@edison said:

My V-ray is 1.48.96, windows. Default number is 50, and I made 150, now renders looks great, but takes more time..

Glad it worked for you

Do you want to post an updated image?

Did you try the "winetricks" application? It come with installers specifically for SU 7 and Su 8. That said, there are many issues with various graphics cards, so wine and graphic applications don't work well on all machines. I also had issues with getting some of the rubies to work. That was the point at which I gave up on it. Was just a thing to play with so wasn't really critical for me to have it work.

did you look at the material downloads from the Chaosgroup website? There is at least one water vismat that I recall.

here's the scene again with just sunlight and GI. It's possible to get a nice day-lit render without all the hidden lights. I think processing the blurry reflections for many light sources is probably the biggest contributor to the long render times. The time is reduced by more than 4 times!

A few things I found that makes render time for this scene very long:
-image sampler noise thresh is .008
-You have detail enhancement on
-LC is 1200
-the ss material has anisotropy on and subdivs of 32.
-most of your materials have subdivs of 32,

I tried rendering at 800x533 with noise thresh at .015, DE off, LC at 800, and subdivs for the metal and countertops and most other materials at 16. My render time was just under 30 minutes. (My processor is an AMD Phenom II X6 1055T)

Best,
Andy

hehe, or a diversion of man-hours, depending on the staffing levels (see asgvis for example...)

You just change the sun in Sketchup, the vray sun takes into account the color of the sky at different parts of the day. You may need to adjust your camera exposure for morning or evening light or your render may come out too dark.
Best,
Andy

Just to second Bob James, I also have the first version that came bundled, and I have not found a way to update the plugin either. Would be nice to have some working link.

If you log on the ChaosGroup website, there's a whole section of downloadable materials for VfSU, including chrome and water materials.

Interesting - I would try rendering without the brushed stainless steel material. I've found that one tends to make my rendering times longer. Actually, one troubleshooting you can do is to do a render with global material override and turn materials on one at a time and see the difference in time to render.

@unknownuser said:

@andybot said:

(...) change your Hsph. Subdivisions to something line 150

150?

That's way too high. Try 50 instead.

60 is default. I typically go to 90 or more to get a smoother image. It doesn't add a whole lot of time for me, but definitely helps with the splotchiness.

@stefanq said:

Hi!
The only thing that caught my attention, is your irradiance map min and max rate. They are way off.
@3200x2400
min/max = -6/-3

Good point - definitely decrease your irrmap rates as you render larger size. I'm curious - what is your time to render at 800x600? Also, what are your material settings for your glossy materials? Seems like there's perhaps some glossy reflection settings that are very high? By the way, which version are you using right now? Are you using 1.49.01? It has many fixes that help with render speed over the older versions.

It looks like your settings are pretty close to default settings.
Few questions:

• what is your sketchup file info - number of edges/ faces, so on? Do you have high-poly components in your model (like 3D plants)?
• do you have displacement in your materials, and is that material close to the camera?
• Do you have any vray lighting or emmissive materials?

A lot more depends on the complexity of your scene and your materials than just on your settings options.

*edit: (Oh - hey man, it's you Kelper, how's it going! I just looked at your post on the chaosgroup forum too. Kinda telling that I check out the sketchucation forum before I look at the CG forum...)

Nice!

When I have a free moment I definitely intend to do a trial of the plugin.

@jason_maranto said:

No, Maxwell fully supports normal smoothing, however normal smoothing is just a trick -- if you look at the profile of the object you will always the see the low-poly nature of the geometry... there is no way to do anything about that. If you want a smooth profile you will have to create smooth curves.

With every regular type of material normal smoothing is more than enough to "fool" the eye -- so long as you do not look too closely at the profile of the curve.

Best,
Jason.

Yes, I'm well aware of the profile issue. So it is possible to have the SU smoothing apply to a regular material face - for example a reflective surface and get a smooth result? It looks like in Jeff's image that the curve face shows the facets.

@jason_maranto said:

In addition, in the future I would use more segments per curve for anything going through Maxwell -- Maxwell loves high-poly detail and the more segments the smoother things will be. This is particularly true for anything that will get a dielectric (water/glass) or SSS material... in fact when doing glass vases and whatnot I will use circles with a minimum of 180 sides (but often 360 sides) because "normal smoothing" is just a low-poly visual trick that does not work for smoothing profiles, refraction, and caustics.

So I've been following this thread with some mild interest, as I'm always looking for good rendering solutions. Do you mean to say that Maxwell ignores the facet smoothing that's done in SU? My experience in Vray for SU is that things improved immensely once that was incorporated into the plugin (1.05 didn't have it, current versions do, it's a noticeable difference, as you can see if Jeff's posted image)

network, network, and network some more. It's a very crowded field, and the more ways you can connect and get yourself in front of potential employers, the better off you are. Find out what their needs are and tailor your portfolio to that.

Good point about the pro version. I wonder if Google considers it a pro software or not? Hmm, a trip into the mind of googleplex...

@jorge2011 said:

Sketchup is an excellent program for this reason is that it always requires a little more.
perhaps, organizer of plugins, better performance, drawing and modification tools more powerful, enhanced animation and scene management, enhancements to apply and manipulate materials, improvements and new features for dynamic components, improvements to the outline and so on .... .
sketchup much can be improved, adding new features.

@fuzzion said:

Simply because SU, when bought over by Google was never meant to be a CAD competitor to other processional software.
As far as the Board of directors are concerned at Google, SU is at its peak of satisfying the general populace
of google earth users and science fair projects.

That's what I was thinking - what is there in the functionality of SU as it is that would prompt Google to change anything about it? Sure there might be some minor bug fixes, but do you really see "them" investing in making this a much more robust 3D modeling software? I am mildly curious how important sketchucation and plugins, etc. are to Google and their needs for this product. I see it as rather fringe compared to their core interests. (i.e. Google Earth)

can you update to 1.49.01 and see if you still have the same problems?