well consider it has been taken over by Facebook. They have the money but not the insight or the interest.
Francois

[Fernando Tella]

In 3dsmax you can change your geometry by a proxy natively when referencing an object. And the plugin also has a proxy functionality.

[Bubbaloo]

Then there's poly painting in Max 2011.

[Half Life]

Yeah, yeah, yeah... rub it in guys

Best,
Jason.

[fv]

In sketchup, and with JDHills new plugin proxies are also real easy in Sketchup. But importing a more or less realistic looking tree or car into Sketchup will crash Sketchup or will take time beyond anyone's patience.

I was thinking of importing a new object into Studio replacing one with the same name that has instances placed. Something like that should not be all too difficult.

And, yes, Sketchup by now by now has overstayed its welcome, especially on forums like these were high-end is mainstream. But as an architect, and working with other architects, all of them being able to use Sketchup and with buildings that can easily be modelled photorealisticly in Sketchup, it would be great to just being able to add a load of trees and cars to any model in Studio.

Francois