Twilight's great, especially if you want to do animations and videos. For example, I used a model of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame building that's in the SketchUp Warehouse, rendered it with Twilight, and made this video. Enjoy!
[flash=480,385:1ypofy0k]http://www.youtube.com/v/3I345cW-7zM[/flash:1ypofy0k]
You also may want to consider using the trial version of Swift3D. Swift3D will allow you to import a vector image like a logo and extrude it to give it some depth and then rotate it, and render the animation. It also imports 3ds files. The trial version does not allow rendering as a Flash swf, but it should allow avi and mov renders and png image sequences. Set the environment background to black and it will render as transparent and also prevent flickering around the edges of the animated objects.
I started out using TurboSketch n/k/a IDX Renditioner, and I thought it did a good job of rendering each image. It's a plug-in, so it's convenient and very easy to use and has a good support forum. But since my purpose is to create Flash animations, I would have to manually render each frame of the animation. Since I've gotten Twilight Render I have used that for my renders, since it will automatically render the animation frames based on the scenes in SU. It's also a plug-in and very convenient and easy to use, and has a good support forum.
@unknownuser said:
I'll ask this of you folks out there, who for whatever reason (lack o'cash?) are FREE VERSION users:
Would you buy the exporters as separate plugins if Google made them available as such?
What do you consider a reasonable (be realistic) price?
I'm a CG hobbyist and as long as I can get to the Collada DAE through the Google Earth KMZ, I can work with that OK. I use Poser too, but I am usually exporting from Poser to other software. I wish Poser had a Collada DAE exporter so I could export the bones and all as a DAE. Isn't Collada supposed to be the vendor-neutral file format standard to make it easier to import/export among various 3D software?
If you don't mind using another software to do it, you could use Poser to create 3D people. It has an option to create a head based on front and side mugshots of someone. Then you just put the head on one of the people from the library, add hair and clothes, export it as a 3ds file and bring it into Sketchup. The person in Sketchup is not poseable, so you'd have to pose them before you export, and they will contain a lot of polygons. I usually put them on their own layer in SU, so I can turn off the visibility when I'm not working with them, so they don't bog down SU too much.
I like Twilight Render. I'm not an architect, I just do CG and flash animations as a hobby. I like Twilight because it's a plug-in, and it provides a lot of options for how the frames should be rendered, and it is fairly quick at rendering too. Here's a link to a flash animation I'm working on using my Twilight frames:
http://www.mary-in-fl.com/twiren-room-stars-12fps.htm