MarcellusW

Question: what is the going rate for photo editing(photoshop only) for things like flooring upgrades in an existing house? Basically I am taking a client's provided photos of their home and editing them for their flooring choices, paint colors, stone selections, etc. I just got asked to do this and don't know where to start for minimum prices (don't want to undercut market). Charge by the image/complexity? Or charge by the hour? The relationship is most likely back and forth alot so I am skeptical about charging per image. US prices please. Thank you for your input!

Anyone worked with or contracted-out laser scanning an interior to convert into a 3d model for both rendering, and for as built conditions for construction documents? I've got an approximately 50,000 SF open warehouse interior I need scanned, really soon. I'm getting quotes but would like to know your experience(was it a usable model) and the ballpark for costs. Any US companies you recommend in the Texas area? Thanks.

Anyone have a positive experience with their basic web analytics (provided by the hosting company)? I use fatcow and I suspect they purposefully hide the country origin info from the IP stats so that they make me sign up for google-monster's analytics (which they spam all over my dashboard). I just want to know a vague location of visitors, not what they had for breakfast. I'm thinking of switching next month. Any better suggestions re: above?

Pretty sure Chris Stoski and Dylan Cole made their own websites. Sometimes "professional" just means trendy. HTML coding is pretty easy if you have dreamweaver and any questions you might have, have already been answered on stackoverflow.com, even for the "professional" looks. Most of the javascripts for intro slide shows and what-not is out there for free if you acknowledge the source in your code view.

I listened to a couple of Gresham College podcasts this afternoon on the issue on my way home from work. http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/eu-debate-should-the-uk-leave-or-remain It seems state sovereignty is an issue. With your parliament being subject to ECJ rulings. Granted, there is "article 50" in the EU constitution that lets a member state leave, thereby getting out of ECJ rulings. Props to the EU if they actually abide by that 50 years, especially if one of the wealthy nations wants to leave. But then again, supreme courts have a way of reinterpreting constitutions to find laws and precedents that aren't written in them, and excluding ones that are. I do think the US is a good example of that. The EU has its own supreme court, legislative body, diplomatic body, currency, military. I think it is at least something like a country...

So I did a little research. If you can call wikipedia research. The EU is defined as a "Politico-Economic Union" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union I was scratching my head at what the "politico" part meant (if that definition was somehow closer to what you were saying as not really a country) The wiki hyper link def. went to: Political union: "... a type of state which is composed of or created out of smaller states. The process is called unification." Under examples of "federal/confederal Unions" there are: Canada Australia The now extinct German Empire and the USSR USA and The European Union. Would you agree that debating further on 'country' or 'not a country' would seem to be semantics? Formally, it looks like... a country. I think you should read the book. I agree that you would better know about your own country's public opinion, but it is a really good read (The Pope Emeritus has an extremely sharp mind in how he crafts sentences.) Then you could give me an insider's opinion on it. Have a great week!

Brexit Points: 1. It is easier to reform a smaller federal government than a larger one. 2. Britain has a wonderful history and culture which will be better protected and passed on by those of the same culture in power. 3. If the UN's premise in settling international disputes falls to the principle of self-determination, then giving power to a supra-national entity over a nation would be a step backward. 4. If we see it as justice that legitimate nations(at least recognized, and had a legal foundation, I don't mean to start a flame war) were dismantled at the end of WWI because of the right of cultural self-determination, (e.g. Austria-Hungary), then again, being in the EU is a step backward. 5. Territorial/cultural disputes not successfully resolved by EU governance could involve arbitration by the UN, which again uses the right of cultural self-determination and anti-colonialism as its legal framework. This scenario seems to be an existential problem because it submits the EU to an external entity. 6. Are other countries willing to accept German dominance? (re: points 2, 3, 4, 5). 7. Bringing separate nations together with deep and conflicting histories by a distinctly secularist foundation is a gamble that Europe can be culturally unified by something other than its Christian past. Re: Pope Benedict XVI and Marcello Pera, "Without Roots." Brexit!

I am curious, does copyright and intellectual property have any value in this conversation? Dealing with say China, is your design properly protected? Are those charging low rates actually purchasing their render toolset? Is it reasonable to expect you can recover damages through the local authorities in the event there is a problem?

Not rant, but, being properly tailored for an actual client, a very good line of reasoning I will steal for bargaining.

Thomas, You're probably more experienced than myself, but I experimented in Mental ray for a good year of free time to learn how to render. Does it work? Yes. Does it work without troubleshooting a greater portion of the time? For me, No. My reason for using it was financial, it was free with 3ds Max. And people can make the final images look really good if they know what they are doing. However, I can say that when I switched to corona I saved a lot of time and I had a lot less headaches, and get better looking raw renders from the start.

Thomas, The corona tutorials on youtube explain step by step the process in photoshop. FYI: I use Photoshop CS4 and the EXR format was not working with the blend modes in the tutorial. I followed the tutorials exactly but changed the format to 32-bit TIFF for the render elements, and the blending modes worked just fine. Not sure if this is fixed in newer versions of photoshop. Cheers.

For this very script, I emailed Vray about a year ago on what they thought(you'd be surprised how often people change their minds when you just ask) about using their demo version which states... "Not to be used for commercial purposes" ...if I used it to have the right .dll file so that I could covert materials ... for commercial purposes. This is the answer I recieved: "..."

Tell me, did this doubled income involve 6 figures and benefits to boot, and NOT living in California? Perhaps likewise I need to 1up my field.

Yes, the Universal Material Converter looked promising, however, you still need Vray installed in order to convert Vray materials to another render engine, otherwise the script wont work. Alas, I am still stuck buying Vray to convert materials.

Thanks for the tips. Unfortunately, I will not be able to upgrade the hardware. Hadn't thought about Project Manager, that's a good one. About Lumion, is it that better to have over Unreal Engine? Just seems pricey for what it does (I haven't tried it, just looking at the site).