Indigo for dummies
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Adam, we must be brothers as I'm just like you, I was a landscape designer and always learning new things,trying to learn too many things at once and ending up knowing a little about everything but not enough to do anything.(not saying you cannot do anything)
Nomeradona, I am not sure if you have used an unbiased engine yet, I have only seen your Podium and Vray renders. anyway unbiased engines are very forgiving and if it was not for it's horrendous render speeds they would be king. You can model poop and blindly adjust your settings to Hellen keller values and end up with a great render, as long as you are willing to wait 9 months for it to render.
So as far as speed goes, Podium is king (but lacks some elementary features like displacement and refraction), Vue a second on exteriors but sadly a third for interiors (but then again Vue is the landscape champ)But this is January, imagine what will be available this time next year?
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Hi Solo
Very nice first try
But i think that 1 hour is too much time for a render that size with that geometry and just the sunlight. Did you turn off the low cpu priority in the advanced settings?I really like unbiased renders (be carefull they can be addictive) because, as you said, they the're very easy to set up. The only problem it's most of the times you'll always have to do some post work, and probably allways too clean the noise (plugins like Ninja Noise and alikes can really do miracles)
But if you're trying unbiased renders now you should try the progressive path tracing method, i don't know how it works but it's like the best of the biased and unbiased renders, unbiased quality with the biased speed, i don't remember if indigo has it, but kerkythea does. But i think it's best when you only use the sun as light.
Keep them coming, and when you have time show us something render with brazil if it's not too much trouble
David
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Low CPU priority? please elaborate, sounds like a trick we can all use.
'Ninja noise' as far as I know is only a Photoshop plugin, I'm unfortunately a Corel Paintshop pro guy.
I will check out the progressive path thing, I am sure Indigo has it, at least I hope so, cannot check right now as I'm rendering (a phrase never used using an unbiased engine)
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In sketchup go to plugins - skindigo - advanced. There you'll see a check in the Low cpu priority (it's checked by default). Uncheck it and it will use all your cpu power to render much faster, but you probably won't be able to work in your pc as long as indigo it's rendering.
In indigo advanced settings you'll also see the render method availables. I don't really remember all the details about everyone, so the best it's to read about them and try them all in diferent conditions (just sunlight, many lights, naby glass, caustics etc)
One great feature you'll probably like it's turning any component into instances so you can render like 100 cars in the same scene but with a very fast export (it just exports one car model and all the others are instaces and copys of that car, and the instances can be components like rectangles to keep the SU model light and they will be still rendered as cars)
Ninja noise can be used as a plugin or stand alone, and you can try it before buying it (comes with a watermark)
I started my unbised adventures with indigo but sometimes it can be very unstable, that in conjuction with sketchup poly limitations and you'll find impossible to even start rendering very heavy models (my bridge project, that i posted just before the forum went down, couldn't render in indigo). But beeing able to do everything inside skethcup it's indigo best feature.
I switched for kerkythea because until now it never let me down and can render biased and unbiased (so i can easyly adapt to every deadline i have) and has a lot of other options. But i miss doing everything inside sketchup so i'll probably give it another try when the new version is released.
David
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guys,
stop playing with brazil. we have a whole government team dedicated to it. let them spoil it by themselves. do not get involved.
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Good stuff solo, and welcome to the indigo club
With regards to increasing the speed, you can also set the number of threads you want indigo to run on (aka how many cores you have), you can find it in the same place as the 'low cpu priority' checkbox.
Indigo can also do network renders, although i havent tried it before.
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Really nice render, Pete...!!
And great idea to make it a public effort...
@unknownuser said:
I switched for kerkythea because until now it never let me down and can render biased and unbiased (so i can easyly adapt to every deadline i have) and has a lot of other options. But i miss doing everything inside sketchup...
Let's see how things will develop in the future...
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@solo said:
Here is the model for us all to play (I believe someone actually posted this one once, but to the life of me I cannot remember)
IT WAS ME! IT WAS ME! IT WAS ME! IT WAS ME! IT WAS ME!
THE YOUNG PIBUZ AT WORK!!!!!!!!
It was filled with metallic storages that time...Ok guys, let's give it a go once again then!!!!
Now I'm a little busy planning my next sharing work, when i have some clearer idea i'll surely give this a go! looks really promising, and industrial themes always...poke me! -
I am currently looking into Rhino as well.
It is a complete modeling suite , plugin based as well(Bongo for animation, Grasshopper for parametrics etc...) and it has all the major render engines.
When things would go bad for Sketchup in the future, Rhino is a good backup.
It has a built-in 'Layout' and its suited for printing 2D drawings.
Not a bad option... -
@Solo
@unknownuser said:I'm also learning Rhino
Take also a look to Moment of Inspiration (same one fathers of Rhino)
More and more people use it as "pre modeler" to Rhino
Same easy ergonomic than SU
Fully compatible (you can drag and drop between them)
And for artists primary created for use it with a pen graphic!!!
(you can use mouse also of course)
And with the next version you will have a "revolutionary" system of object!
PS SKP file export is direct!PPS Cool render as usual
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@frederik said:
@unknownuser said:
I switched for kerkythea because until now it never let me down and can render biased and unbiased (so i can easyly adapt to every deadline i have) and has a lot of other options. But i miss doing everything inside sketchup...
Let's see how things will develop in the future...
hmmmm, a very subtle hint to the effect that something is in the air for the future of KT. i am excited about that!
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@kwistenbiebel said:
I am currently looking into Rhino as well.
It is a complete modeling suite , plugin based as well(Bongo for animation, Grasshopper for parametrics etc...) and it has all the major render engines.
When things would go bad for Sketchup in the future, Rhino is a good backup.
It has a built-in 'Layout' and its suited for printing 2D drawings.
Not a bad option...and if you are use too with vray sketchup.. vray rhino is almost the same.
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Thanks guys, and Pibuz I now remember... thanks mate.
Here is another old model of mine that I ran through Indigo, this time I wanted to see it's 'Clay' render abilities.
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Please solo: TEXTURE IT!
It would be a masterpiece, i'm sure.. -
@unknownuser said:
You can model poop and blindly adjust your settings to Hellen keller values and end up with a great render, as long as you are willing to wait 9 months for it to render.
thanks for the laugh, Solo! priceless! -
Hi Solo,
I'm fairly new to Indigo and have only been using it for about 3 months and already am enjoying it's creative potential a lot! I'm glad that you are also using it and am looking forward to what someone of your caliber can make in it. It is a pity about the rendering speeds, but with the use of multiple computers it is possible to speed it up. Or in my case i set it rendering and it is done when i get back home after school.Another cool feature that I noticed being promoted on this website was using component spray plugin and Indigo Instancing. But I've managed to make it work even better (and i'm sure the promoters did this too, but they just didn't mention it) was to make dummy components in their place like in the tutorial. This allowed me to populate sketchup with vast numbers of plants and trees.
I do use kerkythea occasionally but I think i will use it more in the future, because apparently whaat is going to add the capability to export from skindigo to kerkythea, which will be an awsome time saver! I've also noticed that luxrender is making a plugin for sketchup, this should bring the best of both worlds i reckon! It will be interesting to find out which one performs better: Indigo or luxrender.
In the meantime, in my opinion, indigo and sometimes kerkythea (only when i'm pressed for time or an animation) are the best free renderers around!
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@kwistenbiebel said:
I am currently looking into Rhino as well.
It is a complete modeling suite , plugin based as well(Bongo for animation, Grasshopper for parametrics etc...) and it has all the major render engines.
When things would go bad for Sketchup in the future, Rhino is a good backup.
It has a built-in 'Layout' and its suited for printing 2D drawings.
Not a bad option...Rhino is an amazing program. It has a very very small learning curve to be able to do the basics quite well. McNeel really does a bang up job making the program user friendly for how advanced and accurate it is. RhinoScript also does parametrics with a bit more intricacy/accuracy than Grasshopper, given it is much more difficult to use. McNeel is also working on a new renderer called Toucan to replace Flamingo (which is getting quite dated), and it looks extremely promising. SketchUp to Podium will always be my go to just because its so dang fast and easy, but Rhino is a pretty incredible tool, imho.
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