What is your favorite overall rendering engine for SketchUp?

Pixero

I have Thea, Twilight, Vray and LightUp. (Twilight and Vray aren't used much though.)
I think Vray for SU in it's current state isn't quite working for me. No instancing/proxies possible, and the set up time is much longer than with Thea. I did some tests that seem to indicate that Theas Adaptive (BSD) is a little faster than Vray with comparative settings.

julyyen

@irwanwr said:

wow, even Kerkythea can compete with paid version render apps

Yep,

I also vote for Kerkythea and I think this render engine with proper settings and a good illuminated hdri can beat big boys!
Any news about new improved version (maybe with IBL )?

jason_maranto

Perhaps a more revealing poll would be something like this:

On a scale of 1 to 10 what are the most important factors for choosing an external Render Engine to you:

Not Important - Most Important
Price:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Ease of Use:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Speed:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Quality of Output:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Photo Realism:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Flexibility/Features:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

SketchUp Integration:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Documentation/Training/Support:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Industry Standard/Familiarity:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Peer Recommendations:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

And then add the poll we are using here but change to "What is your preferred render engine."

I think that would tell us alot more useful information than the current poll -- something like this can be set up on http://www.surveymonkey.com/ pretty easily.

Best,
Jason.

david_h

I'm planning on buying all of them. I want to expand my suckiness horizons.

irwanwr

@julyyen said:

I also vote for Kerkythea and I think this render engine with proper settings and a good illuminated hdri can beat big boys!
Any news about new improved version (maybe with IBL )?

Well, actually i use Kerkythea only now. Dropped any other "free" with restriction shorted paid version renderers. Agree with that potential it has behind settings as I can see the difference between. Might even beat those paid ones. I'd go for Thea if I got the chance.
Haven't heard much about the new release yet. But the latest Boost (beta?) release really impressed me with the shortened time needed to render in most settings.

Zoom123

IS Kerkythea actively developed? Last version seems to be from 2008.

From the ones I tried so far I like Twilight most, which uses the Kerkythea engine, but it also has not been updated for more than a year.

irwanwr

Hi there Zoom,

As I already mention up there in the recent reply, there is a Kerkythea Boost.
The one you mentioned is the Kerkythea Echo 2008.
Kerkythea Boost is still under development currently. Haven't got any further info when should it be published as a final release. It works a bit faster than the Echo release, I think.

Perhaps you should try to get the info from the Kerkythea forum. That's where I got the Kerkythea Boost.

notareal

@Zoom123, There will be a new Kerkythea release in some point. At the moment you can try a development version. It will offer some speed improvement, but as been a development version - there are some known issues (better read trough bug topics ).

allanx

Based on my experience with Render engines in Sketchup I prefer and use Maxwell Render, because it has the best integration right now and has fast results, alot of preset materials and can run in slow computer...and the UI is great!!!

allanx

thomthom

@allanx said:

fast results

I tried Maxwell when looking for a rendering solution - and my biggest problem was that it was so slow. And I found no way to speed it up. Has the engine gotten faster? Or did I miss something essential in terms of performance optimisation?

It's also why I haven't been using unbiased engines in general - as I've felt it's taken all too long to complete a render with good enough results.

andybot

Hi Thomthom, did you see the thread comparing maxwell and twilight? I just don't see any way maxwell or any unbiased renderer can ever get in the ballpark in terms of speed. In those tests, it was about a factor of 6 for speed difference.

Andy

thomthom

@andybot said:

Hi Thomthom, did you see the thread comparing maxwell and twilight? I just don't see any way maxwell or any unbiased renderer can ever get in the ballpark in terms of speed. In those tests, it was about a factor of 6 for speed difference.

Andy

That's an interesting thread. I've really struggled to get to grips with these unbiased engines. I was wondering if I was missing some thing essential or if one had to be using a render farm in order to produce something within reasonable time.

The project I work on are under constant revision and I need to be able to render and re-render quickly. 2 hours for a 3000px image is my max threshold. Then it has to be a large complex scene for me to accept such. Otherwise I usually try to keep a scene rendering within 30 minutes. I have a couple of hex-core machines I use for complex scenes which helps when I'm in a pinch for time. (Too bad V-Ray has so many issues with DR in the current version... )

So many times when I read about unbiased people seem to be leaving the image to "cook" for hours - if not over night. Which just seems horrendously slow for me. A set of images needs to be sent out - I can't wait days for that. So I'm really curious of people's workflow. (I make architecture visualisation. Mostly exterior, but some interior as well. Quite large building and sites some times.)

jason_maranto

For exterior shots Maxwell could easily complete complex scenes of decent size within 2 hours using either the Maxwell Physical Sky or IBL (IBL preferred to me).

There are really only a couple of things to avoid with Maxwell if you want fast rendering -- true Dielectric/SSS based materials, Displacement based materials, and interior scenes.

There are a couple of workarounds:

Use AGS and ThinSSS instead of Glass and SSS.
Use Bump and Normal maps instead of displacement maps.

But when you set up your interiors, it's best to do so with the expectations that they will indeed take longer... sometimes much longer (depending on lighting setup).

Best,
Jason.

andybot

I tried a few exteriors too, there was still at best a 2x difference, and that's only if you are willing to accept a degree of noise in your images. I didn't try any larger resolutions since I was only doing the free plugin.

jason_maranto

I guess the thing I always have to say about the "stand-alone" variant(s) of the Maxwell plugin is it is slower than the regular Maxwell Render Suite due to having to run within SketchUp's process -- regular Maxwell does not, so it has access to the full system resources.

Basically subtract a processor core and alot of RAM when using the "stand-alone" plugin(s).

Best,
Jason.

andybot

Sure, incrementally you'll have a slight difference, but it's not going to be 6x faster. Also, whatever computing power you throw at it, it will still be a relative difference since that same computing power can speed up the biased renderers as well.

jason_maranto

No doubt -- I've never made the claim that Maxwell is a speed demon... but I think the speed issue is a bit overblown.

If speed is really your major priority then there are some very fantastically fast render engines (Like Keyshot and Lumion) that will get you there in no time -- and I encourage their use for that Market segment. To me V-Ray is more of a compromise -- it's not quite as good as Maxwell and not nearly as fast as Keyshot and it's harder to use than both put together.

But the thing that really burns my butt about V-Ray is how weak it is for SketchUp when it is actually quite strong for other apps -- and since a license for the SketchUp version does not translate to other apps (which the Maxwell license does) you are stuck with it. This is a real shame because I think a big part of V-Rays traction with SketchUp users is the name it's made for itself in apps like 3DS Max... but it's not really the same program, and doesn't deserve the same respect.

My point is all render engines have weaknesses and strengths, V-Ray included.

I only bring up V-Ray since that was the software you compared it to in terms of speed.

Obviously speed is an important issue, and one that cannot be dismissed lightly... however when used in a logical way Maxwell is a perfectly capable app for a good portion of the types of renders SketchUp users need to do -- all unbiased engines have similar issues and they each try to solve the problem in their own ways.

Best,
Jason.

Hieru

@jason_maranto said:

For exterior shots Maxwell could easily complete complex scenes of decent size within 2 hours using either the Maxwell Physical Sky or IBL (IBL preferred to me).

The same goes for Thea. I'm currently re-rendering one of my Villa PM scenes to use on my website and here is the result after just 40 minutes (1565 x 700 px).

It's already pretty clean and if you were in a rush you could run it through a denoise filter at this point and get very good results. The image will probably be good enough after another 20 minutes or so.

As with Maxwell the speed depends on the scene, lighting, materials etc. My night time shots with interior lighting took about 3 times longer to render.

Edit: I'm using a pretty ordinary i7 PC with 12GB of Ram.

andybot

@jason_maranto said:

No doubt -- I've never made the claim that Maxwell is a speed demon... but I think the speed issue is a bit overblown.

As an arch-viz professional I respectfully disagree. Time is very much money. To only get a handful of renderings after running something overnight is just not viable for me. That's why I stick with vray despite its flaws. Its integration into sketchup is just fine for my purposes. I am constantly modeling and adjusting lighting/ textures/ etc. while a render is running, and when it's done in a few minutes, I can run another. I agree the fire preview in maxwell is pretty good and does give a decent real-time simulation, however, the light cache pass in vray serves a similar purpose and is just as fast.

Andy

jason_maranto

I'll be the first to admit I don't know squat about Arch Viz -- but I do know Maxwell.

This is a render of one of silver_shadows eye-candy models he shared on this forum -- I made no changes other than to turn on the Maxwell Physical Sky (I did have to crop it a bit because the forum doesn't allow images larger than 1600 pixel wide)... this could look alot better if I spent time tweaking the materials and found an HDR/EXR that suited the scene but my point here was about render speed for complex exterior shots.

I rendered this to SL 14 which took 36 minutes on my system (Intel i7 920 2.66 GHz) -- this is typically what I would expect from Maxwell for time to render such a scene (on my less than cutting edge system)... I did use the full Maxwell Render Suite here, so you should expect a bit slower time on the stand-alone plugin(s).

Best,
Jason.

Made by silver_shadow -- click for full size view.