sketchup upgrade and mirror question and water question

[par1975]

Hi,

I'm using Sketchup 6 at the moment and looking at upgrading to 7, will this affect my twilight license when I upgrade?

Quick question on mirrors, If I'm using the perfect mirror template and I want to change the colour of the mirror is it simply just a matter of changing the colour of the material as I have tried this and it only seems to change with certain colours, I want a dark grey mirror however when I change the colour to dark grey it just stays the same although it does work with a red or an orange.

Finally, any thoughts on how I could make it look like water is running down a sheet of glass, I tried using a bump map of a water fall but its not that great. Any thoughts anybody?

Is there a way already of rendering 1 or more scenes one after the other, probably asking too much here but I find that if I have say 3 or 4 scenes it would be great if I could set Twilight to render them to a specific output file and once the first one is finished it would start on the next and so on, I could then leave my machine for the whole day just rendering away, any thoughts on that idea?


Cheers.

[Fletch]

I'm using Sketchup 6 at the moment and looking at upgrading to 7, will this affect my twilight license when I upgrade?

no, but I would back up my plugins folder before upgrading just in case. normally upgrading from SU6 to 7 went smooth as silk and without missing a beat for me.

Quick question on mirrors, If I'm using the perfect mirror template and I want to change the colour of the mirror is it simply just a matter of changing the colour of the material as I have tried this and it only seems to change with certain colours, I want a dark grey mirror however when I change the colour to dark grey it just stays the same although it does work with a red or an orange.

This thread may help (read further down about customizing materials)

Finally, any thoughts on how I could make it look like water is running down a sheet of glass, I tried using a bump map of a water fall but its not that great. Any thoughts anybody?

You could try one of these fountain/water materials by Majid. It depends on the model and scale.
If you post the fountain model as an example, perhaps someone here can help you set it up, so in future you'll have a good example.

Is there a way already of rendering 1 or more scenes one after the other, probably asking too much here but I find that if I have say 3 or 4 scenes it would be great if I could set Twilight to render them to a specific output file and once the first one is finished it would start on the next and so on, I could then leave my machine for the whole day just rendering away, any thoughts on that idea?

This is known as Batch Rendering. Please read the manual section with the step-by-step.

[par1975]

thanks for the sound advice.....

[par1975]

Tried the tips suggested for the mirror however this does'nt give me the effect I'm looking for, basically I'm trying to achieve a tinted mirror which has a slight grey tint to it so all I need to do is darken the default perfect mirror template, anyone know how I go about this? as changing the colour doesnt seem to work, Im probably missing something simple

[Fletch]

change IOR for Perfect Material Template from default of 1000 to be something like 8 or 10... or lower for darker... "1.1" is lowest I think you can go.. and still look decent.

[par1975]

Thanks, that's worked a treat.