POINTS OF LIGHTS

[walterap]

How can I put lights in the projects of the SU. And what is the best "softwere-surrender " to the SU. What is the lightest?
I have heard of the V-Ray, S. Podium and Kerkythea and others will, but never tried any of them. I like to know your opinions, to easily choose which program I work with.
Good morning and thank you.

[Chris Fullmer]

well, they are all good. I would recommend any free one, or one with a free demo at least. Rendering is something that you can learn the basics on any renderer, then once you start deciding what you do like and don't like, you can look for a more full featured version, or one with a different focus. I started with kerkythea (free) and thought it was great. Then I moved on to Podium and lightup demos. Then I finally decided on Thea after using it's demo. I've also recently purchased Vue because I need better landscape support.

So try kerkythea, or maybe SU-PoV or sk-indigo. Those are free and seem pretty good.

[Pixero]

What do you want from a renderer?
Photoreal quality, ease of use, fast rendering, cheap/free?
So, the answer to "which is the best renderer" is: it depends on what you need.

From the sound of it you seem to be new to rendering so I would suggest a renderer that is easy to use and cheap to get you going.
If you want it to be free I suggest Kerkythea.
Cheap and easy to use, my suggestion is Twilight (it's basically Kerkythea but directly from within SketchUp).
Photoreal (advanced), then it's Thea or Vray.
If you go for one of the more advanced you should be prepared to put quite some time into understanding how to use it fully.

There are lots of more renderers and I'm sure others will fill those in.