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What's New with SU Podium for Google SketchUp

What's New April 14, 2011

1. This issue's featured image

    This issues feature image from the SU Podium Forum gallery comes from Julien Dayet. This images was added to the new www.suplugins.com gallery as well.


    Click on image to view much larger resolution.

    SU Podium Forum gallery is a good place to see what can be accomplished with SU Podium V2 and SU Podium 1.7.3.

2. Tips - how to get rid of blotches

    SU Podium V2 presets are calibrated to be as fast as possible. Unfortunately, some imperfections such as blotches or unexpected corner shadowing will sometimes appear in the rendered image. These anomalies can appear quite randomly especially on non-texture pale surface, corners and low polygon geometry scenes. Those imperfections are caused by the lower quality and precision of the Podium V2 preset.

    QMC presets are made especially to overcome this issue. But the cost is a substantially slower rendering time. QMC presets can also produce a more grainy image. To overcome the graininess of QMC presets, it is recommended that you render at a higher pixel resolution than you need and resize the image after it is completed.

    This will solve most of the current blotches and artifices. If they are still appearing with the QMC presets, please contact us.


    Before with interior preset
    After with QMC-interior preset

3.Trees updated in Podium Browser - less fringe

    Most of the SU Podium Browser trees from the the Plants and Trees category, did not render well in SU Podium V2. This was because the plant images were masked to look good for SU Podium 1.7. Earlier version of Podium did not take into account varying degrees of alpha transparencies so the masking done for Podium 1.7 did not have to be precise. V2 is much more accurate with alpha transparencies. This is why trees and plants from the Podium Browser rendered with a white fringe around the edges (CAD Plants and OZ breed have always rendered well). Tree's masking has been updated and the trees render better in V2 now. There's no need to download anything to obtain the new trees. Simply open your Podium Browser and drag the trees into your SketchUp model.

4. SU Walk supports face-me plants from the Podium Browser

    SU Walk is Cadalog's real time, photo-realistic animation program for Windows (Mac will come later this year). This is in Beta and you are welcome to download it and try it out for free. Be aware that it is different from SU Podium. SU Walk's purpose is for the creation of photo-realistic SketchUp walk thru/ fly thru animation. It features real time reflections and lighting of your SketchUp model. However, for photo-realistic still images, SU Podium's quality is far superior. SU Walk now supports Podium Browser face-me plants. Click on the image below to see a very short YouTube presentation of face-me SketchUp components and SU Walk.


    Click here to see Face-me plants in SU Walk

    We invite you to take a closer look at SU Walk by visiting the SU Walk video tutorial page and reading about it here.

5. See you at AIA Expo - Booth #3407

    Cadalog, Inc. will be presenting SU Podium V2 as well our other product for Google SketchUp such as SU Walk and SU Animate in this year's American Institute of Architects (AIA) 2011 Convention in New Orleans from May 12 - 14. Our booth is #3407.

6. What Cadalog, Inc. is working on - Version 2.5, IFC2SKP release, Beams release, updated plants

    There are several things Cadalog is working on to release in the next week or two. Please check out our Twitter account periodically to see what is new.

    First and foremost is work on SU Podium V2.5. This version will have several new items. One is an updated Podium Light System (PLS) or commonly known as the Podium spot light program. In V2.5, PLS will become much simpler and easier to create spot lights. Another feature that will not be as noticeable but provides better stability and speed is "streaming" which will eventually lead to scene caching. More detail on this will be provided with the V2.5 release. SketchUp parallel projection support is also something we are working on. However, this support might not make the V2.5 release and may be in V2.6.

    We are also planning to release a new beta version of SU Walk this month and the final release version to follow shortly after.

    We finally have an updated IFC2SKP plug-in for Google SketchUp 8 which will be released next week. This only works in SketchUp 8 for Windows.

    Also for SketchUp Windows is the Beams program which creates I-beams, channels and a variety of steel shapes, on-the-fly inside SketchUp. This will be released shortly.