Sherpa Render — AI rendering from your viewport (+ a free view straightener)

[sherparender]

Hi all,

I've released Sherpa Render on the Extension Warehouse and I'd rather
explain it here honestly than let a store listing do it.

WHAT IT DOES
You set your camera, hit render in the Sherpa panel, and a lit image of
that view comes back into the dialog. No export step, no render engine
installed. It works from your viewport geometry — it doesn't generate a
building from a text prompt. What you drew stays where you drew it; what
you left open is what it fills in.

There's no prompt box. Light, time of day, colour temperature, artificial
lights, whether people appear, styling level, and per-surface materials
("floor: ceramic", "countertop: marble") are all set with controls. Leave a
field blank and that surface stays as you modelled it.

WHAT IT ISN'T
It isn't photorealistic and it isn't a V-Ray or Enscape replacement. If
you're producing a final photoreal image, use a real engine. This is for
the stage before that — concepts, pitches, the first client conversation.
I'd rather say that up front than have you find out on render three.

THE FREE PART
The package also installs a Straightener: level your verticals, square to
the model or to a selected face, or re-aim and widen until your selection
fits the frame. It moves the SketchUp camera itself, so what you see is
what you get, and Undo restores your original viewpoint. It costs no
credits and doesn't need a Sherpa account. Use it on its own if that's all
you want from this.

ONE FOR THE DEVS
Worth passing on, because it cost me a fortune in time: doing socket I/O
from a Ruby thread inside SketchUp isn't merely slow, it's broken. I
measured the same upload running roughly 600x slower from a thread, right
up to TCP timeouts. Sketchup::Http is now the default path for everything
in the extension, with a HEAD check after upload to confirm byte
integrity. If you're building anything that talks to a server, save
yourself the week.

THE HONEST COMMERCIAL BIT
The extension is free; renders run on credits from a Sherpa account. A new
account gets 5 renders free, no card. After that it's a subscription from
EUR 49/month. Failed renders are refunded automatically. Your images are
never used to train models, you keep ownership, and files are deleted
after 30 days.

REQUIREMENTS
SketchUp 2021 or newer, Windows or Mac, plus an internet connection.
SketchUp for Web won't work — no extensions there.

Extension Warehouse:
https://extensions.sketchup.com/extension/83e9cc43-5326-48ac-8f16-82a2b39d1d0c/sherpa-render-ai-rendering-for-architects
Setup and usage: https://sherpa-render.com/en/learn/sketchup-extension

Tear it apart — I'd genuinely rather hear where it falls over than where
it works. I'll be in this thread.