1. What is SU Podium V2.5 Plus?
V2.5 Plus's major new feature is the result of months of R&D to employ a C++ method of processing scenes which make the overall Podium processing scenes in SketchUp up to ten times faster. In larger models, you will notice even more speed gains. In fact, V2.5.5 is up to 50% faster than the blazing speeds of V2.5. What is processing scenes and why should I care? Please read here.
Panoramic VR is now supported in SU Podium V2.5. Please read about Panoramic VR here.
Panorama Server, where you can upload your equirectangular images and have them converted to Panoramas on a cloud, for free and easily share to any device. Read here.
Improved Generate Script with relative file paths so you can send .scripts to another computer for rendering (V2.5.5 or higher only).
Read more about the specific of V2.5.5 here.
Section Tools has been included in the SketchUp 2015 and 2016 64 bit versions.
V2.5 Plus supports SketchUp 2016, 2015, 2014 Win/ Mac, 64/ 32 bit. However, V2.5.5 does not support SU 2014. If you are using SU 2014 please use V2.5.1. If you are using SketchUp 8, please use V2 Plus.
For Windows, currently requires Window 7,8 and 10 and 32/ 64 bit.
If you are a SU Podium v2 or V2 Plus customer, upgrade for currently a very low price of $39.95. Please read below about the improvements you will obtain for this low cost. V2.5 customers - your upgrade to V2.5.5 is free.
Download from download page (includes a 30 day trial).
Windows SU Podium V2.5.x only supports Windows 7,8 and 10. Read the install here.
Mac OS-X SU Podium V2.5.x only supports Maverick, Yosemite and El Capitan Read the install here.
SU Podium V2.5.x requires a new license code that is different from V2 or V2 Plus. For existing V2 or V2 Plus users, you will need your V2 license code to upgrade to V2.5.x. Please see here.
Uninstall SU Podium V2 or V2 Plus before installing V2.5.x. We recommend that you use our Windows and Mac uninstall programs. Read the install guide here.
SU Podium V2.5 Plus employs a significantly improved Podium Exporter that is written in C++.
Previous versions used a very efficient ruby code to export SketchUp geometry, textures, camera and sun position to Podium's raytracing engine. However, the C++ Podium Exporter can export geometry and materials to the raytracing engine much faster. In many cases 10 times faster. In fact, V2.5.1 is 50% faster than V2.5. As you know, with large models, processing and parsing scenes can often be the longest stage in the entire rendering process. So for large models, the speed difference can be several minutes or more in rendering time.
This Lake House model from has 768,000 faces and 145 materials. On a very fast Windows 7 machine (Intel i7 4960X), with V2.18.972, processing scenes and parsing UV maps took 12 minutes. On the same computer with V2.5.x the geometry and materials exports took 43 seconds. We expect this speed performance will increase even more in the next free update.
Flipped component textures problem - fixed. See here for bug description.
Tiff files crashing the Mac version - fixed. See here for the problem description.
Material that are named "m" or "b" or other single letters. See here for the problem description.
Other UV mapping problems - mostly fixed.
Unknown symbol message - much fewer incidents.
Podium Image Editor has an improved DOF (Depth of Field options) that lets you fine tune the in focus and out of focus areas.
Tools has been updated in V2.5 Plus additional Analyse Tools options providing more information about your model and how to fix problems.
You can see in the above images, there are many new items reported in Analyse. Now there is a summary section for Alerts which provide information why Podium may be crashing or is not rendering as expected. The list of materials now links with both the SketchUp Materials Editor and the Podium Materials Property. In other words, when you click on one of the listed materials in the Analyse Report the particular material is linked to SketchUp's Material Editor and Podium Material Properties UI so you can make edits quickly. Read about all the features of Podium Tools here.
An often requested feature for SU Podium has been to support SketchUp sections. SketchUp sections simulate section cuts by hiding parts of the model that are behind the SketchUp section plane. But SketchUp does not actually trim or cut the faces from the model, to make sections as you might see in a solid modeling 3D program. SketchUp section feature does not remove geometry behind the section plane. Therefore Podium's rendering engine can not distinguish between what is in front or behind (hidden) the SketchUp section plane.
To deal with this, Cadalog has a has a new section tool plug-in for SU Podium V2.5 Plus users, that cuts and removes the SketchUp geometry that is behind the section plane. To ensure that you do not lose geometry from your original model, the SU Podium Section Tool first makes a copy of your model and renames to a unique name. Then the tool creates a new face where the section plane is and removes the geometry that is behind the section plane. The result is a real physical section which you can then render with SU Podium.
Section Tool is now installed with V2.5 Plus for SketchUp 2015 and 2016, 64 bit. This is because SketchUp 2015/ 2016, 64 bit has improvements in memory management and Section Tools works well. However, we have not included Section Tools in SketchUp 2014 or in SketchUp 2015/ 2016, 32 bit because it will often crash due to lack of memory. However, 2014 customers will be able to download it from the SU Podium plugins page.
8. Support for more languages.
SU Podium V2.5 Plus adds support for more languages. Now in Japanese ad Korean with more European and Asian languages coming.
Click on the above image to see the spherical panorama.
Panoramic VR has been introduced with SU Podium V2.5.x SU Podium includes an option to create equirectangular images and convert these into spherical Panoramic VRs where the camera is inside the sphere and can be rotate on it's axis in 360 degrees by your clients. Creates a powerful presentation. Please read about Panoramic VR here.
Cast Shadows is a new material property. There may be times that you do not want a specific material to cast a shadow. One example shown below is Podium Browser's background clouds. At times the cloud background image needs to be scaled up to produce a realistic effect. But this will cause the cloud background image to cast a shadow over much of the scene. In this case, you may want to turn off the material property, cast shadows.
Improved Generate Script with relative file paths - Podium's generate script tool gives you the ability to output a .SCRIPT file that can be opened later on in OOPR. Podium has always had the ability to generate scripts, however until now it has used absolute file references, making it impossible to share .SCRIPT files between computers.
Generate now outputs a folder containing the materials and textures from your SketchUp model, and a .script file that uses relative file paths. The advantage being, you can now send your .script and textures folder to any computer with access to Podium/OOPR. Previously, .scripts files could only be run on the computer used to generate them.
Send your .scripts and texture folder to a faster computer and free up your PC or Mac.