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What's New with SU Podium for Google SketchUp

What's New August 24, 2011

1. SU Walk 1.0.6 update for real time photo-realistic animations

    SU Podium V2 users - special price of $70 per license until September 15, 2011.

    SU Walk 1.0.6, the photo-realistic animation application for SketchUp models, has been updated to 1.0.6 with improvement on reflection rendering speed and flickering. Meanwhile an introduction price for SU Podium V2 users has been launched. If you have a valid SU Podium V2 license, you can purchase this photo-realistic animation Windows program for $70.

    Read a review of SU Walk by Nicolas Harvey here. Read about, watch the videos, download a trial version at www.suwalk.com.

    Above are some examples of SU Walk animations.

2. Mac Users Note: SU Podium V2.6.1 is compatible to Mac OS-X Lion.

    If you want to work with Lion right away, use SU Podium 2.6.1 version. It is a free update. You can download and install SU Podium V2.6.1 for Mac OS-X 10.7 (Lion) from the Version 2 page.

3. This e-news featured image

    This week's beautifully exterior rendereding from the SU Podium Forum gallery comes from Edson Mahfuz. This image was added to the new www.suplugins.com gallery as well. Edson is a long time Podium users and always does marvelous work. Nice one, Edson!!


    Click on image to view much larger resolution.

    SU Podium Forum gallery is a great place to see what others are doing with SU Podium V2 and the suggestions and comments that other users are making. It's a great place to pick up some ideas for your rendering . Click on the Gallery Forum.

4. Render ready Podium materials - Translucent Glass

    Translucency is the property where a material allows light to pass through it, but does not allow you to see any detail. You can see outlines where light is blocked from travelling though the surface, but little more than that.

    What is happening here is that light entering the material and passing through it is being scattered, preventing any detail from being seen.

    In some render engines, this can be tricky to configure. In Podium however, you just choose an index of refraction for your material, and check the 'blur' box. Just as with blurred reflections, there is nothing else to configure.

    The image below shows the effects you get with D5/T95/R0 and refraction set as 'glass'. I have used the new materials configuration scene here and you can clearly see the white outline of the base plane behind the cube.

    To read the rest of this important Materials article on Translucent Glass by Jim Allen please click here for the Materials page.

5. SU Podium Browser 2.0: Paid content update as of August 8, 2011

    SU Podium Browser 2.0 includes a vast library of free content and a growing number of Paid content items. Earlier this August, we released some new libraries for the Paid Content section. Specifically, more Super Modular exterior and interior light fixtures. And a large number of Podium Materials. Podium Materials are textures that are pre made with diffuse, transparency and reflection properties. They are "render ready". SU Podium Browser is included in SU Podium 2.5 and above. If you do not have SU Podium but want SU Podium Browser, go to the Download page on www.suplugins.com and download it. Access to the Paid content on Browser 2.0 is $29 for a permanent license. Additional content coming over the next few months.

    You can also update your SU Podium V2 license to the most current version. This will automatically include the newest version of SU Podium Browser. Click here to go to the SU Podium Version2 page.

    New 3D trees for the Free libraries. A new free category called NorthernAmerican3D was added. This actually includes Northern Hemisphere 3D SketchUp trees. These trees are very detailed. They do take a long time to render using V2. However, they render very quickly in SU Walk.

6. The Essentials: Rendering with Podium V2 - Jim Kenney's book is available now from www.lulu.com

    Customers are getting a lot out of The Essentials: Rendering with Podium V2 from Jim Kenney, professor and practising architect. It is highly recommend. This is a fast and rewarding way to learn Version 2 fully. It is now available on www.lulu.com in a PDF format. Type in Podium V2 in Lulu's search field to find it. The book was original written as a manual for Jim's design classes at California State University, Sacramento. There is one catch - you do need to read. Hopefully you have not forgotten how.

7. What Cadalog, Inc. is working on - Version 2.7, SU Animate 4

    SU Podium Version 2.7 is still in the works. The main feature will be multi-byte support. This will be welcome to users that use multi-byte characters (Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, etc.) for file names, folder names and texture names. Also, included are new presets and updated Podium Tools. A new version of RenderAll will be included in 2.8.

    SU Animate 4 for Windows and Mac. Keyframe animation, new UI, a lot of new things to make SketchUp based animations easier. This version has taken a little longer than expected to be released in beta. For those that do not know, SU Animate is a non-photorealistic (npr) SketchUp plug-in. It automates the process of creating SketchUp based scene animations. It's a handy tool to create npr animations especially if you need to animate object motion such as doors swinging open, fork lifts moving and assembly of construction. I have included a short video of a new feature in SU Animate 4 called key frames. Click here to view on YouTube. This shows the assembly of a building. We expect to have a Beta version by early September 2011.