Enscape for Sketchup

jenujacob · 10 Mar 2017, 12:21

Hi Dave!
Thanks for the heads up for the new version! i tried a quick pano with it [highlight=#004000:h0irar7x]here[/highlight:h0irar7x] !
Me like what i see... it works very well for my purpose! sure.. still missing more controls for the materials... but i am sure we will see it in due time!

cadmunkey · 10 Mar 2017, 13:14

This looks great, as a current Lumion user I will watch this develop with interest.

ntxdave · 10 Mar 2017, 16:28

Found this today..........

I will be testing these sometime later today or over the weekend. Hopefully I can come up with some samples worth sharing...........

solo · 12 Mar 2017, 00:09

I'm down to 5 days left of my trial, has been a fun program so far, sure there are issues and bugs, missing basic features and all but this has some great promise. I have seen many animation software for SU for exteriors that work great, not many have a good enough GI for interiors besides some sort of AO engine with complicated add-ons to get an acceptable result. Here is an old model used years ago to test Thea, perfect to test interior GI, there are no lights yet in Enscape so this is all filtered sunlight. You will see some artifacts and uneven lighting but I mus say for an alpha this is a robust product and very enjoyable.

ntxdave · 12 Mar 2017, 02:27

OK - What the heck am I missing? Is this a number of smaller animations that you sewed together or did I miss something about using scenes and the SU animation?

Again, when they get some of the things you mention fixed, wouldn't it be neat to use Animator and Enscape together!

BTW: If you contact their support team, they will give you another trial since it is still in alpha.

cadmunkey · 12 Mar 2017, 14:55

That looks great Solo! Good demo for them for sure.

solo · 13 Mar 2017, 18:02

Another old scene test, model of home by Castroman, bubble copter my model.

Dave, yes I did stitch videos together in 3rd party editing software.

pilou · 13 Mar 2017, 18:34

Very clean!

solo · 13 Mar 2017, 23:41

Here is another quick one. I normally have NDA's for a lot of my work, but considering this location was changed so technically I am not showing the final set that will be used.

A large percentage of my work is for TV, film and stage, so having a tool like Enscape will be a powerful additional product I can show producers, I would do more but I need the lighting ability which is still missing, most of my sets are very heaving studio lit.

ntxdave · 14 Mar 2017, 02:07

WOW Pete, that one is really cool. When you are able to control the lighting better I think it will be powerful.

Just out of curiosity, did you use any of the material key words I posted earlier in the thread or are these just native SU colors?

I would LOVE to be able to develop stuff like that.

solo · 14 Mar 2017, 02:16

I am using the material names, unfortunately, it's all we have for now. I do not know the folk behind this software I just hope they realise how powerful this can become and how large the SU market is.
So many things are needed, this is going to be a long road.

ntxdave · 14 Mar 2017, 02:28

I agree with you. I have tried to encourage them both on their forum and via a PM.

BTW: I sent you a PM as well.........

jenujacob · 14 Mar 2017, 04:59

WOw! Pete! That is awesome! Really cool projects you get involved in!!!
Wish i got more time to play with Enscape!! A 2 month old baby is quite a handful!!!!

solo · 14 Mar 2017, 17:31

Okay, I believe I have had enough time to give my evaluation of Enscape as it is currently.

The Pros:

Interior GI, by far the best I have seen from any animation software linked to Sketchup
The integration and workflow within SU, live updates and very smooth flow, not sure if it's based on my Titan card but it was really smooth on my side.
The control over shadows, direction of sun, the ability to animate sun movements
Depth of field, I really liked the ease of use and the way it animates.
Sky and atmosphere, very smooth and highly controllable
Rendering animations are based on what resolution you want, 4K is slow but 1080p is pretty fast at high settings.
Fun, this really is a fun program, I literally got so involved that I lost an entire day without noticing.
Very nice clean images and animations can be achieved.

The Cons:

This program is incomplete and seems a while until it's ready for release
Installation issues and updates seem to break causing more installation issues.
Non-existing material editor besides a basic name based preset
No lighting at all, no spots, emitters or onmi lights
Skybox fail, HDRi's do not work here very well and when they do they are fuzzy
When you are rendering animation you cannot move around your SU model.
Nothing is animated, I thought at least water or sky would be.
materials that are grouped and exploded go strangely small, one needs to close SU and reopen for them to go back to original size, water cannot be resized.
Something not right with the AA in animation regardless how fine or high you export.

Other notes:

Pricing seems good based on what I hope the final product will be, currently not as it's not even close to a market-ready product, even though I am no fan of software for rent.
Support seems lacking even on their own forums it seems only one moderator turns up once in awhile, almost as if the dev team all have day jobs and this is a hobby.
Revit seems to be the primary product and Sketchup a byproduct that does not get their full attention even though SU users outnumber Revit users a thousand fold.
No real dedicated beta team, no bug tracking.

Wishes:

I cannot see this being a breakthrough product for SU unless it overcomes SU Achilles heel of being poly challenged, so vast scenes with vegetation will never happen unless there is some sort of Enscape supplied vegetation optimized for their product similar to what LumenRT has, or it integrates with Skatter in some way

Animation, nothing here animates, so I'm not saying it needs a library of animated people but do think they need to support animator.

The animation would certainly be a lot better with a keyframe-based system, too limited currently.

As the product is right now I would still recommend Lumion as your exterior animation software and when Enscape offers a material editor and lighting then Enscape becomes the go to interior animation software.

I never mentioned anything regarding to the VR tools, I do not have a head-set so I could not test this.

ntxdave · 14 Mar 2017, 18:12

I think Pete has given a really good analysis of Enscape.

The only think I might add is WebGL capabilities like Sketchfab or CL3VER. While panoramas are neat (and yes, Enscape has a panorama tool) I, and I think others, would like to be able to display products in a rotatable 3D environment like Sketchfab or CL3VER. Enscape does have the ability (at least for Revit) to generate an exe which can be shared with customers. However, that does not give me the capability to show products on a web site in a 3D environment.

As Pete said though, this is just the alpha version and it looks like there is some real potential for the future. They will also need to step up their support though as well. Again, Pete was right on.

Thomas Schander · 15 Mar 2017, 17:38

Hi, Thomas from Enscape here. I feel honored to read about your interest in our tool!

We are currently several weeks from a real Enscape for SketchUp release. The idea behind offering an alpha version was to gather initial feedback from a fewpeople - if it would not be an incomplete alpha, we would have released it.
The amount of excitement is a lot more than we initially thought - of course looking back, an invite-only alpha would have been more appropriate. Anyway, it's great to read about all your ideas and opinions!

We are making good progress in fixing the bugs you reported to us. In the meantime (beside the fixes), we also added the section plane and a solution for fast grass rendering. I'm sure we can keep up a good development speed to incorporate your wishes!

At least for now, we use your material name as a "hint" for certain parameters, click here for a reference .

The feature set between Enscape for Revit & SketchUp will become the same. Our goal has always been the idea of creating high quality deliverables (walkthroughs, VR, videos, panorama, images) without the need of making adjustments to your project and keeping a separate Enscape project file - all within seconds thanks to powerful real time rendering. I'm happy to have you on board on our journey to make the now "beautiful and fast" Enscape for SketchUp even more powerful

Thank you all for your time and feedback!

ntxdave · 15 Mar 2017, 19:14

I found some videos on YouTube about SketchUp and Enscape that I thought some of you might find really interesting:

These 2 videos are by Winning with SketchUp
This one deals with the materials: Materials 14:56 min
This one deals with animation: Animation 1:52 min

This one is from TheSketchUpEssentials is kind of a nice starting point: Rendering in Enscape3D 9:22 min

Hope you find them useful and entertaining.

ntxdave · 21 Mar 2017, 23:14

Here is a test panorama to give you some idea of how they can be created in Enscape. Hope you enjoy it.

Panorama Test

solo · 5 Apr 2017, 18:21

Having fun with this software, cannot wait for glass fixes, proxy integration with Skatter and ability to control materials and add lights, but so far I am loving it.

ntxdave · 5 Apr 2017, 18:32

Solo, I am impressed.

I wish I could learn how to do the landscaping like you have in this model. Between the landscaping and the background it looks very realistic.