How to create Lamps, Lighting and Night Scenes

[antje]

Hi everyone,

because my last request had so much success I’ll try again to get an answer to my Sketch Up questions through the forum.

I'm looking for plugins or rubies for lighting and night scenes? How can I create lamps and lighting? I need it mostly for outdoor lighting, so nothing super complicated with textures, transparency and so... just for some lighting in gardens and to light up trees and facades.

So far I only found software I had to buy. Are there any free rubies or plugins available you can recommend?

Thanks a lot for your help!

Antje

[remus]

Do you want to be able t do realtime lighting or just static images?

If its jsut static images: have a look at kerkythea and indigo. They are both very good render engines that can produce very high quality work.

If you want real time i think your best bet would be lightup (i tihnk the site is down at the moment, not sure when it's going to be back up.) It's very good for giving an idea of how lighting will work in an interior and exterior. Bear in mind it is currently in beta.