What's New in SU Podium for SketchUp

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We have seen a lot of fantastic work on the forums in recent weeks, including this striking bathroom render by Joe Pretorius. There are three more designers featured on the what's new web page, so be sure to click through and take a look.

If you have questions or want to receive constructive feedback, the gallery forum is an excellent community resource! Please don't hesitate to post your work, it can really pay off!

Animated by Cadalog, Inc in Podium Walker v1.3.

PW 1.30 now includes Light-maps for LEM lighting. Previously, light-maps worked only for point lights/ spot lights. As you may know, the LEM lighting calculations are much slower in PW than point lights and spot lights, so light-map support for LEMs will greatly increase the speed of your video output.

• Lightmaps: Light-maps are form of pre-rendering in which lighting information is calculated and "baked" into your model. Lighting calculations can now be done earlier in the design process giving users far more leeway to make iterative design decisions. Light-maps make last minute changes to an animation far less time-intensive.
• Render and export in a fraction of the time: Once your animation is finalized, Podium Walker, will be able to re-export your video in a fraction of the time it would have taken without light-maps because the scene has already been ray-traced. The final export for the above video only took about an hour, compared to the four hours it would have taken in previous versions.

UI Additions in PW V1.3 - There is now a Create/Update lightmap button in the Podium Walker UI in addition to the Lightmap on/off toggle that was there before. A light map mesh size UI has also been created. The default is 2 inches. If the mesh size is too small, the rendering may crash.

Anti-aliasing bug has been fixed - The anti-aliasing settings issue (described here) has been resolved in Podium Walker v1.3.

Download:  Download Podium Walker v1.3 here

The issues that have limited Podium Browser functionality for the past week have been resolved. This fix changes the way Podium Browser handles cookies, which should eliminate the recurring cookie issues that crop up when Safari or IE release updates. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience. Please see the following for more information: Read more here.	SU Podium V2.5.116 has been released - We have released a small update that adds a scrollbar to Podium's preset selection dropdown. This was a point of confusion for new and existing users in the past few builds, so this should resolve any ambiguity in the preset menu. Free update for anyone already using V2.5 or higher. Get the update here.

Google Cardboard is an inexpensive, stereoscopic virtual reality headset that uses your Android or iOS mobile device to create an immersive VR experience. For this month's quick tip, we've put together a short document that covers the use of SU Podium's panorama feature with a Google Cardboard VR headset.

• Upload to Spherecast: After you've created your Panorama file using SU Podium v2.5.1+, we recommend using the free Spherecast.org upload site to convert your EQ image and host your Panorama presentation. Spherecast has a built-in stereoscopic mode that works perfectly with Google cardboard, and requires absolutely no extra work on your part.
• Get Google Cardboard: There are several reasonably priced Google Cardboard sets available direct from manufacturers on the Cardboard website, or through Amazon. This one in particular is inexpensive and well reviewed: D-Scope Google Cardboard Kit.

Read More: Click here for a step-by-step on how to use SU Podium with Google Cardboard

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