very nice render!!!
Only a couple of observations: I see better use of dirty textures at the point where the building meets the ground, also, I noticed that in all yours renders the glasses are always coplanar whereas, in my opinion, you may give more realistic by windows not coplanar, or perhaps maybe even the shader should be reviewed becouse we are talking about windows maked at times when the windows were nn perfect but very often slightly curved.

nice stuff! would you tell us something about times renderings and the shaders ??

Sincerely I believe that you are an alien ............... but where do you find time to do such modeling?.....

helloooo Tridem!!! amazing stuff by thearender!

Amazing! Which Blender release did you use for these renderings?

just yesterday I discovered this feature of cycles ......
Youtube Video

@unknownuser said:

Understood although free does not always equate to best. I was just trying to show a low cost ($995) solution for great quality rendering with a built in real time solution that works.

Scott believe me, no one doubts about the ability to Showcase but if you take a look around the net to looking for cycles tutorials you will be amazed!

scottpara,
thanks for the advice and compliments for the works, but there is a fundamental difference between showcases and cycles: you buy the first but the second .....................is freeeeeeeeeeeee!!

@michaliszissiou said:

Exporting using what?

1. you own the pro version
2. you use the free ruby obj exporter.
3. a third party on line method.

In any case vertices aren't welded. You can't apply smoothing.

I use free ruby obj exporter and I can smooth the geometry!......sometimes I get the impression that we are talking about different software....

@michaliszissiou said:

Something like this?
http://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=159702&d=1320515852
It was some fast render, just experimental.
I can't search for what you're asking now, there lot of fine examples. Not possible for blender internal engine anyway.
Neither your car image is archivis scene so, here's mine, using cycles.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24090090/Vol3Nep.jpg

But my question is this.
Do we have a decent way to export SU projects to blender? With textures or without them.
I know much about it but 'decent' means something else

the sense of this post is not to wish to demonstrate that the internal blender render engine is better than cycles ;on the contrary, just because I know the enormous potential of the cycles I wanted to test the good old internal engine blender for fun.
with regard to decent export from SketchUp,I have always exported obj format model textured without problems