I've used the 3D letters feature often. I now want to recess letters into a stone surface for a monument. Any suggestions on how to do this?

I'm continuing to enjoy and appreciate the comments being offered. Yes, I'm looking for something not too expensive and without too steep a learning curve... my renderings augment/supplement my work as an architect; I am not a professional renderer. So, something that notches up my quality would be useful. So far, I've downloaded Shaderlight and am testing it out for their two-week trial period.

I truly appreciate all the great comments and suggestions. Now I want to download several and try them out.

PR? My only experience is within SketchUp. I'ved used it for around 10 years. I'm going to upload a typical render from one of my models.

Typical model image.

I am looking for a reasonable purchase price, something as fun to work with as SketchUp, and something where the learning curve isn't too steep. After all, for me as an architect the rendering is a tool, not an end-product. My rendering doesn't need to be quite as polished as a professional renderer.

Thanks Bep. I'm looking forward to trying it out. Why do you also use it after you export to Autocad?

All good points. In asking for people's favorites I'm hoping for anecdotal stories about what people like and why. If 90% of the respondents like Program "A", that probably says a lot about it's popularity and is probably something to look into. I don't have the time to download three or four different programs and try to learn them.

As I previously wrote, I'm an architect looking to improve the look of my SU models and fly-thrus. I create both interior and exterior models of actual projects. But I've never used any photo-realistic add-ons to step up the quality. I'm most interested in interior/exterior lighting: ease of use, ability to create exterior night scenes, ease of integration with SU, etc.

Thanks~

I am an architect wanting to improve the quality of my SU models and videos. My photorealistic lighting/rendering needs include both interior and exterior views/animations. I have been looking at a number of different photorealistic rendering and photorealistic video rendering software programs. What's your favorite and why?

I understand that sketchup converts all curved to straight lines. I'm thinking more in terms of how every straight line segment is divided into individual pieces at each intersection with another line. For example: a window that has muntins (say 2 wide x 3 high). The conversion turns the vertical muntin into 3 pieces, and each horizontal into 2 pieces. Plus, the window surround is then also divided into individual segments. It's very time-consuming trying to join these pieces back together. And if I choose to leave all the pieces separated, it makes for a messy acad drawing.

Does anyone know of a plug-in or Rubyscript to helps cleanup all the little line segments that converting SketchUp models back into Autocad produces?