Sketchup & realtime rendering (freelancing)
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I've found Lumion to work great. The only problem with it (and lumenrt) is lack of artificial lighting. Twinmotion has this but the trial of that hasn't worked well for taking sketchup models so I can't really judge it.
A co-worker of mine even has Revit. but the .skp file import in revit wouldn't take my skp files :S -
Have you looked at LightUp?
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This is slightly off-topic, but If you can, try and add some more RAM to your new computer.
3GB seems a bit low (I was running 4 on my old PC before stepping up to 12 on the rig I got two years ago) and I would suggest 6GB as a minimum.
More RAM should help with the sort of visualisations you want to create.
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Oh sorry I wasnt clear
the 580 is a 3gb model, I have 16gb system ram -
Where's the 'phew' smiley?
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best I could come up with.
I'm trying cryengine atm. Having trouble using it even with playup plugin! the plugin itself works hit and miss for me and the texture process is tedious. I'm desperate to work this one out
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@mrmikeesq said:
best I could come up with.
I'm trying cryengine atm. Having trouble using it even with playup plugin! the plugin itself works hit and miss for me and the texture process is tedious. I'm desperate to work this one out
If you want realtime navigation + IES interior/exterior lighting + integrated into SketchUp (not a seperate App) so no need to learn a whole new workflow, do have a look at LightUp (http://light-up.co.uk), you may be surprised!
Adam
These are captured from inside SketchUp:
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Yes LightUp, ShaderLight,Twilight, etc are half measures I guess....& good ones.
They are all certainly worth every dollar & then some.
It's great that these programs can export a rendered model that you can walk round in (& the quality is quite good)
Lumion and especially Twinmotion are truly interactive in realtime. But they are more costly.... $200 vs $2000 for Lumion &$3000 (+$900 per year) for Twinmotion. But these programs have a lot of features (that I assume increases the cost) that most Arch. firms don't use frequently. In Lumion I don't need tools to build complicated landscapes that cannot be made precisely, etc. Although the integrated vegetation objects are great.
It does seem like the companies who developed gaming engines are all waking up to Architectural Visualization at the same time.
Cryengine has a "architectural visualization coming soon" banner on their web site!
Lumion comes from gaming (but that seems to be what is tripping them up since they are not properly addressing architectural design interactions.)
Anyone who has seen some of your kids interactive game graphics are knows they are more effective than most expensive static images & some animations.
Anyway this is a very exciting time to see what design & presentation tools emerge. -
@dbaird said:
Lumion and especially Twinmotion are truly interactive in realtime.
Eh, LightUp (unlike the Shaderlight etc) give realtime 30Hz navigation. Thats "truly interactive" and unlike Lumion and Twinmotion, LightUp supports interior lights, colored glass light filtering and IES lighting - rather than just Sunlight and.. er, not a lot wrt lighting.
Adam
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I try and have tried most of the rendering engines compatible with Sketchup out there and I permanently look for new ways that could improve the architectural/interior design visualization workflow.
For several years Vray has been the best (for its great image quality) but, the latest version of Light up is turning out to be a more convenient and a more powerful tool in my opinion.
The capacity to fly a rendered model (using the GPU unit) right from inside the Sketchup window is changing the design workflow in a very very positive way.And just like Sketchup is, Lighup is really easy to use.
You won't get all the subtleties that Vray has (too complicated anyway I think) but the ease of use and the real-time / in viewport āTour toolā capacity is absolutely the way to go: I find myself producing now much more finished videos, stills and flythrough than I ever did with my 1000$ Vray licenseā¦
You should give it a try! For less than 200 $US, you will see that Lightup is an essential and revolutionary extension to Skecthup.
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Hi, folks:
Thank you for this very enLIGHTening discussion. Gives a good perspective on available tools. -
All,
Thanks for your input.
I guess i should give LightUp another look while I continue to test & evaluate the value of Lumion & Twinmotion.
The investment in these programs obviously means a shift to very powerful & expensive (3gb) GPU's.
We've been concentrating on buying the fast CPU's for our programs (Revit, Indigo, etc.) (dual 6 cores) with avg. GPU's. A 1gb GPU on a dual 6 core CPU workstation doesn't work good enough with either Lumion & Twinmotion. It works..but not good enough.
The other difference I have seen is that there seems to be no need to have network rendering on multiple CPU's (like for Vray or Indigo, etc) since all of the work is being done by the GPU on one computer. Maybe there will be network rendering of GPU's in the future...
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