Render vs. Export

[djh]

Is there any difference between "exporting" a model as a jpg to "rendering" the model with Thea or Podium?

[Dave R]

Yes!

A straight JPG or PNG export from SketchUp won't have reflections, soft shadows, bump mapped textures and other features of an image after the model is processed in a rendering application. A rendering application can create nearly photo-realistic images which you'd never get out of SketchUp directly.

This is an image export out of SketchUp:

This is from the same model after rendering: