sketchUcation

Bloom Unit has joined forces with Evermotion to make their stunningly real 3D model libraries available directly in Bloom Unit. Initially to be run as a trial, the Evermotion Libraries will make it even easier to create your photorealistic renderings in SketchUp.

A selection of over 20 volumes (that's over 1,400 models) of the Evermotion Archmodels range are being converted during the following three months for use with Bloom Unit. Until 31st August 2013 we will be enabling all Bloom Unit customers to use this growing library free of charge!

Animatex allows you to animate multiple textured faces in SketchUp by assigning them to any three layers which have their own x,y,z parameters to set speed. Also you can set a global 'FPS' and Animatex now works while transitioning between scene camera animation without lag.

While the plugin is still in active development, we wanted to make sure those who are interested in new, exciting plugins but cannot regularly follow forum topics can get to know this excellent piece as well.

For this weekend’s Sketchfast, stay indoors no matter what the weather. Spend it all designing your ideal AR headset! You have untill Monday May 13th at noon (EST) to enter our 4th Sketchfast competition with $500 of cash prizes! To participate, just upload your entry on sketchfab.com with a sketchfast4 tag.

Augmented reality headsets and glasses are all the rage today, with the Google glasses starting to ship and new players entering the field every week. But what would your ideal AR headset look like? How would you design the ideal AR headset for you? For your life?

Browsing the different SketchUp Help Forums, it seems that SketchUp users nowadays often have the question whether "SketchUp supports Windows 8". Although the answer is not "official" by the SketchUp Team - as you can read in this Help Group post by Patrick: "SketchUp Pro 8 doesn't officially support Windows 8. However, we've been doing extensive tests and we haven't found any significant issues yet...", from my own experience, SketchUp (8 that I have installed here at least) supports Windows 8 (64 bit) perfectly. 

These days we are overwhelmed and spoilt with different parametric modelling tools for SketchUp. One of the pioneers of these plugins is Modelur which has been on the market for years now and seems to keep flourishing.

Modelur offers basic tools for quick and effective urban design. Nothing more, nothing less. Intuitive user interface offers a steep learning curve, especially if you are already familiar with Sketchup.

This latest and most excellent plugin, TopoShaper by Fredo6, generates Terrains from iso-contours, that is, contours which have a constant or quasi-constant altitude. Often, when generating terrain with the Sandbox > From contours tool, it has smaller of bigger faults, the generated terrain is not even and smooth and can look (let's face it) "ugly". TopoShaper generates beautifully even terrains based on quads which will look excellent in any application you may wish to render them.

Please, read the forum topic on how to install and what other requirements are carefully.

SimLab 3D PDF exporter for SketchUp plugin enables SketchUp users to share their 3D models in 3D PDF format.

The newly added Template Designer enables users to create stunning templates easily to be used in 3D PDF export. Sample templates are included, and they can be customized in just few clicks to reflect the spirit of a product. The plugin is supported on SketchUp 8, on Windows and Mac operating systems. To learn more about the pluguin, and its great features download the brochure (downloadable PDF).

Field mapping in Thea Render is a new proprietary technique that evaluates consistently the lighting than cannot be reached easily by Final Gathering. It is something that developers invested most of the time in the passed months and have brought it from a simple idea to life. Combined with an improved, adaptive, Final Gathering, the whole evaluation becomes robust even for the most difficult cases.

In addition, with a new implementation for walkthrough animations, the Adaptive BSD will consider all the frames at once and flickering is removed.

Carbon Scatter is the most powerful population plug-in for 3ds Max, Maya and Cinema4D - and it now includes a vast library of 3D plants and billboards! The Carbon Scatter 2 plug-ins integrate e-on's patented EcoSystem™ algorithms directly inside leading CG applications, allowing you to populate your scenes with millions of native objects, and render them with your favorite renderer.

Now we can only wish that there were something like this for SketchUp - or to begin with, SketchUp could handle such models.

Revizto is adding realistically looking, volumetric grass to its rendering engine with which you can even set it height. With it, users will be able to assign this grass to any material and set its height, which will be displayed in Revizto Viewer as shown in the screenshot.

The grass feature and several other new features will be released in Revizto 1.2, coming out in June, just in time for summer! Revizto 1.2 will be a free upgrade for all Revizto 1.x customers.