Why use other renderers?

Chris Fullmer

Lots of reasons, mixtures of what you listed I think.

SU is not a photo real renderer. So if people want more advanced shadows and lighting, SU can't help. If you want light bulbs for example, glowing lights, ambient light, ambient occlusion (neat-o shadows), su just doesn't do that. Some people export to other programs to map on more advanced images to the geometry too sometimes.

But yes, essentially the look of the output is why people use other renderers.

Chris

Al Hart

In addition to lights and reflections, which most add-on renderers do, there are some other features which can give you a better rendering that the one you get in SketchUp.

3D Objects - ArchVision supplies libraries of high-quality 3D object - people, cars, trees, etc. These can be stored in SketchUp as a low-res image, and then rendered as a photo realistic object.

Low poly image components in SketchUp

Photo-realistic rendering with RPC objects.

Solid Materials - several renderers support solid materials, which work better than surface materials for sculpted or complex objects.

Fractal Trees - some renderers can render full 3D fractal trees with a level of detail which would use too many faces if the full 3D tree was included in SketchUp. (And by definition, the fractal tree generates more and more detail as you zoom in on it more for the rendering. So it would be difficult to store, in SketchUp, the full amount of detail you might want when rendering the tree.)

film842

Chris and Al: Thanks for the info. Much appreciated. I should mention that my goal is to find a way to make Sketchup animations work in an HD broadcast project I'm producing, or die trying.

These animations would be fly-arounds of industrial equipment with simple, maybe even one color texture. Our tests so far have been mixed. Our test models are too jaggy with too much line flickering, but one or two models downloaded from the warehouse seem to be much better.

So, it would seem that we just haven't figured out the right style or renderer or something. We've been told that Sketchup won't work for our purposes, but I have to believe there is a way.

Once we've figured out the right way, we'll take them into After Effects CS4 for post.

Would love to have any specific recommendations from anyone interested.

pbacot

@al hart said:

In addition to lights and reflections, which most add-on renderers do, there are some other features which can give you a better rendering that the one you get in SketchUp.

3D Objects - ArchVision supplies libraries of high-quality 3D object - people, cars, trees, etc. These can be stored in SketchUp as a low-res image, and then rendered as a photo realistic object.

Low poly image components in SketchUp

Photo-realistic rendering with RPC objects.

What's with that first picture? As if that's the best a car can be modeled in SU? and that cut-out thing with the stand? Making fun of face-me components? It looks to be misleading, given the work seen on this forum of objects fully modeled in SU, however rendered. Not very flattering, for an advertisement for a SU-based business. But I guess you want to convince people they need to buy another product.

Gaieus

I believe these are only @proxies@; i.e. you can use low poly, dummy things in your SU model and replace them with high quality, renderable things. Another technique to keeplow poly in SU but render higher quality.

A couple of rendering engines are capable to do such things.

Chris Fullmer

How are you exporting your animations? That can have a lot to do with the final quality.

Chris

Double Espresso

@film842 said:

Chris and Al: Thanks for the info. Much appreciated. I should mention that my goal is to find a way to make Sketchup animations work in an HD broadcast project I'm producing, or die trying.

These animations would be fly-arounds of industrial equipment with simple, maybe even one color texture. Our tests so far have been mixed. Our test models are too jaggy with too much line flickering, but one or two models downloaded from the warehouse seem to be much better.

So, it would seem that we just haven't figured out the right style or renderer or something. We've been told that Sketchup won't work for our purposes, but I have to believe there is a way.

Once we've figured out the right way, we'll take them into After Effects CS4 for post.

Would love to have any specific recommendations from anyone interested.

This feels like deja vu all over again...

Al Hart

@pbacot said:

What's with that first picture? As if that's the best a car can be modeled in SU? and that cut-out thing with the stand? Making fun of face-me components? It looks to be misleading, given the work seen on this forum of objects fully modeled in SU, however rendered. Not very flattering, for an advertisement for a SU-based business. But I guess you want to convince people they need to buy another product.

These were just a couple of examples of the use of ArchVision RPC objects. RPC uses proxy objects in the model which are replaces with better looking images while rendering.

For true face-me components, RPC is no better tan SketchUp. Their advantage with peoplecomes when the people are rotated, or need to stay facing the same direction during an animation.

ArchVision apparently has a lot of people who use their RPC objects with other programs, such as AutoCAD, Revit and PhotoShop. We are working on an interface to allow SketchUp users who already have RPC objects, or who want to use RPC objects to use them with SketchUp.

I started another thread to ask if anyone was interested ( RPC Thread) but haven't seen much interest from the SketchUp community.

If anyone wants to continue discussions of RPC - please use the other thread. RPC is not the point of this thread. The (original) point of this thread is what kind of things are available in add-on renderers which are not availale in SketchUp's original renderer.

RPC is a technique which maps images onto geometry to create fairly realistic images without adding tons of faces to SketchUp. However, you need an RPC renderer to see the final result.

This RPC images was not made with SketchUp. But the concept is the same.

Al Hart

@film842 said:

C
These animations would be fly-arounds of industrial equipment with simple, maybe even one color texture. Our tests so far have been mixed. Our test models are too jaggy with too much line flickering, but one or two models downloaded from the warehouse seem to be much better.

You should be able to get good animations from SketchUp. Continue with this thread letting us know what settings you are using (e.g. frames per second) and we should be able to help you out.

If you are having good results with 3D Warehouse models but not with your own models, you might post a model so someone can offer some suggestions on how to animate it better.

Finally, there are some SketchUp add-ons like Hypercosm, SU Animator, and RPS 3D PDF which might be useful for client presentations of equipment. Take a look at the SketchUp Plugins page for more information on these and other plugins.

pbacot

Thanks, Al. I understand it better now.