[highlight=#ffbf00:31zmahig]Calling all Mac users![/highlight:31zmahig] (Mac OS 10.6 or later)
Public Beta for Twilight Render for Mac is now open to all.
Get Started with Twilight Render for Mac

Be sure to check out the video tutorials to get you started quickly!

Twilight Render is a hybrid physically based photo-realistic render engine fully integrated with SketchUp.
It allows you to render very complex scenes, lighting, and materials without exporting your files or leaving SketchUp.

Render SketchUp models with biased and unbiased methods on an unlimited number of processors. Continue working in and saving your SketchUp models while Twilight is rendering in the background. No exporting. No mess on your hard drive! Easy to share.

Twilight offers physically accurate materials, photometric (IES) lights, image based (HDR) lighting, a long list of easy-to-choose optimized preset render settings, animation with SketchyPhysics and ProperAnimation, and more!

We welcome you to the Twilight Render website, and invite you to our forum and on-line shop.

Thank you Micione, for sharing this little gem of a program, creates 3D endless knots (celtic knots) for free in OBJ format (and others).
This was a fascinating related site which teaches you how to draw them for yourself.

I would like to create a nice endless knot lamp to print on a 3D printer.

Using JF obj importer plugin for SketchUp did not allow me to import the 3D file, but I was able to open the OBJ into Deep Exploration and export as .skp file.
Which opened perfectly into SketchUp. I know there are other obj importer plugins for SU I was just too lazy to install them.

Then inside of SketchUp:
I used Artisan to subdivide and smooth the geometry. (could have used one or two more subdivides )
Painted the object a color of red (or red and yellow).
Used the Twilight Material Editor Template > Blurry Metal

Then I inserted the Twilight Lighting Studio from the Twilight Render components pack for licensed users.
I turned off the sun light, and set sky to Sky Probe and used the apartment probe from this thread to light the scene.
I set exposure to .5 or .6 in the camera tab, and adjusted the gamma to .9 or something.
Render on Easy 09.

In the second knot, I discovered the 3D geometry options in the program, so eliminated the need for Artisan for subdividing/smoothing.

For future reference on the Twilight Render website there is a "Tutorials" link.
There you will find the video tutorials for Twilight Render SketchUp plugin. They are made in such a way that people that do not understand spoken English so well can still learn how to use the plugin. (Videos are also available in Spanish and Japanese)
The next place to go for beginners would naturally be the FAQ section of the user forum. In this case, it is not a list of some odd made-up words that no one actually ever asks about. No, it's actually a list of the most frequently asked 'beginner' questions.

Warming up the sky: There are many controls for physical sky, and color of sun, sun radius (how soft the sun shadows are) in the Light Editor dialog for Twilight. Check these tips for beginners wanting to warm up the sun and sky, and speed up renderings and general working in SketchUp:
Default Sky Setting for Twilight... and speed up SU (includes an excellent default sun and sky .skp template file)
First thing to do to warm up the Sun and Sky
In addition of course you can use any spherical sky image in .hdr or .jpg format.

If somehow the User Manual (comprehensive, fully hyper-linked, well organized, and searchable) does not have an answer to your question, you can check out the Best Of Tips and Tricks - The Master List

Lastly the Twilight Render community forum is very friendly, helpful, and welcoming to all. It is very similar to the lovely folks here at the SketchUcation forum.

Finally, users of the free trial still get free support from our user forum. People who purchase a Twilight Render license get access to the Red Carpet Section of the user forum, a lot of free advanced video tutorials, user content, scenes, etc.

Indeed, impressive work as always, Fred!
On a laptop with 32bit SU and Twilight.

@nomeradona said:

great render. you are really pushing twiglight fred. the developer should put you in the annals...

Fymoro is of course, already in "the annals" as a 2011 Top Ten Artist for Twilight Render.

We were well aware of many mac users that already own a license for Twilight Render. They already used Twilight, and therefore do not have a lot of questions about how it works. They can easily take a scene they already prepared in Windows, open it in Twilight on their Mac, and render. It is therefore, both fair and quite practical that we should seek licensed users of Twilight to beta test.

We are not trying to exclude anyone, and hope that no offense was given. We do believe that Twilight Render Mac lovers will give us their honest opinion.

We are sorry if it offends you, but we are also confident that we will not be creating great UI changes just for Mac, as development and technical support is more efficient when everyone is on the same page... and UI.

Twilight Render is a fully integrated plugin for rendering within SketchUp, it is not an independent rendering studio.

We are looking for people to test the soon to be released Mac version of Twilight Render 1.5!

Testers must:

• be licensedusers
• run OSX 10.6 or later on an Intel (x86 or 64bit) machine
• be willing to assist developers in diagnosing problems by sending examples of problem scenes, providing clear, detailed descriptions of how the problem was caused

*Preference given to users who have contributed constructively to the Twilight Render forum community.

Please post at the Twilight Forum here if you are willing and eager to help out! We appreciate all the help we can get in rolling out the Mac version of Twilight Render 1.5

Marcus, that's just breathtaking. Lovely.

Can you show us a section cut of the model? I'm curios how it's held up inside.
How in the world did you model this?

Hi Joel, your resilience in life after tragedy is inspiring. Thank you for sharing.
I imagine it took many many hours of work to put this together.

I started this thread for days like this.
Subject: Design Ideas and Inspiration

@paul russam said:

Here's a link to a very rough YouTube vid showing the Pixeet app on my iPad:

very very

Very nice, thank you gentlemen!

Very nice, Thank you, TIG and Rich!

TIG
Fantastic job on this set of tools. They are an "essential set" IMHO for any architect using SU.
Thank you so much for sharing this.

First class work, David!

I'm surprised that tfdesign is not in the "Top SketchUcators" group.

I wholeheartedly support teaching kids SketchUp! Great work!

ok, thank you, TIG.
It sort-of works. I actually have something a bit more complex version of the scene I posted and the "delete edge-explode group-regroup-retry super drape" method does not appear to work on that version. It did, however, give me a nice bugsplat.

So I will use with caution. I think the drape+superdrape method for moving the materials automatically may be a nice way to go.

I was actually hoping for a drape function like in other 3D apps that will drape a mesh like a cloth over an object. Is there some plugin like that for SU already of which I am unaware?

Thanks for sharing, TIG!
Maybe I'm using it incorrectly or expecting something different?

I expected that it would look like it does with the Drape tool, only with the materials painted as well. But clearly it's not like that.

here's the scene to try

Wow! I will definitely have to keep an eye on this ambitious project. Thanks for sharing!

Beauty model, Rich! The renders help highlight the great modeling. Perhaps needs some detail where the spokes hit the rims.

Fantastic modeling!