Yes, I'm trying to render a scene with an HDRI background and I want the objects to cast shadows. How do I get that to work?

@massimo said: Hi Tommaso and welcome. Please don't post external links to your images. I'm not on Facebook for example so I can't see them. Just use the "upload attachment feature" you'll find at the bottom of the post panel. You can upload your work in the gallery section of the forum. You can choose the WIP subforum for your work in progress jobs. Thanks, I just added some pics in the Gallery section so that you can see them I hope. Thanks again for your support and lol fot this forum!! Tommaso

I think, however, that even with the default fov 35, the problem is the same

@pieterv said: I don't always understand how other people are managing there lights. Like, when you have a look at this image in attachement. (made by http://nemostudio.pl) you can see that the sun is casting bright rays of light on the floor in the living room, but at the same time all the rooms in the appartement are lit very evenly and diffuse. I think this is a very special example and not comparable to your situation. I would say that this is lit without ceiling/walls with one or two emitters in front of the windows to simulate the sun. When you look at the next two images of the interior renderings section on this site (http://nemostudio.pl/wizualizacje/wizualizacje_wnetrz/ ) below the one you posted, you will see a similar situation like the one in your renders.

@valerostudio said: If you do a search in these forums, you will see the the Arrowway maps question has been discussed. Especially pertaining to the reflection / glossiness maps. Those freebies though are insanely low res and I wouldn't expect amazing results from them. I think you can buy some of the maps individually. The pay ones are very hi res and work well with VRay. You may have to downsize them though because they may be too large for SketchUp to handle. I think some of them get as large as like 12,000 pixels wide or something insane like that. One more note. If you search for Jason Maranto, he is a Sketchucation user that has made SKM libraries of all of the Arroway free files. The libraries he made link direct to Maxwell, but you can still use the SKM libraries without Maxwell and the hi-res versions. Thanks! One thing i have been missing withe my version of vray was the materials that are supposed to ship with it... I did not realize that and have been trying to create or find materials elsewhere or create them from scratch, which has been time consuming. I realized that they had sent me an link to download the library when i first signed up but when I had clicked on it I got a forbidden error 404 so i did not download it at that time then I forgot all about it. I have sent a request to Vray for assistance downloading the vray library. I am assuming it is a pretty good place to start with some nice materials as well and all i have to do in import them!

@decumano said: Yes! Solved... as in my other question-post it was a component problem. I exploded and made it again a group and now it works. Ok, tomorrow i will try to use ies+spotlight lights and not omni Thanks for the help Anytime

Thanks for the links.

First thing I would check is textures. Make sure you don't have any funky image files from any warehouse objects for example. I've sometimes run into images that are cmyk jpeg files instead of RGB for example. Have you tried doing a render with global material override. That way you can check if any of the materials are causing problems. (You can override some materials and have those render, that way you can check specific materials.) There's any other number of problems that can crop up. Another trouble-shooting option is to load default options settings to make sure something in your options isn't messed up. If you are using DR, there are all kinds of instability there that could be an issue. Any more specifics you can share on your settings? One last thing: do you have more than one window of SU open when you are rendering? That can cause all kinds of issues too. I never have two windows of SU open with vray running.

Hi Shawn - I am not familiar with the KKWS tools. Do you have a link?

@mike lucey said: I think Solo (Pete Stoppel) is a Master Renderer in my humble opinion. Now if only he would do a series of Mini Publications for SketchUcation we could make him Rich and Famous! http://www.solos-art.com/ I also go for that! Always Solo has been a source of inspiration to me! Also there is a great potential of masters that may brings energy to our forum more than ago..

hi, other good option could be maxwell render standalone plugin for sketchup, there's a free version with certain limitations and for US $95.00 you can get the licensed version of the plugin... it renders within skethup so no geometry importing-exporting needed and it's so simple and easy to use best V

you got an old version update to lastest and then leave the opacity 100% and tick "use color texture for transparency" in the diffuse slot, that's it. for proper shadow apply the png on both positive and negative faces.

Hi Dave, I'm new to the forum as well, but have been lurking for a while now. I use SU for the exhibit industry and have become very fond of the Maxwell plugin. It is really easy to use, but isn't the fastest renderer out there (the results are worth the time in my opinion though). I was using the free version for a couple of years and finally decided to buy a license for the plugin which really is not that much money compared to other options out there. Maxwell is a nice all around rendering plugin, but for exhibits I am constantly on the look out for better ones. As an exhibit designer you might find issue with the lack of lighting options. Lights must be built in to the model by assigning emitter materials on to faces of actual objects (geometry). This produces very realistic renderings, but sometimes in the exhibit design world you need to just throw some lights in there with beams coming off of it to show clients that their exhibit will be well-lit. So I use Photoshop a lot to fake my lights. Hopefully this helps. Kyle

Have you tried ThruPaint? http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=44552 or as unwrapping solution a commercial plugin: SketchUV http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=44501 I use ThruPaint and it works great for me. But all faces have to be quads for some tools. And you should enable "Ignore Distortion" For groups/components who contain ThruPaint mapping otherwise the maxwell plugin will export one per quad face!

Yeah, his previous book was excellent. I've been excited to see this one as well. Should be great! Chris

Fair enough, I dropped Photoshop and After Effects after CS2 (and switched to alternative software)... so it was just an semi-educated guess. Best, Jason.