anton

I got the pro version as well and works like a charm. You're right, it will use the closest edge to where you clicked on that plane to orient the tiles. The only issue I had with it was that the default tiles seem to be a lot larger than normal so I've built my own and saved as presets. Really useful script!

That is a really weird behavior. Would you be able to post some code here? It's quite hard guessing what happens without seeing the code

This sounds interesting! Never thought of that before but it should be pretty straight forward to try it. I will play with it over the weekend.

You'd think... but with autodesk it's not always the way they chose

And to be helpful too, I found this website that has the help for matchmover for maya: http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/MayaMatchMoverOnlineHelp/index.html Search for "coordinate system" and look at "Defining point relations" page. It seems to have some info on that.

I am not sure how matchmover works but the best solution in my opinion (very cheap also) is Syntheyes! It's extremely easy to work with, very fast and accurate, and as an added bonus it has it's own scripting language that makes customization of exporters a breeze I know I am not helping here...

Can you post a reference image? All i could find in google images are rectangular windows on a flat wall... If i understand correctly what you're trying to achieve, you could build the rounded windows then remove some of the edges to straighten the glass pane then divide them again and rebuild the mesh. Check the attached image for a step by step illustration of the process.

Hi Jeff, I was reading my post again and you're right, it is a bleak outlook on the future! Maybe I am too pessimistic but my opinions are influenced quite strong by the discussions I keep having with all my peers in the industry. Companies are still laying off and are not able to get enough work in house to keep them running, people that were used to just have the work handed to them are now forced to freelance and they are struggling at best to get jobs, and the successful freelancers I know are getting less jobs too. Maybe all this is because I am in Southern California, which is one of the areas hit hardest by the housing market... I really hope that this is just my opinion and not the reality. As about the survey, I've read the results but I am still taking it with a grain of salt as it's human nature to be optimistic about the future and paint a better picture (no pun intended!) As I said before, I really hope that this is just my opinion and I am wrong because it's an industry I love and have been part of for the last 15 years!

It's the first time i saw this post and all I can say is that it's well worthed reading from start to finish! You can see people's opinions changing and feel the confidence disappearing... Back in 2007 i was one of the only people in Southern California that had the financial possibility to buy a house but decided not to, and I am really glad that I stuck to my opinion while everybody around was telling me I'm making a mistake by not buying! Now 2 years later, I can see how this situation worsened and maybe I am the pessimistic type but I don't see a bright future for our industry. The housing market will take a lot longer to recover than it's expected due to the complexity of the economic situation and the people that were laid off are in the worst position as most of them have no marketing and business skills. It's true, there still is some work to be done out there and there are a few people still thriving but that's the minority. The rest are changing industries, looking for other booming markets, spending money they don't have on training hoping for a better career etc. This only will worsen the situation in my opinion. The big software companies are losing money as their user base is shrinking thus they will try to find ways to make more money from their existing users, alienating them. New players will try to catch the fallen user base with better and cheaper products but most of them will fail due to under capitalization too... These are times when the money and power will shift around plenty of times and for some will bring prosperity but for most will not be the best of times. I hope my train of thoughts here is not that depressing...

What edgemaster is saying is the truth. Just like everything practice will make you better at it. Now, for your issue with the edge loops unless you really need to terminate them in order to save every polygon (for game assets most of the time) you would keep them there. The most important thing is to make sure you model doesn't have any shading issues.

What I would do is continue the edge to the left and make a complete loop then divide the large polygon in 2 the get quads. Check the green lines on the attached image to see what i'm saying. Here is a link to an excellent tutorial explaining some basic techniques for poly modeling: Learn the inorganinc modeling fundamentals in 3ds max

The web application would become a bit cumbersome when you start adding all the options to it thus forcing the client to "learn" how to use it. You might find people that would like that but most likely they'll dread using it and they won't necessarily tell you, and their response time will dramatically increase. The simplest way would be for you to develop a workflow that allows you to output a multitude of renders based on client input. If you are using 3ds Max I can help with answers and ideas on how to use maxscript to accomplish this.

Your best bet would be flash with a lot of actionscript involved. Everything else would take too long to develop. Basically you would have to model and render all the products you have in all their sizes and save them as an image with an alpha channel so you can overlap them over a background. The hardest part would be to build the background... I am not sure how to go about it but once you have a clear idea of what it should look like it should be pretty straight forward. Now my question is: wouldn't it be easier to actually create some scripts for the application that you are using to ease the creation of the space? With some well thought out scripts you could dramatically reduce the time needed to create a new render... Give me more details like what 3d application are you using, details on backgrounds and objects and I'll be able to help more.

Can elaborate more on what do you need to accomplish? Is the cad work at different z elevations but you need to move them all to 0 or you need to build them in 3d at the original elevation?

I haven't used bevel profile much but from my understanding you can just extrude along an axis perpendicular to the selected face while with sweep you can use a spline. Sweep is more related to loft as you can select your shape, your path and extrude the shape along the path. There are some nifty mapping settings and the best part is that it's open to maxscript too, unlike the loft (this has saved me a ton of modeling time!).