Overall I'm cynical about AI but I have started using it for conceptual work and creating renderings fast which seems to garner greater interest with clients.

Most of it right now is not as advertised. Particularly with architecture. I have to put text input to create the rendering I want and right when I think I'm making headway it completely changes the design.

It's hard to control textures and materials. I went from doing some AI renderings -- on ReRenderAI -- and eventually used the same SU model to develop my own renderings. It's much easier to change colors and materials from there along with design elements.

I haven't used it in weeks. I have some success using Facebook ads to get work. It's hit and miss. Prolonged messenger chats that go nowhere. Many people literally think $900 for a set of plans is too expensive.

Everything is changing which is nothing new. From the days when I first started drafting in a land survey company. Hand drafting with technical pens on vellum. To reluctantly getting a computer and learning Autocad by way of a DOS command.

So I'm willing to use AI if and when the results work and look good and maybe get me more work or more ideas from the client. I'm still using my 20+ year old Autocad. I'm half way to 70 and have nowhere to go.

@Mike-Amos Mike, yep. I am curious about Rayscraper. I've seen some really great results.

Sometimes I think about getting Thea alongside D5. It's more work for creating a render. There are times when I think D5 is a little cartoonish. It has a lot of positives. Perhaps when I was starting out using D5.

I used Twilight on a few projects at first right after using Kerkythea for a while. That was my main first rendering engine. I think there was this other Metropolis Light Transport plugin for Sketchup to experiment with.

I neglected learning rendering even though I putzed around a lot with Kerkythea. It was with Thea render when I really started to sink my teeth into rendering.

Rich, there's a long thread of crash reports at the D5 community page. One person thanked me for bringing up the Turbo Mode bug. I just tested it with Turbo Mode on and MCE set to disabled but with temp limits. It D5 didn't crash and it took 10 minutes longer to render 6 scenes. Go figure. I didn't repeat the test. I could I suppose. Three years ago D5 had the same Turbo Mode crash bug too.

Mike. Not sure yet about changing over. I've gotten so used to this D5 workflow. For now.

I narrowed it out to Turbo Mode being enabled in my BIOS. Apparently anything over the rating on my CPU will crash D5. It's the only program that's causing this. This actually happened about 3 years ago. I had to figure this all out myself. D5 should be designed to run without making these kinds of adjustments. Like all software.

Yoni said Sketchup rolled back this update. Over at the Sketchup Forum.

Yoni said Sketchup is aware of the issue and responded to him in "record time." Someone let the thing out without checking under the hood.

@Rich-O-Brien Yep. So I went ahead and left the update in place but completely replaced the js directory and it's normal again. Yoni is already checking it out. Something is wrong with one of the js (Java script) files from Sketchup.

Normal...

Well, it's one of those Monday morning's again. This time I got an update from Sketchup for Dynamic Components and it broke the Flextools dynamic component window.

See attached.

I tested this in Sketchup 2022 and 2025.

Help! I emailed Yoni about this.

Almost a month since I brought these crashes up to D5 support and still no answers. There's an obvious memory leak with this program. People should not have to adjust or degrade their operating system to run D5. It's the other way around. D5 Render should operate without users having to adjust any part of their OS, CPU, GPU or BIOS setting to use their software. It's not 1992.

How I really feel...

Blender is a big learning curve which of course would include modeling. I do use it with D5 Render with Blenderkit assets.

It's a different topic or issue but the future of Sketchup at this time is starting to become unknown. Especially with Trimble running the show. It's really an easy and fast 3D modeling software for architecture. I have thought about if and when the time come to start using Rhino.

I like the similarities between D5 and Twinmotion. Or at least what I've seen. I'm trying really hard to cope with these ever increasing crashes with D5. I know the people at their forum are nice and trying the best they can but it seems like they don't have a dedicated customer support system in place.

AI is fun and work to create some quick renders to garner the interest of clients. It's kind of boring though and a lot of text input. Then it comes up with something completely random.

Frankly, I wish I planned better and didn't have to do anything and be firmly in retirement living in Vietnam or Sweden.

Oh, and while I was typing this I had D5 Render open and it crashed all on its own.

Does anyone have any experiencing crossing over from D5 Render to Twinmotion? Someone commented that my D5 renders look a lot like Alternatives to D5 Render.

The reason I'm asking is because D5 Render has gone back to being an unstable rendering platform prone to frequent and random crashes. At the same time their customer service is close to non-existent and below par and what one should expect from a so called professional rendering software.

I realize that the learning curve at this point would be a challenge. Perhaps I'm just venting. I am certainly not at all happy with D5's customer service.

Thanks!

Here's another before and after for a kitchen remodel I'm working on.

Short video.

Another view

Something I designed on the fly while testing ReRender AI. This is D5 output with on some AI enhancement which is basically sharpening which I later added when scaling the renderings down in Photoshop. Anyway, I think it's an international style.

Modeling is Sketchup as is the topography. Windows and door are Flextools.

Bzzt...

Thanks guys. They do remain my models so I can always feel that AI is just another tool. I know I have my own personal disgruntled opinions about AI overall but with ReRender AI I've discovered an AI tool that relatively easy to use and gets pretty good results. I already did some quick AI renderings on a house I'm working on and the client now wants me to do one of my own renderings for him.

It's not perfect and has a mind of its own sometimes and it's almost impossible to get the same results all the time. It's usually a one shot deal "per rendering." Then you have to go back and work with the text prompts to get similar results. Overall though I can either have fun with it like with my train renderings or I can use it for work to get quick interior and exterior renderings in minutes which can lead to more work.

I've been using Sketchup to generate 3D models for rendering which I can also use to generate 2D cad exports to using in elevations for my plan sets. It's a 25 year old Autocad (ADT 3.3) which still works and is like my old favorite pencil.

Here's another ReRenderAI example. The first is just an original sketch with no material that's generated in D5 from a Sketchup model.

Another before and after using "enhance" with the text prompt "Put this train in an enclosed weathered train repair shop on a lift with a lot of dirty train locomotive repair men around it.."