Introducing AmbientOcclusion Extension

Extensions
1

AmbientOcclusion is a very fast visualization plugin that requires no learning. In just one click, you will create a visually compelling preview of your 3d models, highlighting space and relations among objects.

You can download a free 15 days trial here.

http://www.ambientocclusion-sketchup.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/interior3-bw.jpg

http://www.ambientocclusion-sketchup.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/fansworth-bw.jpg

http://www.ambientocclusion-sketchup.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/tricicle.jpg

http://www.ambientocclusion-sketchup.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/technik-dof.jpg

1 Like
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Looks interesting. Seems to fall somewhere between LightUp and Maxwell.

3

It looks like you rely on the middle mouse button to orbit, using the orbit tool itself takes you out of the render preview. Can you think of a way to do orbiting and staying in the render preview?

Also, changing the quality setting doesn’t seem to change either the frame rate or the quality.

4

By design, we decided to make the orbiting, panning etc to use the standard OpenGL drawing instead of AmbientOcclusion, so that adjusting the view is more responsive than if it was done with ambient occlusion active.

The rendering automatically stops when the quality reaches what is specified in the quality settings; for example, if you set the quality to 64 spp, the rendering won’t stop util it reaches 64 samples per pixel.

5

I don’t mind that orbiting drops out of the render preview, it’s just that I have to reselect the render option every time, unlike your video where the render tool gets reselected automatically.

If I set the quality to 4 app, or 1024 app, I still get about 5 fps when zooming in, and the results look the same.

6

To orbit or pan without dropping out of the rendering tool, use shift + middle mouse button and alt + middle mouse button.

The quality setting doesn’t influence the frames per second, but just how long the scene is rendered. The longer the rendering, the less noise will be present in the final image.

7

Like I mentioned, middle mouse button. I’m using a trackpad, I’ll look into whether I can emulate a middle mouse button.

8

You might want to take a look at this post:

http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=34221

9

I didn’t fully read that link, but in the meantime I had tracked (pun?) down a solution that may be covered in that article. I can command-option-control single click-drag to emulate middle mouse button. I can now orbit in the same way shown in the video.

The one drawback I see is that SketchUp treats Option as a modifier key to say that you want to orbit off-axis.

Quickly figured out a way around that! If I press command-option-control- single click drag, I can release those keys, and get normal Orbit behavior.