Sunflow Rendering System

[kwistenbiebel]

Hi all,

I am new to the forum and liked to ask if a Sketchup exporter is in the pipeline.


Cheers,

kwistenbiebel

[fpsunflower]

Not that I know of, but I would love to see one created.

[yellow]

kwistenbiebel:

There's a ruby script available for SketchUP for both Kerkythea (Podium uses kerky BTW) and a ruby script for Indigo, both create XML type files.

Needs someone to do the hacking about I guess.

[fpsunflower]

I just looked at indigo's ruby script. It works with the free version of sketchup.

It seems very straightforward to adapt this to Sunflow. I really hope someone will dig into this. I might do so myself if no one does, I think sketchup is a great package.

[twooster]

It's not done yet, but here it is:

http://www.foslerarchitecture.com/Upload/su2sf.rb

What works:
* Exports whole scene or selection
* Exports sky state (sun position, etc)
* Exports camera state (including viewport size)
* Exports groups and components
* Exports textures as colors for now

What doesn't:
* Component export might be slightly broken, still figuring this out in tandem with a SF bug
* Not enough status updates, not enough control over the export. You'll have to modify the output file for anything special.
* No support for lights
* No support for pages/animation steps/multiple camera angles
* Will output non-visible faces (layers that are off, etc).

Still, it seems quick, and it'll do the job for basic mass-modeling renders. Please tell me what you think!

Thanks,

-Tony Wooster

[yellow]

tony

Excellent, looking forward to trying your script out when i get back into the office on Monday.

Great start.

[twooster]

Alright. While the exporter I've posted works, it obviously needs a bit of an overhaul. I was attempting to learn about Sketchup, SunFlow and ruby all at once with this project. The resulting code is pretty messy and not very ruby-like. I'm anticipating a partial rewrite.

So, in light of that, what features do you folks consider essential for the exporter to have? Sketchup excels because it has a simple interface. The concept here is to have a big red "Render" button that guesses, as best it can, how to produce a good scene. However, SunFlow is feature packed, and it would be negligent of me to ignore all the added features altogether.

Let's put some ideas on the table. There are the features I'd like to use but cannot, for limitations in SF, such as thin-glass shaders. If anyone has a kickstart guide to faking this, I'd appreciate it.

Secondly, how important is an animation export? Do we need just the defined camera views, or do we want interpolation between, and do we want motion blur?

Third, how should something as complicated as shader settings be handled? I've pretty much settled on per-material (not per-face) settings handling in Sketchup.

Fourth, for those of you who have tried the exporter, is it quick enough? I tried my damnedest to ensure that the scene is looped over once and only once. I know, however, that there are a lot of ways to speed this sucker up. I'm also a bit removed from speed concerns because I wrote/tested this on a speedy MBP.

Please, let me know what you think. I'm looking at this primarily from an arch-vis point of view, and I think some other user viewpoints would be helpful.

[zeitmeister]

Hi tony,

just a few thoughts:

[fpsunflower]

I quickly tested the exporter - it works great

I don't have any cool renders to show yet, but it will be quite handy to be able to work from Sketchup now too.


Would you like for the current script to be checked-in to SVN?

[zeitmeister]

Hm,
where do I have to place the ruby-script in my SketchUp-Application?
Or do I have to do some sort of compiling?

[fpsunflower]

Try the plugins folder inside the sketchup install.

It should create a new menu entry in the program. No compiling is required.

[twooster]

SVN + me == ?

Ah, you could check it in to SVN, I suppose. It's messy, as you've probably seen, and really does need a rewrite. On the plus side, it's now easy for me to create geometry for SunFlow, which is nice. On the minus, texture support is going to be hell. It might actually be best to leave the Sketchup exporter out (say, on the forums only) until you release the new API officially, and I rewrite the exporter for that. Also, perhaps to wait for thin-glass shaders or similar.

zeit: If you're using Windows, I have no clue, but I suspect C:\Program Files\Sketchup\Plugins is the place. If you're using OS X, either /Library/Application Support/Google Sketchup 6/Sketchup/Plugins (or similar if you're using 5) for a global install or ~/Library/Application Support/Google Sketchup 6/Plugins for a local one.

[zeitmeister]

Thank you, but I can't find anything about SunFlow in SketchUp after placing the script in the plugins-folder.

[dandruff]

zeitmeister - under the plugin menu at the top of the screen

twooster - THANK YOU! This script opened a new world for me at work. Me and my coleges are discussing to use SunFlow in our presentation pipeline now (Architectural firm), because of you. Here's one of the first renders I made with SunFlow/Your script:



Just one problem though... Is it possible for you to make a function that converts, for example, components named "meshlight...." to meshlights? I've tried to edit the sc-file afterwards, but it get's to cryptic to use it that way. I would be very happy if you managed to solve that.

//dandruff

[zeitmeister]

Under the "Plugins"-menu, SunFlow or anything else doesn't appear.