sketchUcation

The CGarchitect Architectural 3D Awards are the largest awards event for the architectural visualization industry. Now in its 10th year, the awards attract entries from top studios, freelancers and students from around the world in 4 separate categories: Image, Film/Animation, Interactive and Student, within the Film/Animation and Image. With over $98,000 (yes, ninety-eight thousand US Dollars) worth of prizes in different categories, this is indeed a tempting challenge for any 3D artist with skills and talent.

More than 20 (currently 23) free, royalty-free and free for commercial use, high quality and high resolution (10,000 x 5,000 pixel) HDRI maps are available for download at HDRMAPS.

In fact, it's worth exploring the whole site as the price for the "pay content" is also affordable and the image resolution of the commercial hdri's is the double of the "freebies"; 20,000 x 10,000 pixel. There are bundles of hdri skies, too.

Some "samples" from the site...

If you own a previous version of LumenRT, don't wauit but upgrade to LumenRT 4 Studio for $395 only! (until April 30, 2013) This means you'll have paid your LumenRT 4 Studio less than those who buy today! (You paid $395 for LumenRT 3 + $395 for the upgrade < $795 SRP LumenRT 4 Studio).

LumenRT 4 Studio is the most comprehensive system for transforming 3D models and designs into rich, nature-filled videos, images and real-time immersive experiences.

Now you can get Xara Xtreme 5 for FREE! Yes, it's true, completely free, no charge whatsover! This is the full download version of Xara Xtreme 5, as previously sold for $89!

Xara Xtreme is the perfect graphics tool for all your drawing, photo and design needs.  Whether you want to create illustrations, edit your photos, layout a brochure or create some web graphics, Xara Xtreme's fast and easy to use design tools make it a pleasure to be creative.

If you've ever wanted a 3D scanner now's your chance. By pledging support to this project, you can have your very own Photon 3D Scanner.
The Photon allows anyone to take a physical object, and turn it into a digital 3D model on your computer.

From there, you can print your file on any 3D printer, or online printing service. Or use the model you created in an animation or video game.

A set of 10 high quality Xfrog plants and trees that you can download for free and use inside Thea Studio, or as proxies at your modelling application, with the use of Thea Live Plugins. Download the zip file and double click on the extracted library for the included models to be installed (alternatively open the library from inside the Studio to install it).

Note that full libraries of Xfrog plants and others with high quality models and materials are available for licensed users.

I have recently come across with a site SketchUp Texture maintained by Rosanna Mataloni. She keeps sharing stunning material some of which we also share here (linked to  her site of course, not "reposted").

These are 21 palm tree png images with transparent background.

It is well worth to browse the whole site however as there are many other, very nice materials you may be interested, too.

Today we have reached a total of 180,000 members on SketchUcation. Since the launch of the new site in late September, membership is not only constantly growing but growing at a speeding pace, currently somewhere between 7,300 and 7,500 new members joining a month.

If trends keep to be the same as for the last half a year, SketchUcation may even reach a quarter of a million members this year. Fingers crossed when the final count-down starts around December.

An extremely cool, new plugin (albeit still in beta phase) has been released by Renderiza (Rafael Rivera) lately. Canvas can Interactively paint groups and components in spray type manner. To use it:

Do you need to show a Shaderlight render to a client but you’re in the field? Want to check on the rendering status of a scene or animation? Forgot to download a render before you left the office? With the new and free Shaderlight Cloud Viewer, you can view SketchUp renders anywhere using an Apple or Android device. View completed scenes and animations, check on the status of in-progress renders, and download and display renders. The Shaderlight Cloud Viewer, combined with Shaderlight desktop software, will increase the effectiveness of your rendering workflow. Your high quality, photo-realistic scenes and animations are available anytime you need them.