Render

[tpstigers]

From the looks of things, this is the right place to ask about this. I've been a loyal fan of SketchUp for years now. By trade I'm a Map Dork, so most of the time I deal in landscapes, but whenever I need a model, SketchUp is always my first stop (in the overwhelming majority of cases, it's my last stop as well). It's just a damn good application.

What I'm curious about is rendering SketchUp models and/or scenes. Specifically, I'd like to know what you all prefer to use for your renders. I know this is often a question of personal preference, and those are the sorts of answers I'm looking for. What do you use for renders? What sorts of constructs do you render with it? Why is this your particular preference?

At the end of the day, I'll probably give a few a try (at least from among the free/low cost category - I'm an enthusiast, not a pro here), but I was hoping you folks could help me narrow the field a bit.

Thanks,

• Terry

[Krisidious]

Vue

(www.e-onsoftware.com)

[mitcorb]

Of course, Kerkythea is one to consider for entry level rendering. It costs nothing, but your effort, and has the plugin SU2KT to assist in export, a helpful community, and a fee based version. Several members here are also community members at Kerkythea. And they may be posting shortly on this thread.

[solo]

Terry, the key to your enquiry is 'landscapes'.

I have used almost every render engine out there and they all can do the job of rendering, however with landscapes I'm afraid unless you want to use 2D representation for a 3D space then Sketchup is NOT the tool.
But if you insist in using Sketchup I'd suggest either go studio or go Vue. That way you can populate your 3D vegetation without needing to be poly aware. I'd suggest Vue for landscapes as there is nothing out there that can compete with it's ease of creation and availability of vegetation not forgetting it's endless environments.

[pmolson]

They all have advantages and disadvantages and the best
for you is dependent on your needs and budget(both time and money).

For me Podium fits best.

1. Affordable
2. small learning curve to get good results.
   (with a little more effort pretty amazing results are possible)
3. Works within sketchup....kind of.
4. Very helpful users forum.

Here is a link to a few projects of mine that I used podium on.
Not all the projects used podium, but most of them.

pmolson's HOMES
(Above is a link to other pmolson homes)

paul

[Ecuadorian]

Different tools for different purposes.

Currently I'm a licensed user of:

Twilight Render
What I currently use it for: Photorealistic interior & exterior stills.
Pros: Easy to use if you understand basic rendering concepts. Good communication with SketchUp. Renders SketchyPhysics.
Cons: For really photorealistic results in interiors you must use an unbiased method, which is slow.

LightUp
What I currently use it for: Interior walk-through videos of houses.
Pros: The fastest way to render a walk-through of a house.
Cons: Not really photorealistic. Uses AO to fake indirect illumination. Uses reflection mapping, which looks bad in flat surfaces. Waiting for TourTool to start, sometimes up to 40 minutes, is a bummer.

Lumion
What I currently use it for: Walk-through videos of exteriors and large interiors.
Pros: Nice landscaping tools, although quite inferior to those of Vue. Animated people, animated cars, plants move with wind, can move the sun and clouds. Fast but not nearly as fast as LightUp.
Cons: Not photorealistic at all. Uses real-time SSAO to fake indirect illumination, which is worse than LightUp's pre-calculated AO. Uses reflection mapping, which looks bad in flat surfaces. Still buggy. Material re-import issues remain unsolved and can result in high blood pressure.

I plan to buy soon:

Octane Render
Planned use: Photorealistic stills of small projects.
Pros: Blazing fast unbiased rendering. Live preview of every setting you change.
Cons: It's limited to 64 textures. Rendered images have "fireflies" in the current version.

Maybe I'll try:
Podium 2 - People say it's simple and gives good results
Render[In] - Same as above
Shaderlight - Same as above

You might also want to give V-Ray a chance, as everybody seems to use it.

[bron]

Whatever it is you need to render if you are after quality check out maxwell render. It integrates with sketchup. So you can particularly set everything up and just hit "render". However renders take long.

[Frederik]

IMHO I'd say that Solo's answer seem to hit the nail the best...

You see... The more people posting an answer here, the more suggestions you'll get about which render application to use based on their personal preferences rather than objective suggestions...

Go check out the Render application Home pages thread...
Check out the programs... Install the free demos and run some test yourself...

Above all - enjoy and have fun...

[tpstigers]

@solo said:

Terry, the key to your enquiry is 'landscapes'.

I have used almost every render engine out there and they all can do the job of rendering, however with landscapes I'm afraid unless you want to use 2D representation for a 3D space then Sketchup is NOT the tool.

Actually, I tend to default to Bryce when I want to render a landscape (or model one). It's pretty much designed for it.

Sometimes, though, I just want to render a part of the landscape (a house, for instance). This is why I'm asking about rendering applications. Bryce can do the job, but it doesn't play very well with SU.

@ Ecuadorian: Thanks. That's exactly the sort of answer I was hoping for.

[Gaieus]

@tpstigers said:

Sometimes, though, I just want to render a part of the landscape (a house, for instance).

Well, Thea has a really cool feature: region rendering. Combined with the Interactive render feature (where you navigate; orbit, pan, whatever to get the view you want and it is interactively rendering the "final" image - sort of) then make a rectangle selection and there you go; it will render you that part.

If you build the main features of your landscape in SU, you can add pretty high poly plants inside Thea (and later, when the exporting plugin supports it, you can place "dummy" proxies in SU and turn them into full fledged 3D plants in Thea).

Hm. Still selling at 45% pre-release price until the 21st of February (RC2 has just been released).