OK, Thanks... I see... It's 2D trees...
But it looks really excellent...

That's very nice, Pete..!!
(Although I wonder why you've posted this in the SketchUp Gallery and not in the Renders Gallery... )

Any way... I can see that many of the plants are Form Fonts placed directly in SU, but what about the background trees..??
Is it just a background image, or are the trees 3D as well..??
Was this render made using Podium 2..??

Yeah... Many things can improve these renders...
I.e. you should try using a spherical sky hdri probe...
Also adding more details - such as grass and much more plants - will help you get these images more alive...

You say that this is your first render post - but for how long have you been working with a render program..??
And also - What render program did you use..??
(look alot like KT, and if it is KT, then you can get a lot of help on these at the KT Forum... )

Hhhmmmm....
Don't get me wrong on this... It sure looks good, but I have some disturbing things, which makes this render look a bit too poor...

I.e. the brushed steel on the cooker hood seem out of scale...
The wooden texture on the stairs don't look right... (Is it same material you've used on the door?)
The lightning of the room/scene don't seem right - at least not to me...?!?

But apart from this it looks nice...
(Although you can always argue that adding more details to the scene will make it look more realistic... )

@solo said:

You can evn import a mesh with diffuse, bump and alpha map attached that will render in KT and Podium perfectly.

Really... That sounds excellent...!!
I've never worked with Vue myself, but maybe it's time to have a closer look now...
BTW, Thanks for your quick reply...

Pete, I've been wondering... What program have you used for texturing these spheres..??
SU is crap when it comes to this...

Ha, ha, ha You just couldn't resist adding those spiders, could you...!?!
But it looks really good..!

On the site it says very clear...

@unknownuser said:

is an Plugin for Google Sketchup Pro 5.
This Plugin does not work in the free version of Sketchup

And further...

@unknownuser said:

Releas 1.0 works until end of 2008 !

But this statement isn't true...
Unfortunately the timelimit is still there...

Hope to hear some updates on this...

Really nice, Pete!!
Thanks for sharing...

Yeah... They look really excellent, Kwistenbiebel...

Only crit I can come up with would be on the missing caustics in the water and the too shiny tiles...
But it would definitely make my client happy...

Alright... No worries...
Like yourself, English isn't my native language...
I was unsure about what you meant and just didn't get the point...
But thanks for clarification...

@solo said:

...if anything wait for Podium version 2 as it will not be KT based.

Very interesting info indeed...
And you're absolutely sure about this..??

What will be the successor..??

@unknownuser said:

Glad to see that KT has a dedicated, jealous team.

Not sure I get the point here...
We have just been pointing out the fact that the engine behind Podium is Kerkythea...
So what's there to be jealous about..??

To no-ones surprise, I happen to agree with Fletch...

@unknownuser said:

Hmmm.... I can show you scene where Podium will render many times faster than Kerky.

The point I wanted to make was that this can't be true, since the engine behind Podium is Kerkythea...!!

I have high respect for the Podium plug-in, but that's only when it comes to the way TBD have made it... The ease of use, where anybody can make a nice photo realistic render, without knowing anything about renders at all...

On the other hand, I can show many renders made in Kerkythea, which can't be achieved in Podium... Reason for this being that KT have so many much more advanced settings and options, which can't be made with Podium because of the limitations made to make it much easier to use...

@unknownuser said:

OK as you have better idea maybe you should organise the setup...

Doesn't this conflict with your first statement (the one shown above..)..??
You said that you can show a scene, and now you want me to arrange the set-up..??

I can show you some renders made with KT, which you can't achieve in Podium, but what's the point really...??

@sepo said:

I don't understand what do you mean by "And please also tell us how we can test it in Podium ourself..."

I'm not surprised...
First of all to get an idea about the render time in Podium ourself, and secondly to enable us to see what the output should look like...

We're ready...
And please also tell us how we can test it in Podium ourself...
(That will also enable us to see what the output should look like...

You can send the scene to frederik [at] kerkythea.net

Hi majid,

Those renders are really good...
The lightning in the first image could be much better, but the second render is really nice...

Can I please ask you also to post these at the KT Forum..??
I'm sure that you will get many advices about how to take these renders to next level...

@sepo said:

Hmmm.... I can show you scene where Podium will render many times faster than Kerky. It all depends on presets.

I sure would like to see that, Sepo...

With all due respect to the Podium plug-in, which IMHO is very intuitive, easy to use and well made...
But as we both know, the render engine behind Podium is the Kerkythea SDK...!

Regardless of whatever kind of tweaking and optimizations you can claim to have made, the engines are identical (apart from some exceptions available in KT and not in Podium...) and thereby I really can't see how you can claim that Podium will render many times faster than KT...

But if you want to give us (the KT Team) an example, I'm sure that we will be ready to give it a fair test...

@unknownuser said:

The render engine is only part of a great render, knowing how to use it is the other part.

That's SO well said, Pete..!!

I'm with tinanne... Personally I leave the sky to white (like in SU5) and then I might use a background sky-image, a sky-dome or a style...
In my latest project I used the Instant Watercolour 2 made by Ross Macintosh...

I guess that you're right, Juju... Thanks for the answer any way...

In the previous SU Forum, I recall that no-one said anything about the functionalities in the SU6 version (while it was still in beta...), but at least we were informed that beta-testing was ongoing...