AmbientOcclusion for SketchUp released

jiminy-billy-bob

I'm trying to figure out how this differs from Visualizer...

Visualizer is a true renderer (although very limited features). This is "just" Ambient Occlusion.

It could actually be very interesting if it was happening in the viewport. For client presentation/interaction, etc
Sometimes you just want to add some depth to the model without a realistic render.

pbacot

Is the blur in the last image a part of the plugin's function or post pro?

fluid

The blur is a ray-traced depth of field done directly by the plugin (in the pro version)

Frederik

@pixero said:

@fluid said:

Yes, unfortunately the SketchUp api doesn't allow to render directly into the standard viewport

Isn't that what LightUp does?

Thea4SU is also able to do this, hence you're wrong, Nicola...

fluid

Thanks for pointing that out, we'll look into it for the upcoming release

fluid

We just did a new release, fixing the Bugsplat that some users were experiencing. You can get it here

sepo

Hmmm...The output looks like Podium version 1.x with no lighting and AO preset. I remember it well as wrote a preset and it was damn fast. If is not real time in the SU viewport it is step backward IMHO.

pbacot

What would realtime in the SU Viewport mean? You could view your models like this while navigating and working on them?

olishea

would be cool if it baked the textures

Rich O Brien

@sepo said:

If is not real time in the SU viewport it is step backward IMHO.

juju

@fluid said:

We just released a new version of AmbientOcclusion, you can get it here: http://www.ambientocclusion-sketchup.com

This new version adds rendering directly inside the SketchUp viewport.

[flash:7ci503sq]https://www.youtube.com/v/Rst3-SoYAvA[/flash:7ci503sq]

nice...

fluid

We just released a new version of AmbientOcclusion, adding support for SketchUp 2015 for Mac and fixing some bugs. You can get it here.

olishea

I like it; simple and effective.

Would be awesome if you had an option to overlay the sketchup lines onto the render in one shot Anti-aliased of course. Should be able to maintain the current sketchup line style too such as line extension.

Many people like to make simple "clay" renders with a line overlay to help reveal details.

A vignette option may also be cool. Goes really well with AO renders.

fluid

We just released AmbientOcclusion 1.5.0, you can get it here.
In this version:

Added hard shadows
Added opacity control for xray effect

Hard Shadows
X-Ray

tim

I'm giving this a quick tryout and so far I quite like what I see. On my 3y.o. iMac it renders modest models very rapidly - my whole-house model is taking quite a while though, unsurprisingly.

Two annoyances I noticed pretty quickly
a) once you've turned on 'render viewport' I can't see a way to turn it off. closing the model window seems to be the only option, followed by reopening. Not as friendly as it could be.
b) it seems to take an interesting view of what is visible and what is not. When rendering my house from a view supposedly only showing the layer for the timber frame the rendering was displaying many other layers but not all. Odd. If you would like to use it for testing I'll happily send you a copy of the model file.

Oh, and I just noticed that it leaves the sliders (used by opacity setting etc) lying around on the screen.

Jim

I like it also because it's easy and fast even on my old laptop. But after I do a few renders, SketchUp gets really slow to do anything. Even just creating a box starts lagging. I'm going to guess you are using SketchUp observers inefficiently.

pbacot

I guess I don't get it. The rendering looks nice but the shadows look unrealistic to me. A lot people like this sort of thing though.

EDIT: I don't use SketchUp (live) a lot for project demonstrations, but I did the other day. I admit this feature might have enhanced the appearance of the model in that process.

karimtabbara

Hello

I've just tryed Ambient Occlusion.

I read "if you add overlaying on textures (adding support for .jpg/.png textures is enough) then it can be a free alternative to LightUp"

Sorry but I don't thik so.
LightUp is maybe 189$ but it's worth it.
Adam has made a very good plug in.
Even Incremental Render mode is better and faster then Ambient Occlusion...
No need to say that wonce fully rendered with Lightup, all scenes need no time to render.
... And Ligtup has video Render, Internet plug in, many many settings ...

Best regards

spadestick

too slow on my machine for any real use... it should be instant. perhaps graphics card?

fluid

We just released AmbientOcclusion 1.5.4, you can get it here.

This version solves a lot of issues, in particular:

Layer visibility
Slowdowns
Imprecise camera placement when rendering big models
Group closing when changing view