[REQ] book manager by skatter

[optimaforever]

Hi Thomas,

I know it's a stretch but could we hope to use skatter as BookManager plugin for SU?
I guess you are aware of Model+Model plugin...
You select some random horizontal surfaces, then your set of books to skatter, and finally you choose a preset of shelves populating pattern (percentage of void/fill, percentage of leaned/vertical books, percentage of horizontally stacked books, randomness of alignments, percentage of upside-down/front-back reversed books, etc.). And then you just push the seed button until you're satisfied.

It would need a clever collision detection, some fixed angles rotation(0 90 180 270°), a vertically-stacked shelves awareness, and probably a specific GUI...

There was a thread in Sketchucation but I'm sure lot of folks would be interested.
Now I'm forced to export the bookshelves to 3dsmax, convert as poly, populate the books with Bookmanager, convert to thea materials and re-export as thea scn to re-import the books via the thea browser. Quite lot of work. Yet it's faster and better looking than doing everything by hand in SketchUp...

[JQL]

You could try Random replacement of components and the new sketchyphysics wich is 64bits.

Array some components;
Replace them by a component set;
Draw a shelf
Inclinate the shelf
The books will topple onto each other...

I haven't tried it but it should be fun

[optimaforever]

In this case I'd need to give some "physicality" to my thea compo books, I guess...

[JQL]

In this case I'd need to give some "physicality" to my thea compo books, I guess...

No need, they are funnier with default settings. You can even throw them around if you wish.

Cool thing would be if you packed them in a box, model a shelf and then try putting them in the shelf.

If you manage that, please share a GIF with us!

Anyway I would very much like to see skatter perform this sort of request.

[jiminy-billy-bob]

You want to put a screw in the wall. You have a hammer which could kind of do the job, but you want a screwdriver on the handle to make things easier.

I don't know if my analogy is good, but I hope you see my point. The Model+Model plugin is awesome, but targets only a very specific use. The whole UI is designed around that one use.
Skatter is not intended for this kind of things.

Maybe look at Profile Builder? It may be more appropriate.

[JQL]

I was making fun with Sketchy Physics but I do think it would be fairly easy and funny to do it there.

I also have this thing with books... They are pretty but really, they mean a lot of time wasted in a 3d model.

I often use random push pull on a texture that I split and make them out of focus with DOF tool.

[Pixero]

It's possible to skatter along a line so you could perhaps just draw a line on each shelf and use that for the skatter.

[optimaforever]

It's possible to skatter along a line so you could perhaps just draw a line on each shelf and use that for the skatter.

Indeed, one could do this for linear and simple layouts.
I studied Profile Builder 2 this week and I find it very powerful but not for random skattering unfortunately.

[nektares]

Pixero is right, this could easily be done with skatter, but as a helping method, using a line and the grid mode you could randomly place the books with skatter along curve, then with sketchyphysics or manually skew some books and erase others, perhaps with random select too, but for this of course instances of the books must be generated (no render only)

maybe even randomly place them with the rotate and collision function but as thomas stated, skatter is not intended specifically for this, it has some railclone capabilities but in the end, it is a scattering plugin.

[optimaforever]

I tried Jan's suggestion but the grid/collision algorithm was too weak and therefore not very usable.
Even with a grid of 1cm density and collision at 10% there's no real possibility of further tweaking.
Perhaps by working in mm?
And yes, I must work with real (non-render only) instances to be able to delete doublons and some. But my main issue is the fact that some books are reversed, even if I revert the spline.

To make the Skatter behave like I want, the spline must be welded, otherwise Skatter doesn't recognize the lines as hosts.

And second, I realized that the line must be split in at least 2 parts (line>divide>2>weld), unless you accept some booktitles to face the wall.

In the pic, the upper line is a single line (simple straight line welded) and the lower line is a spline formed by 2 straight lines welded together. As you can see, the books all face toward the viewer.