What is your favorite overall rendering engine for SketchUp?

valerostudio

My apologies for forgetting a few and stirring the pot. I guess I wanted to see which was more popular and not the 'best'. There is no best rendering engine. All have there own advantages and disadvantages. I guess I wanted to see where the bigger user base was and so far it seems Thea is the leader.

david_h

I can only vote for one, but I use Podium, Thea and twilight.

I suck at all 3.

Krisidious

Vue and Lumion will blow your mind... so fast, so easy such incredible results. movies and renderings. what is also out of site is the price for either one. but it will make you look and feel like a master.

this was done in lumion demo in like 15 minutes.

sonder

I've tried Kerkythea, V-ray and Podium. Of the three, my favorite by far has been Kerkythea. I am really glad to see Thea in the lead, as I am buying that shortly. Kind of makes sense I guess!

Pixero

I have Thea, Twilight, Vray and LightUp. (Twilight and Vray aren't used much though.)
I think Vray for SU in it's current state isn't quite working for me. No instancing/proxies possible, and the set up time is much longer than with Thea. I did some tests that seem to indicate that Theas Adaptive (BSD) is a little faster than Vray with comparative settings.

julyyen

@irwanwr said:

wow, even Kerkythea can compete with paid version render apps

Yep,

I also vote for Kerkythea and I think this render engine with proper settings and a good illuminated hdri can beat big boys!
Any news about new improved version (maybe with IBL )?

jason_maranto

Perhaps a more revealing poll would be something like this:

On a scale of 1 to 10 what are the most important factors for choosing an external Render Engine to you:

Not Important - Most Important
Price:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Ease of Use:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Speed:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Quality of Output:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Photo Realism:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Flexibility/Features:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

SketchUp Integration:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Documentation/Training/Support:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Industry Standard/Familiarity:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Peer Recommendations:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

And then add the poll we are using here but change to "What is your preferred render engine."

I think that would tell us alot more useful information than the current poll -- something like this can be set up on http://www.surveymonkey.com/ pretty easily.

Best,
Jason.

david_h

I'm planning on buying all of them. I want to expand my suckiness horizons.

irwanwr

@julyyen said:

I also vote for Kerkythea and I think this render engine with proper settings and a good illuminated hdri can beat big boys!
Any news about new improved version (maybe with IBL )?

Well, actually i use Kerkythea only now. Dropped any other "free" with restriction shorted paid version renderers. Agree with that potential it has behind settings as I can see the difference between. Might even beat those paid ones. I'd go for Thea if I got the chance.
Haven't heard much about the new release yet. But the latest Boost (beta?) release really impressed me with the shortened time needed to render in most settings.

Zoom123

IS Kerkythea actively developed? Last version seems to be from 2008.

From the ones I tried so far I like Twilight most, which uses the Kerkythea engine, but it also has not been updated for more than a year.

irwanwr

Hi there Zoom,

As I already mention up there in the recent reply, there is a Kerkythea Boost.
The one you mentioned is the Kerkythea Echo 2008.
Kerkythea Boost is still under development currently. Haven't got any further info when should it be published as a final release. It works a bit faster than the Echo release, I think.

Perhaps you should try to get the info from the Kerkythea forum. That's where I got the Kerkythea Boost.

notareal

@Zoom123, There will be a new Kerkythea release in some point. At the moment you can try a development version. It will offer some speed improvement, but as been a development version - there are some known issues (better read trough bug topics ).

allanx

Based on my experience with Render engines in Sketchup I prefer and use Maxwell Render, because it has the best integration right now and has fast results, alot of preset materials and can run in slow computer...and the UI is great!!!

allanx

thomthom

@allanx said:

fast results

I tried Maxwell when looking for a rendering solution - and my biggest problem was that it was so slow. And I found no way to speed it up. Has the engine gotten faster? Or did I miss something essential in terms of performance optimisation?

It's also why I haven't been using unbiased engines in general - as I've felt it's taken all too long to complete a render with good enough results.

andybot

Hi Thomthom, did you see the thread comparing maxwell and twilight? I just don't see any way maxwell or any unbiased renderer can ever get in the ballpark in terms of speed. In those tests, it was about a factor of 6 for speed difference.

Andy

thomthom

@andybot said:

Hi Thomthom, did you see the thread comparing maxwell and twilight? I just don't see any way maxwell or any unbiased renderer can ever get in the ballpark in terms of speed. In those tests, it was about a factor of 6 for speed difference.

Andy

That's an interesting thread. I've really struggled to get to grips with these unbiased engines. I was wondering if I was missing some thing essential or if one had to be using a render farm in order to produce something within reasonable time.

The project I work on are under constant revision and I need to be able to render and re-render quickly. 2 hours for a 3000px image is my max threshold. Then it has to be a large complex scene for me to accept such. Otherwise I usually try to keep a scene rendering within 30 minutes. I have a couple of hex-core machines I use for complex scenes which helps when I'm in a pinch for time. (Too bad V-Ray has so many issues with DR in the current version... )

So many times when I read about unbiased people seem to be leaving the image to "cook" for hours - if not over night. Which just seems horrendously slow for me. A set of images needs to be sent out - I can't wait days for that. So I'm really curious of people's workflow. (I make architecture visualisation. Mostly exterior, but some interior as well. Quite large building and sites some times.)

jason_maranto

For exterior shots Maxwell could easily complete complex scenes of decent size within 2 hours using either the Maxwell Physical Sky or IBL (IBL preferred to me).

There are really only a couple of things to avoid with Maxwell if you want fast rendering -- true Dielectric/SSS based materials, Displacement based materials, and interior scenes.

There are a couple of workarounds:

Use AGS and ThinSSS instead of Glass and SSS.
Use Bump and Normal maps instead of displacement maps.

But when you set up your interiors, it's best to do so with the expectations that they will indeed take longer... sometimes much longer (depending on lighting setup).

Best,
Jason.

andybot

I tried a few exteriors too, there was still at best a 2x difference, and that's only if you are willing to accept a degree of noise in your images. I didn't try any larger resolutions since I was only doing the free plugin.

jason_maranto

I guess the thing I always have to say about the "stand-alone" variant(s) of the Maxwell plugin is it is slower than the regular Maxwell Render Suite due to having to run within SketchUp's process -- regular Maxwell does not, so it has access to the full system resources.

Basically subtract a processor core and alot of RAM when using the "stand-alone" plugin(s).

Best,
Jason.

andybot

Sure, incrementally you'll have a slight difference, but it's not going to be 6x faster. Also, whatever computing power you throw at it, it will still be a relative difference since that same computing power can speed up the biased renderers as well.