SkIndigo 3.4.4b

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Whaat
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SkIndigo 3.4.4b

Post by Whaat » Sat Jul 21, 2012 5:25 am

Update August 22 - 2012: New beta now with normal map support! There's some new bugs lurking with IGM material import that I'm working on but I thought I'd release this anyway so you can start playing with normal maps.

#Version 3.4.4b

#Added: support for normal maps
#Fixed: errors which occur when a material name had leading or trailing whitespace

#Version 3.4.4

#Added: support for orthographic cameras
#Added: section plane support

To use section planes in a render:

1) Select a section plane. The plane cannot be inside a group or component.
2) Right click and select 'enable section plane'
3) Right click again if you wish to disable the section plane

SkIndigo 3.4.4b Windows Installer
SkIndigo 3.4.4b Mac Installer

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cotty
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Re: SkIndigo 3.4.4

Post by cotty » Sat Jul 21, 2012 8:50 am

Very helpful, thank you! :D
little gallery... http://unverzagt.biz/cottysgallery/

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fractal.design
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Re: SkIndigo 3.4.4

Post by fractal.design » Thu Aug 16, 2012 12:47 pm

Any news on the Mac build? :D

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Whaat
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Re: SkIndigo 3.4.4

Post by Whaat » Fri Aug 17, 2012 7:45 am

fractal.design wrote:Any news on the Mac build? :D
:oops: yeah...I'm going to try to have normals maps added and release a new build for PC and Mac next week. Sorry for the delay. :D

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Pibuz
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Re: SkIndigo 3.4.4b

Post by Pibuz » Sat Aug 25, 2012 6:03 am

..Sorry if I post here..

Still, I get problems when importing external meshes.
I have prepared a nice SU model, with my simple mesh linked to the right OBJ model. I followed the steps for creating the materials, and each materials is applied to a part of the simple geometry, so that in case of a "purge unused" they don't get deleted. If I render the simple geometry file now created, it renders fine.

Ok.

Now I save the file, and I put it into the component folder of SU (doesn't matter where I put it: the result is the same). When I load or import the geometry, some materials are missing, even if they were APPLIED directly to a face of the geometry......

Am I the only one experiencing this?

What am I doing wrong?

Thank you Dale.... :oops:

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Re: SkIndigo 3.4.4b

Post by Whaat » Sat Aug 25, 2012 7:53 am

Pibuz wrote:..Sorry if I post here..

Still, I get problems when importing external meshes.
I have prepared a nice SU model, with my simple mesh linked to the right OBJ model. I followed the steps for creating the materials, and each materials is applied to a part of the simple geometry, so that in case of a "purge unused" they don't get deleted. If I render the simple geometry file now created, it renders fine.

Ok.

Now I save the file, and I put it into the component folder of SU (doesn't matter where I put it: the result is the same). When I load or import the geometry, some materials are missing, even if they were APPLIED directly to a face of the geometry......

Am I the only one experiencing this?

What am I doing wrong?

Thank you Dale.... :oops:
Well, I personally have never experienced that. If you apply all of the materials to directly to the faces, they should all come in fine.

Here is an idea: When you are importing the component, are you sure that current SKP file does not already have the material names inside it? If so, when you import the component, it will change the material names to avoid naming conflicts ("Material" becomes "Material1") Maybe this is related to your problem.

Also, do your material names have special characters in them? I don't think this should cause a problem but you never know...

I would be happy to test this problem if you are able to upload your OBJ and your SKP component (dummy)

Dale

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Pibuz
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Re: SkIndigo 3.4.4b

Post by Pibuz » Sat Aug 25, 2012 9:50 am

I usually name materials in order to avoid name conflicts. In this specific case, I just let the original mesh names, which were numeric codes (this isn't my favourite worflow but I was testing other things).
This isn't the first time it occurs to me, so I don't think I'm doing something wrong, really. No strange characters in the materials name or anything.

I attach the SKP file of the dummy. I cannot post the OBJ because it comes from a commercial bundle and it's quite heavy (150MB).

The basic issue is this: if you open bonsai8.skp with a simple double click, you will see the dummy with all the materials correctly applied (to the faces, not outside the component..). If you now close and import the same skp into a new SU file, you will se that some mats are missing............

I don't think this problem is caused by the OBJ itself though, seems to be some kind of bug in the SU component import, but, I repeat, maybe I'm doing something wrong. This doesn't seem to be related to texture either, because here there are no textures applied and it's the same.

Thank you in advance Dale.
Sorry to bother. Tell me if you get the same error as me!
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Whaat
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Re: SkIndigo 3.4.4b

Post by Whaat » Wed Aug 29, 2012 5:11 am

Pibuz wrote:I usually name materials in order to avoid name conflicts. In this specific case, I just let the original mesh names, which were numeric codes (this isn't my favourite worflow but I was testing other things).
This isn't the first time it occurs to me, so I don't think I'm doing something wrong, really. No strange characters in the materials name or anything.

I attach the SKP file of the dummy. I cannot post the OBJ because it comes from a commercial bundle and it's quite heavy (150MB).

The basic issue is this: if you open bonsai8.skp with a simple double click, you will see the dummy with all the materials correctly applied (to the faces, not outside the component..). If you now close and import the same skp into a new SU file, you will se that some mats are missing............

I don't think this problem is caused by the OBJ itself though, seems to be some kind of bug in the SU component import, but, I repeat, maybe I'm doing something wrong. This doesn't seem to be related to texture either, because here there are no textures applied and it's the same.

Thank you in advance Dale.
Sorry to bother. Tell me if you get the same error as me!
Hi Pibuz,

Yes, I got the same error as you. This is a SU issue and has nothing to do with SkIndigo. When you import a component, SU seems to assess all of the materials and checks whether any are identical (RGB and opacity). If it finds identical materials, it does not import the duplicate material, it just re-uses the first material.

It is weird because it seems like all 11 of your materials are identical (except in name), although I did not verify this. If they are all the same, then only one material should have been imported but this is not the case either... :?

If you ensure that all of your materials are different in some way (RGB, texture, opacity) then they all will be imported properly. I suspect that SU does not care about the SkIndigo settings of the material. Even if the SkIndigo settings are different, if the RGB and opacity is the same, this issue could still occur.

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Re: SkIndigo 3.4.4b

Post by Pibuz » Wed Aug 29, 2012 5:55 am

So, changing RGB base colour should be enough to get all materials imported?
Thanks, I'll try that. Strange that I haven't tested it before, but let's make some trials and see.

Thanks again!

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kwistenbiebel
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Re: SkIndigo 3.4.4b

Post by kwistenbiebel » Tue Sep 18, 2012 4:02 pm

Hi all,

I am pretty pleased with Skindigo/Indigo these days :).

I do experience two little issues:
- Is graph card acceleration working in 3.4.4 for you guys?
At my end, it just generates a black screen.
- I wasn't able to render a section cut. I followed the process as described by Dale in the first post, however it is not rendering the section cut but the whole model

Cheers,
Chris

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Pibuz
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Re: SkIndigo 3.4.4b

Post by Pibuz » Tue Sep 18, 2012 7:16 pm

Hi Kwisten! How are you!
My graphic card seems to work here, and I can render section cuts. :?

Although some time ago I had some issues with my graphic card too, even if I had all the drivers up-to-date.
Try to render the same scene with the legacy sky model and see if it render correctly, then come back!

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Re: SkIndigo 3.4.4b

Post by Whaat » Wed Sep 19, 2012 2:34 pm

kwistenbiebel wrote: - I wasn't able to render a section cut. I followed the process as described by Dale in the first post, however it is not rendering the section cut but the whole model

Cheers,
Chris
Hi Chris!

If you are absolutely sure that the section plane is not nested inside a group or component then I am not sure what else could be wrong. :?:

For your other question, all I can suggest is to update your drivers. Maybe someone else can offer a better suggestion. :)

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Re: SkIndigo 3.4.4b

Post by Pibuz » Wed Sep 19, 2012 11:36 pm

Hi Dale!
I am very curious: lately there are some ongoing discussions about Aperture Diffraction. They usually refer to "postpro AD" and "physical AD"; well, at the moment I have no clear idea of what that means, and most of all, how we control/set the first one or the second one in SkIndigo. Could you please point that out? As usual, no hurry :D

Thanks a lot in advance!

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kwistenbiebel
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Re: SkIndigo 3.4.4b

Post by kwistenbiebel » Thu Sep 20, 2012 6:47 pm

Whaat wrote:
kwistenbiebel wrote: - I wasn't able to render a section cut. I followed the process as described by Dale in the first post, however it is not rendering the section cut but the whole model

Cheers,
Chris
Hi Chris!

If you are absolutely sure that the section plane is not nested inside a group or component then I am not sure what else could be wrong. :?:

For your other question, all I can suggest is to update your drivers. Maybe someone else can offer a better suggestion. :)
Hi Dale, Pibuz :)
I am happy to be back saying it was indeed a matter of updating my Nvidia drivers. :)
The other issue (section cut not rendering) is a boo boo from my side: I enabled section cut in the context menu, however overlooked the Skindigo version of the 'enable section cut' option. My bad :), I must have been on too much coffee.

All is running pretty smoothly, Skindigo is still a top renderer for me.

Thanks for following up :)

Cheers,
Chris

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Re: SkIndigo 3.4.4b

Post by kwistenbiebel » Wed Oct 17, 2012 1:26 pm

I just want to express my gratitude to the development team of Indigo-Skindigo.

Indigo Render is so bliss to use these days in an architectural practice.
It's easy, the quality is very good, it is fast for an unbiased render (including very speedy parsing/export times, you can do elevations, sections, etcetera.

I love the fact that SkIndigo is so well tied in with Sketchup. Each design change immediately translates to the rendered output. A big benefit over using a 'Studio'.

Thank you for a wonderful product :).

Chris

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