Thea for SketchUp - Available Now!

Chris Fullmer · 21 Dec 2012, 02:51

Oh I am genuinely excited!

jeff hammond · 21 Dec 2012, 05:35

bravO tomaz!
that looks really nice..

the obligatory one-click-wonder-test went well too.. installed it, open the skp of this thing I'm working on, pushed play..

everything went smoothly and i actually received an image too
(last time i tried thea was a couple of years ago and things weren't so smooth then (at least on the mac side of things)

very promising and i'll definitely be exploring this one further.

boofredlay · 21 Dec 2012, 14:33

A Merry Christmas indeed.

david_h · 21 Dec 2012, 15:49

So is the upgrade worth it considering the world is going to end today? I'm downloading it now just in case. . .but I dunno. . . .

Sure is taking a long time. Are you guys overloading the servers???

tomasz · 21 Dec 2012, 16:50

Thank you for kind comments.

A note for existing users of Thea Studio 64bit version. To use 'Thea for SketchUp' you also have to install the 32bit version of the Studio.

david_h · 21 Dec 2012, 17:10

So I will go ahead and answer my own question. . .

Pretty Darn worth it. and I stink at this. . .so in the hands of you wizards---pure magic.

ATLAStudio · 21 Dec 2012, 18:05

Installed this afternoon and went through tutorial videos, quite excited to try out proxies as been v-raying for ages. Material editor is nice to use. For pic below I just imported the model, swung camera about, tweaked a couple materials and hit go, pretty impressed with result. Would like to know how to reduce noise if there's any experts reading!

notareal · 21 Dec 2012, 18:22

@atlastudio said:

Would like to know how to reduce noise if there's any experts reading!

Not sure how materials and scene is set, but I do get a impression that most light comes from the Sun trough a glossy based glass (a real glass that creates caustics) curtain wall.
Some "tricks":

Thin Film based glass (architectural glass) will speed up convergence a lot.
TR2 will render most challenging light paths and materials (naturally with cost of render time)
Super-Sapling set to "High" with TR1/TR2 helps to reduce noise
Use some fill light (a emitter that is not visible to the camera) to boost convergence, if most of the light comes trough glossy based glass.
Note: light components and mesh emitters intersecting nearby mesh may cause noise as well as emitters that has really dense polygon mesh. Make sure that pure white and black are not used, keep diffuse colors in 6-96% range.

pbacot · 21 Dec 2012, 18:27

Similar here for the Mac! Some good rendering right off.

But no joy with materials. Soon as I go to material editor SU hangs, and no material.

notareal · 21 Dec 2012, 18:40

@pbacot said:

Similar here for the Mac! Some good rendering right off.

But no joy with materials. Soon as I go to material editor SU hangs, and no material.

Please, if issues are find, report those at related topic for all technical questions about Thea for SketchUp. There probably are some unfortunate bugs here and there, even as Thea for SketchUp is tested by our internal beta test team.

solo · 21 Dec 2012, 19:45

Playing with Thea4SU

pbacot · 21 Dec 2012, 22:40

@notareal said:

@pbacot said:

Similar here for the Mac! Some good rendering right off.

But no joy with materials. Soon as I go to material editor SU hangs, and no material.

Please, if issues are find, report those at related topic for all technical questions about Thea for SketchUp. There probably are some unfortunate bugs here and there, even as Thea for SketchUp is tested by our internal beta test team.

Thanks. As it is Beta, I expect to help by reporting issues I have. I registered and activated the account at Thea, logged in, but can't post.

tomasz · 22 Dec 2012, 07:28

@pbacot said:

Thanks. As it is Beta, I expect to help by reporting issues I have. I registered and activated the account at Thea, logged in, but can't post.

SketchUp sub-forum is divided into three sections: Versions & Resources, How do I...?, Bug Reports. You have to select a section first.

pepa · 26 Dec 2012, 17:59

Hi nice render, everything works really fast, I tried insert my own proxy. I wanted save the custom model from thea studio, but I cant find a mod.thea format which is needed for inserting the proxy inside SU. So question is if is it possible insert own proxy into SU..?

Frederik · 27 Dec 2012, 08:26

@pepa said:

So question is if is it possible insert own proxy into SU..?

Yes, of course it's possible...
However, the process is a little tedious at the moment, but a new process will be worked on...
Once you get used to the guide below it really isn't that difficult...

The proxy system is primary thought of to be used, when having a very high poly model/component, which can be difficult - if not even impossible - to work with inside SU... (I.e. high poly tree models (eg. Xfrog models) and alike)

The steps are:
1.) Open/import the model you want to use, in the Thea Render Studio.
2.) Adjust all materials making it "render ready".
3.) Group all parts of the model.
4.) Make sure the gizmo of the group is adjusted so it aligns with the X, Y and Z point.
(Use the parallel view in Thea, which makes it much easier to set...)
5.) Click the Model tab and either right-click the part you want to make to a .mod.thea file and select "Automation > Build Preview" or click the "Build All Previews" icon.
6.) In the Thea Browser panel, click the "+" (read: plus sign) and select the "/Models" option from the menu.
By Default Thea4SU will open the "C:\ProgramData\Thea Render\Models" location, but you are able to create folders anywhere you want on your hard drive and browse for it.
(personally I stick to the default location...)
7.) If you want you can right-click in the Browser panel and create a new folder, making it easier for you to control the various models you're going to make.
Double-click the folder where you want the .mod.thea file to be in.
8.) From the Models tab, simply drag the model down to the folder in the Thea Browser panel.

Voila, you're done and you can now use that model as a proxy model in SU using the Thea For SketchUp tool...

pepa · 27 Dec 2012, 09:58

thanks for your detailed instructions. really helpful

rv1974 · 27 Dec 2012, 14:24

@tomasz said:

Thank you for kind comments.

A note for existing users of Thea Studio 64bit version. To use 'Thea for SketchUp' you also have to install the 32bit version of the Studio.

2 questions:
Does this version support X64 architecture?
Is there distributed rendering feature?

marked001 · 27 Dec 2012, 16:04

Is it/will it be possible to use Colimo with Thea for SketchUp?

tomasz · 27 Dec 2012, 20:47

@rv1974 said:

Does this version support X64 architecture?

Only in the Studio. Thea inside SketchUp works in 32bit environment.

@rv1974 said:

Is there distributed rendering feature?

It will be supported on the plugin level soon. It is available in the Studio.

@marked001 said:

Is it/will it be possible to use Colimo with Thea for SketchUp?

It will be possible to export Colimo file straight from the plugin. Please note that this feature will require large quantities of free memory. The more materials one wants to paint after a rendering the more memory is needed. 64bit version of SketchUp would be an excellent companion to Thea.

tomasz · 8 Jan 2013, 10:45

We have just updated the plugin with a fix for Windows XP systems and localized SketchUp versions. There are also some improvements with editing and reseting Thea material back to a default state. We highly recommend you to install the new revision.