I think most of the friendly folks here have not caught on to Google Sketchup Free yet.
Have you seen Google Sketchup's intro videos?  They are umm.... extremely elementary.  If anyone reading this is thinking of checking out the free Google Sketchup (and I highly recommend they do, they don't know what they're missing) watch the video tutorials found here:
http://www.sketchup.com/?sid=35

there are hundreds of dollars(USD) worth of free tutorials and in as little as 20 mins-or up to 2 hours you will be FLYING in 3D.

http://download.sketchup.com/downloads/training/tutorials50/Sketchup%20Video%20Tutorials.html

I haven't tried the .obj thing,

does it split the materials just as easily as the .3ds option?

Fletch.

yes I saw it... I think... had several pm's lately so, you know...

resend it if I didn't respond and you needed something.  I'm there every day!

wow Wabe, thanks for the tip... could be why the 'x' shaped grass patches of my ecosystems always seem to invade my streets and curbs slightly.

Jim, you too have a point, VUE seems to be sensitive to small images... trying at least a 1024x1024 map may help Leo??!

and - I see you have 'populate below foreign object' checked, did you try unchecking this? (must if you use Talley's suggestion)

Also, did you try changing the slider for 'smooth blending strip' closer to 0 instead of 100?  Not sure exactly what this does, but I have a theory, and wanted to see if it works... maybe vue is 'blurring' your trail for you with this, and you don't want it blurring that line?

I think you mentioned, M. dangeroux, that you were smoothing the mesh inside of SU?
I'm sure you've tried it both ways, but I read somewhere that smoothing it inside of SU is no good.

What are you bringing into VUE?  a .3ds or a .obj?

Well, the 'rippling' as far as I can understand from what I've read and experimented with is caused by the 'z' scale in the function of the water (according to the manual).  Unfortunately there are several placed one can change a 'z' scale in the water I've dealt with and I'm not convinced I have narrowed it down as to which one that actually is.

So theoretically if you can figure out which Z scale controls the speed of the ripple, and then figure out which value for Z equals 1 frame of time in your animation, then you should be able to create a 'loop' of rippling water by only animating one full 'up and down' motion of the z.  but unfortuntately VUE's manual is more of a tease than a help when it comes to creating this effect (IMHO).

R. Czarney or Phoul will be more of a help maybe, but I'm afraid experimentation and patience will make you the expert on this, then maybe you can post your answer and help us all out, I'm very interested in it.  I would like a little 3 second looping animation of the water and the wind in my vegetation and my sky seeming to move so I don't have to render 30 seconds or so of animation!

If all you want to move is the water, I suggest Sqirlz Water Reflections.  It is simple to use and much fun and looks fantastic.  Unfortunately, it's only the water that moves, and not the sky and the trees.  I can send you a great .swf file example of a Squirlz water rendering if you send me a personal message w/ your email address, Palagas.  Or just Google it and check out their website - it's a free program!

well, J, you gotta say what you've already tried when you post these q's, or we just type in useless info for you.  are you in Vue 5 Infinite or Esprit?  I'm assuming Infinite.

Saw it... fascinating.  It explained a lot.  Thanks a million! (don't know if I'll ever use it, but hey...  maybe to put a moving picture on a TV in a lobby (architects are such geeks)

try Form Fonts models.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean.  This would be a 'random' pattern of apples that you want to create by manipulating a noise function to get it to look like an apple?  Or you want it to look 3D?  To what end?  I'm confused.  Please illustrate a bit for us slow people.

well, since you never answered my question when you posted this the first time, I will wait there for a reply.

Leo,
Post a screenshot of your material settings - especially the function editor so I can get an idea of how you are creating your path. 

Talley, I like the idea of the dummy box ... you can then select the box (or a series of boxes), Leo, and then hide them from the render.  Put them on their own layer and turn the layer off so you don't even see them any longer.  That's the way around creating the density map... but I use density maps to create trails.

Also make sure you check 'do not populate below foreign object'... or something like that in the ecosystem density tab.
Also choose '100%' sampling quality.

thanks Chipp - I worked thru it... very well put together... my mapping didn't work out the way yours did, if I changed the Z to 0, it was fine... is it possible this is different between V5i and V5esprit?

this will come in handy, thanks.  my next task is to create a good concrete texture for a street curb.  I will probably apply something w/ this variable transparency/underlying material thing.  any tips would be appreciated.  Also, it's got to have concrete joints every 8' on the curbs... so it will have the bump doing that as well.

Jim's right again, try '60 degrees'.  the smoothing angle is defaulted to this for me for some reason and I hate it because VUE smooths my models, and I don't want that.

I know you probably know this already J.B., but for reference of others: smoothing angle is the angle measured between the normals of two adjacent faces.  A normal is a line drawn perpendicular to a face.  (Hope that clarifies)

here's my post about this very thing on Sketchup's forum Jackson:

http://forum.sketchup.com/showthread.php?t=70785