Dome light is an incredible feature. Image based lighting is where everything is heading. I read an article about Pixar's Monster University being totally lit using IBL.

nice tut. thx for sharing the link. the picture in this tutorial = 5% sketchup, 5% vray, 90% photoshop

Hi joseark, Could you post a link with your scene, I'm not sure why its doing that and If I can see how your material was created I might be able to help. Ted

One more material here that I use sometimes. This uses a lot of artistic license, but sometimes you just want a glass material to appear 'glassy'. This is a cheat that does not use Fresnel and is not fully transparent. It's a nice cheater. ThinCheatGlass.zip

@valerostudio said: V-Ray for SketchUp Freelancer Special Pricing http://www.chaosgroup.com/en/2/freelancer_promo.html (not sure if this is appropriate ) If you go down the list of resellers you'll find CGriver is offering V-Ray for freelancers for $50 less than the promo price. At $649 it's one of the less expensive options available for rendering.

A trick I use is to be sure to place each ID material to one of the proxy triangles. This way it is seen as used and will not purge and it also stays along with the component. Beware that purge plugins will also purge materials that are used as part of a 2-sided material. Chaos recommends using the purge material feature inside the material editor.

I don't have vray or a mac, but one possibility and a bump so others may answer, check that you don't have the face reversed.

prior versions had different or less... or no limitations. It's changed a few times, so it's hard to keep straight in my head. Currently though, yes, there is a watermark, output size cap, and a few other limitations here and there.

Nomer get's into a technique on his website. http://www.sketchupartists.org/tutorials/sketchup-and-photoshop/use-image-editing-software-inside-sketchup/

Ahh my bad, I meant to type "I have GI and BG switched off and am only using HDRI dome"... I think the bright skies are in some cases the realistic effect with these camera settings... must learn to tweak them better and maybe start experimenting with the Aperture F value. Thanks again for the tip though, I'm sure if other people are checking in on this thread it could help them also

great, thank you all

Great brushes and tutorial! Thanks valerostudio, with your always good suggestions. thanks guys!

You would need the create the map to be applied to the sphere and then possibly UVW map it outside of SketchUp, maybe using UVtools and Blender? I dont know. All I know is that mapping a sphere in SU alone is dicey.

Thank you, i tryed that (change the IES file) and I manage to get more or less what I was looking for, I still need lots of practice for that kind of render (Night Scene, or interior). At this moment (same model) i'm having issues with a glass material, i'll upload some pictures to see if i can get some help, again thank you very much

As well as the other suggestions, have you tried increasing the HSph subdivs (under the irradiance map rollout) to something like 80-150 to reduce the blotchiness?

Just tried increasing the HSph subdivs to 150 and it seems to be doing the trick. Thanks for the suggestion. [image: wFRe_bthrm_test13.jpg]

2.0 bump mapping has improved significantly. I would not use displacement on tiles or bricks. Seems like an incredible waste of render time to me. Try bump, trust me.

First I want to thanks you guys who helped me, you are great! I used the group function and worked perfectly, so the function on EDIT SU materials... But still I have one last issue, as you can see on the image there is a fail between my grass and my floor...any hint to help me? Thanks very much! PS: do you guys think the grass is good looking? I lowered the scale, but its seems...different from a real grass :S [image: 2Yzo_aaaaaaaaaaaaaa.png]

try contacting support@chaosgroup.com

I also have this question. The old version scene cann't render correctly in 2.0 version. Use "Regenerate all Vray materials" can solve the question, but that would lose old vray materials settings.