AI Render Enchancer Extensions or tools

[pixelcruncher]

Are these AI providers significantly better than SketchUp AI render? I.e., what's the added value of paying for an external tool when you already have it in SketchUp?

[Krass]

That’s a good question. I don’t hear much feedback about SketchUp’s AI rendering tools. I haven’t switched to the latest version myself, but the technology has likely improved since its initial release. To clarify how it works: sites like 3dvibes are undoubtedly very effective, but they require a different workflow within the modeling software. For SketchUp, using them makes sense if you can fully integrate the 3D geometry, furniture, vegetation, and textures directly into the SketchUp project. However, this results in very heavy projects with excessive polygon counts; rendering detailed fabric sofas, 3D figures, or trees can be a struggle. Yet, these rendering services are far more capable of maintaining consistency and precision across different scenes and viewpoints when all the necessary information is already present in the SketchUp workspace.

In professional practice today, however, the standard approach involves doing about two-thirds of the 3D preparation in SketchUp and handling the rest in a "real-time" rendering engine—such as Enscape, Twinmotion, Lumion, or D5 Render. These engines offer great fluidity by leveraging the graphics card, particularly when dealing with vegetation and high-poly models. The results are truly impressive.

For instance, you can integrate 3D objects created via AI-from-photo modeling; while they are incredibly useful, they are also very heavy—making it impossible to use them in large numbers within SketchUp.

As we speak, I believe some users are betting on moving away from traditional rendering engines altogether, and that approach works well in many situations.
It is certain that, in the medium term, AI will take over about half the workload of traditional rendering engines; indeed, exterior backgrounds and vegetation are already being generated using AI today.
Furthermore, many of these services are increasingly integrating directly into modeling software as extensions. D5 Render offers AI rendering with D5 Lite.

It would be interesting to get feedback from users of AI Render (diffusion).

[pixelcruncher]

Thanks for the explanation, @krass - So there's real value in these AI rendering solutions; they are not a fad. I should go build my own.

[Krass]

yes Pixelcruncher these solutions aren't a gimmick any more, I don't know if you're an expert in this field, but yes, absolutely. However, it's a real hassle to offer to clients—it requires massive servers...

Free AI models are pretty good, but they don't compare to paid solutions. Zpix, by Samuel Tallet, is a free PC app that generates really decent images using open-source models. However, it's best suited for creating single views and involves a lot of randomness.
I couldn't really use this image for my client, but I put it on my site...

[MikusZ]

Disclosure first: I'm one of the founders of Vizbase, an AI rendering extension for SketchUp, so read this with that in mind.

@miikka1978, your point about editing only certain materials or parts of the model is the problem we built around. Vizbase detects the elements in the captured view (walls, floor, ceiling, joinery, furniture) and you set a material for each one, typed, from a reference photo or from a material library, instead of one prompt for the whole image. After rendering, Refine lets you mask an area and change only that.

It isn't flawless. On a renovation project last month the first pass dropped a plaster ceiling rose that was in the model, and it took a Refine pass with a reference image to bring it back. And as @Krass says, consistency across several viewpoints is still the hard part for every AI renderer, ours included.

Since testing on your own models came up: the free plan has 5 credits a month (up to 10 renders, no card), and the SketchUp extension works on it, so you can try it on your own model without paying. If anyone wants more room for a proper test on a real project, message me and I'll set up free Studio access. Post the results here, good or bad.