Enscape for Sketchup
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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 minThis one is from TheSketchUpEssentials is kind of a nice starting point: Rendering in Enscape3D 9:22 min
Hope you find them useful and entertaining.
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Here is a test panorama to give you some idea of how they can be created in Enscape. Hope you enjoy it.
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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.
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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.
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This looks promising, it has a miniature model feel to it, appealing in some sense.
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A compilation of videos I have created with Enscape to showcase how diverse the application can be. Cannot wait for some basic features to be implemented like lights, material editor, keyframe controls, and a proxy system. Royalty free music 'ignite to life'
Select HD if you can as it was done in 1080p
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Thanks Pete,
The environmental lighting looks incredible! Killer models too.
Some of the architectural models look a little like scale models. Do you think that is just due to D.O.F.?
Really exciting output.
Peter
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The DOF in many cases results in a tilt-shift effect, I kinda like it.
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Really nice example Pete
This product really has some potential IMO. I downloaded version 1.9.3.152 but when I tried to use it I got the Trial Expired and I can no longer produce any output however I think I could see still more improvement in what I could do.
As you stated, "Cannot wait for some basic features to be implemented like lights, material editor, keyframe controls, and a proxy system." There are a couple of other things I would like to see but what you stated would certainly make it one heck of a product. Can you imagine how it would be if you could use Fredo's Animator plugin with it.
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@solo said:
A compilation of videos I have created with Enscape to showcase how diverse the application can be. Cannot wait for some basic features to be implemented like lights, material editor, keyframe controls, and a proxy system. Royalty free music 'ignite to life'
Are there plan for proper moving water shaders?
What's up with the AO? Seems to draw in and out?
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Is enscape getting better or are you dealing better with it Pete? It's a tremendous quality improvement on your compilation, from the first video you posted.
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@jql said:
Is enscape getting better or are you dealing better with it Pete? It's a tremendous quality improvement on your compilation, from the first video you posted.
Well there has been only one update since I started using Enscape and that was not significant, seems like the Devs are all from a Revit background and all the love goes there first even though SU users will outnumber RT users by a factor of a thousand eventually. I also feel that the development is more concentrated on the VR market than the animation market.
I just found ways to compensate for the lacking features and more tricks than features at this point.
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No post pro, more HDRi trickery, camera movement and the fact that I have a new machine with a better GPU and can render at 1080p faster than my last machine could do 720p.
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Who knows how to setup emissive intensity๏ผ
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The emissive intensity is based on the material color, white therefore means the maximum intensity. However, emissive materials are currently not yet suited to illuminate large areas. They are just designed to show some "glow". This will be improved in one of the next releases.
@RichOBrian: The water will be improved, and together with the mentioned emissive and reflections improvement, there will be an AO slider. Hope that helps
Please notice that the current Enscape for SketchUp version was still an alpha, we will release it in the next days. It will already be a lot more stable and versatile in terms of section planes and billboards.
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We released a new alpha version with support for Skatter!
https://forum.enscape3d.com/index.php?thread/175-preview-for-sketchup-1-9-4-369/Also, the many other features like the grass rendering have been improved. Check it out
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