Short story of Thea light
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Here and on my website I share a short story how Thea works with SketchUp models. It is not intended only as a marketing, rather as an insight how Thea works in general.
We do not have native lights in SketchUp. There is no native rendering engine in SketchUp, apart for very simple OpenGL display.
We’ve got Thea touch which creates miracles – beautiful images from models. Even the most elaborate SketchUp display styles do not give them justice.
SketchUp component cannot give light on its own. There must be Thea present and the component has to take a name of a light. It has to have “_lighttype” somewhere in its’ name. It must be saying “I want to be a light!”. Thea will make it emit light, but as most of us understand, not by component’s own means. Thea is the source of light. It is what brings life to any SketchUp model.
Interestingly every component can be turned into a light. ‘Marc’, ‘Susan’ or ‘Heather’ may be converted into an emitter. Try it! Every single light matters in rendering and is taken into account when calculating the global illumination.
There is Thea online manual, few books and a lot of tutorials on Thea, but the most important is to have hands-on experience.
Happy rendering!
Tomasz_pointlight#34
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Hi Tomasz,
Thanks for sharing the tip. I remember there was a similar tip in working with Kerkythea.
The only thing is that if the face polygon numbers affect the rendering time? -
The text is a parable. It is not really concerning the software.
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By the way, smart approach. As it is a long while since I do not have my hands on Thea, I come with a question: If there is a similar approach towards other materials? i.e if the name includes "grass", "plastic", "metal","zinc", .. then Thea recognizes it as the proper material?
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The thing that most put me off Thea renderr was the licensing, it just made me think rip off. This annual subscription and monthly subscription thing is something I cannot get used to so went on to buy something I could use in perpetuity.
Sorry is this ruffles feathers, just saying wehat I see and no doubt folk using it for commercial reasons will be happy enough.
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@mike amos said:
The thing that most put me off Thea renderr was the licensing, it just made me think rip off. This annual subscription and monthly subscription thing is something I cannot get used to so went on to buy something I could use in perpetuity.
Sorry if this ruffles feathers, just saying what I see and no doubt folk using it for commercial reasons will be happy enough.
+1
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