Simply awesome Nomer !
I love the use of bright/dark contrasts and the spot light effect really works.

Keep'em coming

Thank you guys. Much appreciated.

And thanks again to Paul for the model. He should come in and collect the flowers .

Thanks and you are damn right ...CPU is smoking

Rendering this scene actually was a nightmare with multiple crashes all around.
I think I obtained a succes rate less than 30 % when hitting the render button on different render apps.
All the rest were bugsplats, SU stalls etc...
This makes me conclude that this is more a Sketchup problem than a render app problem.
Also I think render software developers should try to seperate the render process from SU (In the task manager the CPU resources are combined with the SU one).

The crashes are troublesome, certainly if you really need the software in your professional workflow.
Luckily for me these church images were play and not work.
In my professional work (architect) I expect a bit more stable environment, a thing Google Sketchup cannot provide me anymore when I start using render software on big models.....but than again, SU is so easy. Yes sir.

And a last one (also Vray).
Thank you Paul for borrowing your (fine) model.
It was a nice exercise on overcoming the RAM issues one can experience in trying to render from SU.
This issue is one of the major things to be solved in next SU updates imho (although I have the feeling the Google team does not hear its CG customers...maybe we are too much of a niche market )

second vray shot (semi 'unbiased' settings (Quasi Mont Carlo), thus the noise):

a Vray version:(some Jpeg artifacts in the upper right corner of the image)

Rendering the interior is a tough nut to crack as the computers RAM is taken to its limits when pushing render.
Rendered with Podium 1.5: Render time about 35 minutes

Actually Paul, I liked the animated gif a lot. (going to hell....going to heaven). I would just have taken the literal religion names out.
Any chance to see an adapted version posted again?

I am not going into a religion thing... (but I would be careful not to arouse people though as it's a delicate subject to some)
Just rendering along. This time using Fry and with a slightly different stone texture:

I hope to try out Indigo for this scene (I like Whaats renderings a lot) as soon as I get the web based GUI to work.

An image of the real thing:

That last image looks awesome Whaat.

I am experimenting a little with Paul's model myself.
A 'bombastique' rendering in Podium (not as photoreal though):

Hi all,
I found this model on 3warehouse, from the hand of FL Wright: "Massaro residence" : the design sketches for the cantilevered house were made in the 50's but the residence was post mortem built in 2007 (design reconstruction by a disciple of FLW).

You can find the model here:
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=a90fa77dc812122aa67c15d9691c6a73&prevstart=0

The texturing on the original was really bad so I quickly changed some of the mats, rendered it for 10 minutes in Podium 1.51 (noisy settings) and did a dirty 'mask in' with some image grabs from a similar lake on Google images.

I didn't spent much time on matching the view correctly...so this is kind of an interpretation. As I said above: quick and dirty

Regards,
kwistenbiebel

The Podium 1.5 rendering (+ pshop for surroundings):

Wow Paul, your modeling skills are really good.(both church as that latest project) and i must say whaat captured it really well in Inndigo....

For a moment I though that real photo was the next of Whaat's renderings
Great job Whaat! (and thank you for Skindigo which works really well !!)

Thanks Dylan,
Most of the time I browse the web in search for decent textures and often I adapt them in photoshop to get them just the way I like.
Texturing is one of the key elements for rendering imho.

Thank you for the nice comments.
This is the SU native output:

The clothes are a .3ds drop in. (import).

@unknownuser said:

As I started scrolling down the images slowly, I was half expecting it will all lead to a complete human body model down the page .... .
Guite

...Thank God Solo didn't go as far as 'under the belt'

and NO Solo, this is not a challenge
(Unless you would do the gender switch ) ...

I am wondering.....
How would one texture this model with all the typical skin features like poors and hair and stuff.
I guess this is an impossible thing to do in sketchup?

Although really really nice...it would be even more great to have it completely photoreal

He he.....always pushing solo to do even more and better

Quote from Pixar CEO:
"Come work for us !"

I am loving it....
Good to see some real artists here....
Character building in SU always keeps amazing me ...
:the work of Monster zero (very nice blog)..and now your work.. very cool

You guys give me good reason to check this forum section very often.

Thanks for sharing!

...Amazing organic modeling.
And besides your modeling skills this Hansen chair is one hell of a good design.

yep and some envy hate points too