Okay, I'm convinced.
On your recommendation I downloaded Twilight and I can definitely get passable renders out of it with essentially a one button click.
Very impressed with both the quality of the render and the price and the speed (considering I did nothing - set no lights, altered no materials).
Of course this kind of software could put me out of business.

Thanks 3deviator -

I dragged some displacement maps I use in modo into my SketchUp scene and now I have displacement. I assumed downloading some of the files from this thread and hitting Render without doing anything else would work but for some reason it doesn't, not sure why. But whatever, I seem to have overcome the problem.

@unknownuser said:

Toolbars fixed

LAA enabled

Could you explain these two? By Toolbars fixed you don't mean that the toolbars go back to where they belong after the SketchUp window has been re-sized do you?

By the way - I took your advice from my other thread about rendering and downloaded a trial of Twilight - I'll make my extremely positive comments about the program over there.

Over the last few weeks I've been moving to a new computer.
In the process my demo for SketchUp 8 kind of got lost - it doesn't matter because I had no time for it anyways - my overclocking got screwed up so I was in computer hell for a bit there.

Question - now that it's been out for awhile is there a consensus as to whether or not the upgrade is worth the cost? A necessary upgrade or no? I don't use Google Earth so those improvements have no use for me.

Thoughts? Opinions?

Thanks

Whenever this subject comes up all of the available programs are thrown into the discussion without adequate regard to cost or setup time.

V-Ray is $700 but LightUp is $150.

I wonder if anyone out there has the necessary experience to pen a short review of the lower cost options - Twilight, LightUp, ShaderLight, etc. My question would be - to what extent do they actually offer a one button solution?

I model and render in modo and I'm going to add V-Ray to my list of acquired software as soon as I can justify the cost. But both of these programs require some setup. I'm curious about which of the 3 low cost options actually produce a passable render with little or no setup for those situations when you're under time pressure. This morning I produced a couple of quick renders for a client just to show her development on her project. They didn't need to be great, their purpose was only to show ongoing progress. I did them in V-Ray but the time I invested is kind of lost. A cheaper, one button solution would have been more appropriate.

TIA in advance for any replies.

Vray is at the higher end of pricing and it's not the easiest program to learn but from my limited knowledge I find that it 'gets' wood better than other programs I've used. Something about the light. There is an adage that says you can make any rendering program do what any other rendering program does if you know how to use it. I don't find that to be true. I use modo and now, on a 30 day demo, Vray, and I find the light in each to be very different and very distinctive.

Also, keep in mind that some programs are plug-ins and others are standalone apps. Vray is a plug-in so it works inside SketchUp. You can't use it to render a model from another program unless you convert it and bring it into SketchUp. Thea on the other hand is a stand alone program so you can bring a model into it from any program that it has a plug-in for.

There are pluses and minuses to each of these approaches. Working inside a program means that you don't have to export the model every time you make a change. It's worth asking yourself how you work. Some people complete a model and make few changes once it's done. A stand alone program works well for them. But I make changes all the time so exporting the model to a separate rendering program gets tedious. Each to his own.

Hope this helps in some way.

Very frustrated.
I'm trying to learn a bit of Vray before my demo expires, then I'm back to modo until some more $$ comes in.

I can't seem to get displacement to work. Is there a global switch somewhere that I'm overlooking? I've downloaded all of the files in this thread, opened them without changing any settings and I get nothing.

Any ideas of what I'm doing wrong or what I'm not doing?

Thanks

@unknownuser said:

That is very cool Pete. I wish I were in New York to see it in person.

Pretty sure it's been taken down. I saw it soon after it was erected and it was quite spectacular.

Just the texture files when I Export.

When I work in SketchUP I create a file that has the model and all of it's textures in it for organizational purposes. The file for this model has 4 wood textures (JPGs). When I Export it as OBJ the file shows the SU model and 77 textures - all instances of the original 4. This shows up in the file folder, not in the Materials panel or anywhere else in SketchUp. But when I open the model in modo I have 77 textures in the Shader Tree and 77 texture polygon groups in the Statistics panel - so the file madness is coming along with the model.

I can rebuild this model easily but my curiosity wants to know why this is happening. I can make a simple cube, copy it and distort the 6 faces and get nothing but the original textures when I Export so it has something to do with this particular model.

Thanks for your input so far.

Thanks thomthom - that was it.

I 'distort' each incidence of wood texture depending on where it is on the model to make it look correct. I didn't realize doing that would create a separate instance of the texture in the texture file.

Live and learn.

When I export this model as an OBJ, the files in the texture file duplicate like crazy rabbits. Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening?
The model is very simple - no components or items from anywhere else like the Warehouse. It's got 4 materials and I have an HDRI in the scene. It wouldn't be such a drag in SketchUp but when I Export to modo the file duplications are killing me.

Thanks in advance for any advice you have.

Thanks so much for the replies.

I'm going to take the topic over into the SketchUp Discussions thread. I experimented with the model some more this morning and it turns out the texture duplications occur at the moment I Export as OBJ. So, probably not a Vray issue. Driving me crazy nonetheless.

Thanks again.

Can anyone tell me what's going on here. My texture files are replicating like bunnies. I think it has to do with Vray but I'm not sure.

Thanks for any input I can get. It's madness when I take the model over into modo.

I make shop drawings so your woes are the story of my days.

As was pointed out above, the biggest cause of inaccuracy is coming from the client's end but I often work with drawings that have been converted - from VectorWorks to PDF or PDF to DWG or whatever. This process introduces inaccuracies due to how the software is reading the file. I use a program called Print2CAD to convert PDFs to DWG but it's only accurate to something like .003". Not a problem for someone looking at the drawing but it makes the drawing unusable for me unless I re-draw.

I find SketchUp to be a useful tool in this situation. Sometimes I get drawings that have so much useless data in them (deleted blocks, etc.) that it's worthwhile to run them through SketchUp and back out again as DWGs. That results, as you know, in every line segment being a separate line which is a problem in itself but I've found ways to work around that.

Thanks for both replies. Right clicking and choosing Select after 'opening' a group does exactly what I want.

Yes, models come in from the Warehouse with a weird assortment of materials and when I select one in the Materials panel and hit Delete, I always get a splash screen saying that material is in use - even when it clearly is not.

Thanks again.

Is there any way to see where a material is in the model by selecting it in the Materials panel? I brought a model in from the Warehouse and suddenly I've got dozens of materials and I'd like a simple way to highlight them like I can do in modo so I can see where they all are.

Possible?

Thanks

Thanks.

You understood my question perfectly.

I wish there was a way to put my cursor over something and have the whole file path for that item displayed (or is there a way to do that but I'm not aware of it?).

I'm working on a brand new computer that has very few files on it (heaven!) so not being able to find that particular file is sort of aggravating. I made a new material library so it's no big deal. I just want to avoid going mad spending hours trying to find where the file is in my computer.

For future reference - the file ext. is .skm

I have a 'library' in my Materials list called Alex (that's me). But I don't know where the file is. When I got to Program Files (86)> Google SketchUp 7 > Materials all the other material categories are there but not Alex. Alex has a material in it. I can access the material and use it but I don't know where it is.

Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the replies. I suspected it was normal behavior but I didn't want to go on a wild goose chase hunting down the culprit if it was an expected situation.

I downloaded a demo of Vray yesterday (1.49.01) and now there's a real lag in opening SketchUp. Is that normal? Expected? Is there any way I can tell SketchUp to not load Vray unless I tell it to? It's not a big lag but moving in and out of different files was instantaneous before I downloaded Vray so it's kind of a drag now.

Also, when working with older files (I've just moved to a new computer and I'm arranging and deleting and doing all of that) I get a Bugsplat when I close. It doesn't seem to affect working with the files so I close the window and go on. Not sure if this is related to the Vray demo download.

Thanks in advance for any input.