Ruby Tuesday: 16 August 2011
Since Arno's excellent ModelConverterX (aka "MCX") is an integral part of getting our work into FS, we are indeed fortunate to see an increasing number of features being added to that tool.
One of Arnos most recent 'experimental' feature additions to MCX is the "Performance Indicator Render Mode":
http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=82947
...which is very informative when used in conjunction with the DrawCallMonitor
http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8967
Thankfully, we may resolve an increasing number of issues resulting from our modeling technique while our models are opened in MCX... as Arno adds more options to the toolkit in the future.
But some might say that "Prevention Is The Best Cure", so it is beneficial to analyze potential problems with modeling, texturing and performance, and fix as many issues as possible while still inside Sketchup... before importing a model into MCX.
While we are all no doubt very grateful to Arno for his many innovations to date, perhaps by performing such analysis and optimization prior to MCX import, we can allow him to work on other specialized features conducive to our work-flow as FSDevelopers with less necessity to implement options for cleaning up glitches in our models.
A couple of other plug-ins by thomthom may prove helpful to this process:
Probes by thomthom
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=33233&p=293079#p293079
Probes is "a collection of various tools to query and probe a model"... consisting of:
Probe - Normals:
Probe - UVQ Values:
Probe - Count CG Materials:
Model Info by thomthom
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=33233&p=293079#p293079
Model Info outputs the model statistics to either console or file.
Model Info counts the triangles of each face, as this is a "more accurate indication to how complex the model is".
Ex: 2 models have an identical number of faces, but the number of triangles required to generate the faces is significantly different due to the inner geometry
NOTE: Some authors (like thomthom) use a ex: "library" sub-folder located in the [Sketchup install path]\Plugins sub-folder along with either a "launcher" for a plug-in Tool, or the actual Ruby tool script itself.
Both the above plug-ins require installation of "TT_Lib2" (if not already installed into the [Sketchup install path]\Pluins folder chain... for the main Tool to work:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/view...?f=323&t=30503
Hope this helps !
GaryGB
Since Arno's excellent ModelConverterX (aka "MCX") is an integral part of getting our work into FS, we are indeed fortunate to see an increasing number of features being added to that tool.
One of Arnos most recent 'experimental' feature additions to MCX is the "Performance Indicator Render Mode":
http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=82947
...which is very informative when used in conjunction with the DrawCallMonitor
http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8967
Thankfully, we may resolve an increasing number of issues resulting from our modeling technique while our models are opened in MCX... as Arno adds more options to the toolkit in the future.
But some might say that "Prevention Is The Best Cure", so it is beneficial to analyze potential problems with modeling, texturing and performance, and fix as many issues as possible while still inside Sketchup... before importing a model into MCX.
While we are all no doubt very grateful to Arno for his many innovations to date, perhaps by performing such analysis and optimization prior to MCX import, we can allow him to work on other specialized features conducive to our work-flow as FSDevelopers with less necessity to implement options for cleaning up glitches in our models.
A couple of other plug-ins by thomthom may prove helpful to this process:
Probes by thomthom
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=33233&p=293079#p293079
Probes is "a collection of various tools to query and probe a model"... consisting of:
Probe - Normals:
- Mouse over a face or edge to see the normals.
Probe - UVQ Values:
- Displays the UVQ values of each vertex for the face that the mouse points at.
Probe - Count CG Materials:
- Counts and select all groups and components with materials applied - ignoring V-Ray objects.
Model Info by thomthom
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=33233&p=293079#p293079
Model Info outputs the model statistics to either console or file.
- Statistics to File
- Statistics to Console
- Extended Statistics to File
- Extended Statistics to Console
Model Info counts the triangles of each face, as this is a "more accurate indication to how complex the model is".
Ex: 2 models have an identical number of faces, but the number of triangles required to generate the faces is significantly different due to the inner geometry
NOTE: Some authors (like thomthom) use a ex: "library" sub-folder located in the [Sketchup install path]\Plugins sub-folder along with either a "launcher" for a plug-in Tool, or the actual Ruby tool script itself.
Both the above plug-ins require installation of "TT_Lib2" (if not already installed into the [Sketchup install path]\Pluins folder chain... for the main Tool to work:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/view...?f=323&t=30503
Hope this helps !
GaryGB
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