Reflections on a new sketchup exporter for LuxRender ?

Gaieus

...Lux supports various algorithms, including biased and unbiased ones, so the choice of easy of use / speed / quality is up to the user...

Just like Kerkythea.

kwistenbiebel

Hi Terrence,

Imho, The best way to go is contacting Whaat.
He developed the (Sk)Indigo plugin and other great plugins.
By now he must understand all the pitfalls when coding a Render engine for Sketchup.

I don't think whaat will be willing to write yet another free exporter, but maybe he is willing to give some advice.

As a user of different render engines for Sketchup, I can say there is room for another (free) render engine.
The things we currently miss in the unbiased range of engines, is a way to seperate the sun from the skylight, for instance for overcast days.

Also, rendering out 'channels' for compositing is something we miss: reflection channel, matte channel, shadows channel etc...

I am very interested in what exactly the photon mapping and raytracing component in Luxrender produces.
Vray like? Hybrid?
Currently there is no real good Vray clone in the open source/freeware section, at least not one that produces the same quality.

tbd

Is there any C/C++ API existing or in the works which would allow more direct control of sketchup's API ?

http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/downloadsdksubmit.html

it would be nice to have a generic exporter and be able to add different render engines output formats (Podium, VRay, Kerkythea, Indigo, ...) - this way everyone will benefit - the users will be able to test different render engines with no or minor tweaking and us, the developers, can concentrate on other things (and not reinventing the wheel, againi and again).

Frederik

@kwistenbiebel said:

The things we currently miss in the unbiased range of engines, is a way to seperate the sun from the skylight, for instance for overcast days.

Not sure I understand what you mean, Chris...
Wouldn't this be taken care of if you're using a HDRI...???

@kwistenbiebel said:

Currently there is no real good Vray clone in the open source/freeware section, at least not one that produces the same quality.

Can you please elaborate on this a bit further...

kwistenbiebel

Hi Frederick,

The lighting a HDRI produces is flat, meaning the shadows are not pronounced (unless it is IBL enhanced like a texture on a dome or something)
A 'sky/sun separation' would mean that you can control the intensity of the physical sky and direct sun seperately.

In most render engines, sun is either 'on' or 'off' and the intensity is calculated by time of day but not tweakable besides that.
(In other host apps (3DsMax,C4D, etc..) the sun is an object (infinite light) with an intensity that can be set. Sketchup hasn't got that. ).

Fryrender is the only SU based render engine where you can control sun intensity seperately from sky by using layer blending.Physical sky on layer 0, sun on layer 1 for instance. (Kerkythea might too but not from within SU).

toxicvoxel

@unknownuser said:

it would be nice to have a generic exporter and be able to add different render engines output formats (Podium, VRay, Kerkythea, Indigo, ...) - this way everyone will benefit - the users will be able to test different render engines with no or minor tweaking and us, the developers, can concentrate on other things (and not reinventing the wheel, againi and again).

Alternatively we need to develop a spec for a Sketchup xml specification which can be used by any rendering- or indeed any other application to interrogate a Sketchup model in an API-neutral way. This could also be an ideal import format that can be targeted by any modelling application without developers investing a huge amount of time developing an understanding of the different Sketchup API's.

Gaieus

dae (collada) is already supported by many apps and is kind of becoming a generally accepted "standard" (or at least a good candidate). Also, it is in xml format which many (or at least some) exporters such as SU2KT also use.

Frederik

@Kwistenbiebel...
Thanks for your explanation...
Let's see what can be done with future applications...

radiance29

Hi guys,

Thanks again for all your replies and ideas

I've decided to go ahead with it and start my planning phase.
I'll report on these forums once i have something.

Radiance

radiance29

Hey,

I forgot to ask, Would it be possible for some people to send me some sketchup scenes which i can use during development/testing of my exporter ?
I've never used sketchup before, so it's not going to be easy to make some advanced scenes straight away...

If you have something you want to send, send me a PM and i'll get you my email adres...

Thanks,
Radiance

l.frisken

just search the google 3d warehouse and you'll find many!

otherwise, i'm sure that there will be people willing to give theirs

pibuz

Hi Radiance!
I can't wait to see an exporter for LuxRender!!!
Contacting Master Whaat seems a reasonable tip to me, as he developed a quite good exporter to Indigo
I'd be happy to give you any scene you need: I'm a perfectionist, and I'm pretty convinced that my geometries aren't affected by normals issues or something, so they're ready to render, somewhat..
I usually model archviz scenes, so basically buildings..
Do you need interior or exterior scenes?

Good luck Radiance and thanks!