One alternative not mentioned is Truespace (now free). It has most of features included in XSI, C4D etc. including bones, animation, more complete modeling tools than Silo, plus a not half bad render engine. If you are interested take a look at their organic modeling videos. http://www.caligari.com/products/trueSpace/ts5/Courses/WorkspaceOrganicModeling1.asp?Cate=Training&Subcate=Fundamental
The interface is not inspiring but not nearly as daunting as Blender.
Here is one of the past winners, Dennis Allain, and how he does his illustrations. 3D program plus Photoshop.
http://www.cgarchitect.com/upclose/article1_DA.asp
I find his illustrations are a cut above almost all the other pros.
I would like to see a dedicated thread for illustration and possibily include inspirational examples.
Juju, I think you are probably correct in your concept of what real time rendering means is this case. Here is a link to an almost identical scene as the first animation, but the shadows are clearly there in the first part of animation, which I think shows it is rendering with shadows rather quickly.
The 'real time render' part got me too. I think it means all the frames in the animation were rendered in 15 minutes total for all frames. Considering the time to render a frame in other applications - this sounds pretty darn fast. But who knows if that is actually the case.
I downloaded Truespace and have been gradually learning a little about it.
Here is an interesting 'real time animation' that looks pretty smooth and hi poly. This would be a usefull capability. Would anyone like to see SU be able to do this sort of heavy lifting? Or is SU already able to do comparable hi poly animations?
Caligari (owned for a little while by microsoft) is offering Truespace 3d free to the public. This is a pretty full function 3d program including rendering, rigging and animation. A pushback to Sketchup for sure.
Coen, excellent and interesting newsletter. Thanks for your hard work.
I can't help thinking the fears about GE are overblown.
Alex, just great matte painting. Please keep showing this sort of thing!!
Really enjoyed your web site.
Google is building quite an infrastructure around sketchup, that is a support team that is reaching out in many directions. They are bloging it in a big way. Looking for Sketchup pros as instructors says something big is coming. Could be release 7. Also SU is so capable compared to older CAD programs, improving SU with a new release might throw many of the dino CAD apps into the dust bin.
As far as need for photorealistic rendering. Google could afford to produce a really speedy renderer. The addons to SU currents do not seem (hearsay) to be as fast as some of the speedy rendering applications available in places such as Modo. Speed does make a big difference in the rendering arena. Probably SU could maximize integratiion of render component better than anyone else. Will they do it. Maybe.
Should have said Sketchup 7 will be released on or before the date of base camp 08. My dyslexia affects more than my spelling sometimes.