Anyone using/used the integrated HD4000 graphics when modeling? When I was using the HD3000 graphics on my i5-2500, there was no anti-aliasing available in the SU configuration. Had to drop in an old discrete card to get it so as to avoid the ugly jaggies.

@grizzler said:

..., I need something that will get me from A to B without too much difficulty.

My suggestions would be:

Look for a renderer that is under current and ongoing development. These are more likely to offer decent documentation and active user forums, as well as optimizations for today's hardware.

Once you've found a renderer to try, go to youtube and/or vimeo and look for video tutorials made with that particular renderer software. So, search on youtube for "XYZ renderer tutorial" or something like that. Seeing someone work through the selections while setting up a render session can be much more helpful that reading through poorly worded, overly technical documentation. You usually have to view multiple tutorials in order to 'catch' tips, suggestions and explanations for the arcane stuff that is inevitable in rendering software. Rendering software is full of technical jargon that sounds like complete and impenetrable gibberish to a rendering newbie--it's a technical subject all its own and it's tough to get a basic footing in it.

Perhaps start first with truly free rendering software, like Kerkythea or LuxRender or Blender, since there is no artificial time limit on your use of the software. That will give you plenty of time to search for understandable tutorials and to practice at rendering. Lots of the knowledge you gain will transfer into other rendering software later on if you decide to then go for a licensed software.

Steved--

Now you know a little bit more about your computer--that's a good thing.

The GPU in there is a very basic one. I have put a couple of those into computers I assembled to give to neighbors and friends. In fact, the integrated graphics on your I5 CPU are probably more powerful in some ways.

I only looked briefly at the Raylectron website, and did not see specific information relating to hardware requirements. I'll assume that Raylectron is like most rendering software, and so is CPU dependent rather than GPU dependent. If that is the case, then your computer's GPU is really only tasked with drawing the various windows on your monitor(s)--it's the CPU doing the "heavy lifting" in creating the rendered image.

System RAM is always important, as the file size for rendering can get hefty. Fortunately, RAM is comparatively cheap nowadays. Just be careful to verify your motherboard's RAM support, both capacity and RAM speed. I have 16GB in my computer, and it was plenty when I was fooling around with Kerkythea. Kerkythea does not use the GPU for rendering.

If you were working with a GPU-based renderer, such as the Cycles renderer in Blender 3D, then you must be concerned with the GPU's onboard RAM (VRAM) quantity, as the file data for the scene to be rendered must fit entirely on the GPU's RAM. There's lots of stuff to figure out when you're trying something new like rendering.

Then there are "hybrid" renderers, like LuxRender, that utilize both CPU and GPU during the render process.... More things to think about.

The advantage to GPU rendering is greater speed in most cases, so you can at least speed up the learning curve in figuring out how to do rendering for more realism.

@steved said:

Thanks guys I am on my way to understanding.
Tom everything you said was true including the fitted graphics card. However i opened up my tower to have a look. I found an ASUS EAH5450 graphics card (but embarrassingly was plugged into my Intel HD 4000 graphics card?!??!!!!!!!?)

By the way I have found out how to easily find out which graphics card you are using type "dxdiag"into your start search.

I have been on the rayflectron forum and it seems that render ingine is, as graphics card dependant as SU (not very much at all aparently) so I do not seem to need to upgrade my graphics card (unless someone thinks i should) So i can spend the money on ram. My motherboard can take 32 gig so 32 gig it is! might not need it but somehow the idea of having 32 gig of ram makes me feel warm all over...

Thanks again guys

Hello Steved--

Sounds like your troubles are with the native, simple style of rendering built into SU, as opposed to a third-party renderer used when we want more photorealistic renders.

If you aren't real 'tech oriented', you can get a quick idea of what sort of graphics ("GPU") your computer currently is using by opening the "Device Manager" from within the Windows "Control Panel". Once in the Device Manager, look for an item named "Display Adapter", click on that, and it will name the type of GPU present.

The odds are pretty good that your computer is using the native GPU that is actually built directly into the I5 processor. In your case, with the I5-3570K, that would be the Intel HD 4000 graphics.

You may however have a 'discreet', standalone GPU plugged into the computer's motherboard. That would be either some kind of AMD brand or nVidia brand graphics card. The Windows Device Manager will identify which kind of GPU is present on your system.

As I understand SU, it is fairly undemanding as to computing power, so for SU's modeling and simple rendering there should be little benefit to using a powerful, gaming type GPU. Sketchup does what it does primarily in the CPU.

Dedicated rendering softwares do sometimes make use of the GPU for rendering calculations, but you must read the software's documentation to determine which GPUs are compatible with the software.

@steved said:

Hi all, have had a few issues of late doing renders. I would like some opinions of my compter specs and what graphics card I should upgrade to. the model I had issues with is 33mb with 1.8 million polys. When I turn on the shadows SU has a think for a mater of minutes (not responding) then evenually comes good (most of the time) Where is my weakest link.

Widnows 7
Quadcore I5-3570K CPU @ 3.4GH
8 gig of ram
unknown graphics card

Will upgrade ram a further 4 gig

What graphics card is a good bet to upgrade to?

If somone could explain what does what that would be a bonus!

Thanks guys

Count me in as someone else very interested in seeing Sketchup applications in the design and making of real-life "stuff". I tinker with SU for drawing and thinking my way through potential carpentry projects.

@tig said:

Much as with the Pro OBJ Exporter the geometry [mesh] is broken down by 'loose/group/component/image' and then within each of those subdivided 'by material'....

OK, I can see something of this now in Blender's outliner. After expanding the size of the outliner window, I do see that each mesh is identified as part of a component or group, or with the component name ('crown moulding') and material name. I just needed more screen space to reveal all of the text. I'm embarrassed, but Blender's interface is difficult for a modeling noob after a little time spent in SU.

I think I can more effectively combine the relevant meshes into the singular objects they were meant to be, but it still will be tedious.

Is it inevitable, technically speaking, that SU geometry Group and Component associations are lost when exporting to an OBJ file? What I tried to do was open a SU model (interior room scene) in Blender so as to try and work with Blender's rendering features. Discreet objects within the SU outliner--entertainment center cabinet, wall(s), floor, mouldings, plantation shutters--were no longer discreet objects in Blender's outliner. In Blender's outliner there was only a very long list of 'meshes'. The model/scene itself displayed properly in Blender's viewport. If I placed the cursor over what had been the 'cabinet' in SU, then clicked to select, only a single mesh among the many comprising the cabinet would be selected. There was no practical way to determine which among the hundreds of meshes in the outliner were those that comprised the cabinet exclusively, and so I could not select it individually so as to make material assignments (color, sheen, and all that).

I managed to forget about Maxwell Render. There is a free version for Sketchup--it operates as a direct plugin which incorporates the renderer right into SU. The free version of Maxwell is limited to a render resolution of 800x800, and there are some other limitations as compared to the full, licensed Maxwell.

As mentioned, Kerkythea probably comes closest. It's a standalone renderer with its own exporter which integrates seamlessly into Sketchup. Model in SU, run the Kerk exporter, and your model opens in Kerkythea ready for all of the materials, textures, and lighting setups to be made for rendering.

Note that SU groups and components as such do not export into Kerkythea. Instead, SU models/objects are identified in Kerk by the material names assigned in SU while modeling. As an example, if I am modeling a cabinet in SU, and apply a color from SU's color palette (e.g. "Color_000"--a shade of white), that cabinet is then identified in Kerkythea's outliner as "Color_000", not as "Cabinet" or "Entertainment Center" or whatever I might be calling that object. Other items in the scene, such as flooring, wall mouldings and etc. are in turn identified by their own SU material names.

You can apply all sorts or garish colors while in SU, if for no other reason than to help keep various objects distinctly different. You fix all that while choosing the final material properties once in Kerkythea--color, specularity, texture, and so on.

Kerkythea is capable of producing excellent renders approaching photorealism. However, the learning curve is very steep if you've no prior rendering software experience. Documentation is poor for Kerkythea, so you sort of start trying things to see how they work; but given the multitude of possible settings, things can get out of hand right quick.

Kerkythea renders can take a while depending upon the complexity of your scene as the rendering is entirely in CPU. Some renderers (Octane, Blender 3D's Cycles renderer, LuxRender) do all or part of the rendering in the GPU, with much reduced render times. Octane is not free; Blender and LuxRender are. Blender's Cycles render engine only functions with nVidia GPUs (GTX 5** series being the best performers). The Blender internal renderer (not Cycles) runs entirely in CPU and so is GPU agnostic. Cycles is interactive, meaning that you can alter materials and other settings in real-time during the render, unlike in Kerkythea. Blender gives you the option of two internal renderers--the original Blender Internal, and the newer Cycles if you have a compatible GPU.

To use Blender for rendering, you'll need to install TIG's OBJ-exporter plugin (free) into Sketchup--this is assuming you are using the free version of SU. You then save your SU model in OBJ format, which can then be opened in Blender. Be aware that no SU component or group associations or material assignments are seen by Blender in the OBJ file--it's just a huge pile of "meshes". If you have modeled a scene with multiple objects, you'll have a tough time selecting them individually for materials editing. In that case, you might be best served saving each scene object individually in SU as an OBJ file, opening them singly in Blender, and then welding or joining each object's meshes into one unified object (e.g. a vase, lamp table, wine glass). Then you can combine these different objects within a new Blender scene and set about the materials and lighting setups.

As with Kerkythea, Blender has a huge and difficult learning curve. But Blender is also a serious and complex modeling software, and it is free. You can choose to focus just on the rendering features. You would have to get familiar with the basic object manipulations to move things around, set up lighting, modify scenes and such. Modeling, at least certain kinds of modeling (non-organic?) is far easier in SU. I am continually amazed at how good a job the SU developers did at making SU intuitive and easy to learn. I'm basically the village idiot, yet I was successfully modeling in just a few hours. Wish Blender was that way. There are a ton of Blender tutorials at youtube and elsewhere--just have to find ones that start at your level.

LuxRender is ahybrid renderer, splitting the rendering calculations between both CPU and GPU to leverage both. Lux can utilize either AMD or nVidia GPUs within certain model ranges, so you aren't locked into a specific vendor. Unfortunately, the LuxRender Sketchup plugin is not yet ready. There is one for Blender, however, so I suppose one could export a Sketchup model as an OBJ file, open it in Blender, then export from there into LuxRender. I haven't yet tried that workaround as I don't have a suitable GPU for LuxRender.

There might be other options, but these were what came to mind immediately. The renderer landscape is continually changing, but most are licensed softwares with steep prices.

@notareal said:

It true that getting used to Kerkythea might take a bit work, but here are few fast start tutorials for Kerkythea
http://www.sketchupartists.org/tutorials/sketchup-and-kerkythea-fast-start-4architects/
http://www.sketchupartists.org/2010/10/kerkythea-take-a-deeper-look-at-materials/

I did download and print the available Kerkythea tutorials so that I could read through them as needed. My trouble is that I am kind of slow to pick up on technical things, and the vast array of adjustments to be made within Kerkythea leave me kind of lost. I want to make clear that I greatly appreciate the work put into writing Kerkythea, and especially that it has been made available to anyone at no cost. That allowed someone like me to give it a try.

Where I stumble, mostly, is that I tend to think in intuitive ways, but highly technical things often have little inherent intuitive character (e.g., choosing a 'color' to determine a degree of shininess or other characteristic besides an actual color). I also fall way behind in the tutorials when it is suggested to pick a setting or value, but there is no real explanation as to why, or what makes certain settings appropriate, or why other switches in the configuration window are left alone. It probably all makes good sense for those who have plenty of prior modeling and rendering experience in other softwares--that's something I do not have. I imagine it is very challenging and time consuming to construct tutorials for complete newbies.

I will keep trying