What is your favorite overall rendering engine for SketchUp?

solo · 26 Jan 2012, 19:25

Got a link to that model?

jason_maranto · 26 Jan 2012, 19:31

The original thread is here: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=10549

You can get his models here: http://www.box.net/shared/4ao75395un

Best,
Jason.

dsarchs · 26 Jan 2012, 20:13

I use Thea's unbiased engine almost exclusively, but I believe the biased engine has been much improved as well. Does anyone have more experience using it? How does that compare to V-Ray?

I work at an Arch. firm but we almost never get hired for visualization -- the rendering we do is more to help design and persuade the client of what we'd like to do. For us, Thea makes more sense since it's pretty cheap. V-Ray might not cost too much -- for a specialization firm -- but for us it's not worth the cost.

holmes1977 · 26 Jan 2012, 23:04

@jason_maranto said:

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.

Hi Jason

Im not competing at all. Just was interested to see how long this render would take in Vray. I have the same spec comp you do (Intel i7 920 2.66 GHz). it rendered out at 1600x1200 in 5mins.

jason_maranto · 26 Jan 2012, 23:10

I believe it -- and I wasn't pretending Maxwell could compete with V-Ray in terms of raw speed... in the same way V-Ray cannot compare to other render engines (like Keyshot) in terms of raw speed. My point was simply that the time frames are not out of the question, which is often implied with Maxwell.

It is slower no doubt, but still completely doable.

Best,
Jason.

mwm5053 · 26 Jan 2012, 23:44

Reading through this seems like renders are like women and wine you like what you like for one reason or another. When I got into SU and this forum it opened a whole new experience for me and I have tried many of the trial renders to make my models look more realistic. I use KT because it was free since I don't do this for a living. Since I lost my wife and the kids are grown up need to find something to fill in the time. Sorry maybe shouldn't have said that. But just to say how much this community means to me. Thanks to you all.

holmes1977 · 26 Jan 2012, 23:58

@jason_maranto said:

I believe it -- and I wasn't pretending Maxwell could compete with V-Ray in terms of raw speed... in the same way V-Ray cannot compare to other render engines (like Keyshot) in terms of raw speed. My point was simply that the time frames are not out of the question, which is often implied with Maxwell.

It is slower no doubt, but still completely doable.

Best,
Jason.

Totally doable. Im actually looking at other options other than Vray. So disappointed at its development path compared to other renders.

Hieru · 26 Jan 2012, 23:59

@unknownuser said:

it rendered out at 1600x1200 in 5mins.

It would be interesting to see the quality. Infact it would be good to see a test scene rendered using all of the software in the poll.

Rich O Brien · 27 Jan 2012, 00:06

Twilight have a Bauhuas lamp scene to test speed (or rather boast on your setup) that would make an interesting test here.

Though a generic Cornell Box scene would suffice.

Hieru · 27 Jan 2012, 00:22

I agree that the Bauhaus lamp would be pretty good.

As another option I've got a challenging product-viz scene with difficult glass materials. It's based on a photo which would be good for this purpose, as the end results could be judged according to how closely they resemble reality (taking time - both set-up and rendering - into consideration). My only reservation is that different approaches to materials could skew the results.

andybot · 27 Jan 2012, 00:39

@hieru said:

It would be interesting to see the quality. Infact it would be good to see a test scene rendered using all of the software in the poll.

Well, if anyone wants to compare this test with other rendering software, I'd be curious to see other results.

@holmes1977: I'd be curious to see the image output too. If it's similar, I would say the roughly 1:6 difference between biased and unbiased speed still holds.

holmes1977 · 27 Jan 2012, 00:58

I can post the picture but am out of the office till Tuesday, so will have to wait.
The picture looks the same, if not a wee bit darker.

Hieru · 27 Jan 2012, 02:06

Thinking about it, I don't think my Skog Lamp scene would be suitable (too many variables). It might be good for a render-this thread as we haven't had one in a while.

Yes/no?

jason_maranto · 27 Jan 2012, 13:05

I do enjoy the "render this" series.

Best,
Jason.

jason_maranto · 30 Jan 2012, 15:11

I decided to create the survey I suggested a few pages back -- you can check it out here http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZZJD8LM

Since this a free account I think it will only allow 100 responses -- but I'll post the results here after it completes.

The idea is to to get a clearer idea of what is really important to SketchUp users when deciding on which external render engine they will use... this service just supports a more complex type of poll than forum software usually provides.

Best,
Jason.

Ecuadorian · 31 Jan 2012, 18:50

Most interesting poll. Here in Latin America Artlantis is still very popular, and so is V-ray. Thea is unheard of here, but it looks like it's the favorite of SUC members.

I'd suggest splitting the poll in two:

-Favorite for still images
-Favorite for animation

Some of us work almost exclusively with animations.

andybot · 31 Jan 2012, 19:30

Hi Miguel,
I'd be very interested too in knowing more about how people do animation from Sketchup, which plugins are preferred. May be worth another thread for that discussion.
-Andy

jason_maranto · 31 Jan 2012, 19:40

I can easily set up a poll for those specialties after my current one gets done -- but it does already have a question regarding animation support as a major factor for selecting an engine...

Best,
Jason.

IdahoJ · 31 Jan 2012, 19:52

As a longtime user of POVray, I'm finally looking for another rendering option to use with SU. I've been using Didian Bur's POvray plugin, but it's engineered to give good basic POVray functionality. I have to do a lot of tweaking to the exported files to get the final results. These days, I'd rather render more, and tweak less ...

I'll be looking forward to the results of your poll Jason.

Cheers

Frederik · 31 Jan 2012, 20:26

Wonder how many new members SCF have gained because of this thread...?
The other day, Maxwell was far behind Thea and Vray... Now it's a close race...
Strange, cause I don't seem to recall seeing that many renders made with Maxwell in the Gallery section...
(I don't want to start a debate here... I acknowledge Maxwell is a great render app, but for SU renders made with Maxwell are few and far apart...)

BTW... I agree 100% with JD Hill, who's one of the developers at Maxwell...

@jd hill said:

Please don't take it wrong, but I generally think such polls are akin to: which is the best overall tool?

hammer

screwdriver

paint brush