About PSU, I often see how people build they PC with a ridiculously high power PSU. Usually they noisy and they best effiency level is not reached with ordinary PC.
I build my i7 (920) / Asus P6T Deluxe / GeForce 8800 GTS (640 MB) -rig with 450W PSU, so 750W PSU is enough, even if you build a sli. Actually a 400+ PSU is fine and could run some lighter SLI configurations too, just make sure that it's a quality PSU. Power consumption and efficiency of i7 system. From list of good 400+ PSUs, I would pick Nexus VALUE 430.

You really should try 08. Exterior Daytime (progressive...) with Twilight.

After reading this I did remember this
http://make3d.stanford.edu/

Eerie...

@khai said:

so far all I've been able to render with it is bugsplats...

open Twilight render splat

Cant remember when I have got a bugsplat and I use this daily. Maybe some other ryby does not like it... sorry no clues. Did you try 1.0.6 that was just released? If so, better post a bug report

Paul, setting skyportals should give some benefit in a scene like the this.

True...

Looks great! Vue atmosphere is hard to beat. Loved to have the scene in my hands too...

Thanks Pete & Miguel, could not agree more.

You almost got me... wonder what keeps them making a SU exporter. Anyhow Luxrender has made some impressive development. The result looks good, but should cook far longer.

@dedmin said:

Collada support is very positive - a lot of companies are improving their support - Blender, SolidWorks, Modo etc.
The real problem is Autodesk's monopoly and arrogance! If dwg is a standard - make it open standard! About Blender - this hype about the difficult interface is nonsense! Actualy it is very easy if YOU READ ABUT IT! There is coming a new version with a lot of improvement in the UI side ! Read this http://www.blender3darchitect.com/

I would not dare to say that Blender interface is easy, all the time it feels that different types of items are just cluttered together, reading and knowing key combos wont help. For me it's simply illogical and inconsistent; try to locate all mesh editing tools..., BUT 2.5 seems to be a major change and most likely I'll then drop SU and jump to Blender wagon, but time shows how it goes. SU6 pro is still fine tool for me and if there had not been this community and generous ruby developers... I would be using some other tool.

Collada support sounds good and I have a feeling that many free users will welcome that. It feels a bit like strategic move to only offer dwg import in pro, but I would not complain as long as old SU stays in working condition.

For my understanding there is no build in renderer in SU, only some OpenGL acceleration, so "features in native SketchUp" is what eryone can see without a renderer - everything else is added feature. Naturally a render pluging should be able to repeat SU functionality, but honestly does one need a renderer just for that?
Certainly some of the advanced global illumination features available from various render plugins, might be overkill for some, but those can be essential to others. For example if interior designer or a architect is using indirect light, should the render plugin produce a acceptable solution. And what if translusent materials are used - blurry reflections and subsurface scattering is fairly native feature of these materials in real world, like caustics for glass, water or metals - all find from SU buildin materials.
Therefore if the video where a real tutorial and not a advertorial, these features should be atleast mentioned, even if this was ment to be focused to basic features (sorry cannot recall if that kind of focus was mentioned in the video).

@al hart said:

@notareal said:

What about caustics, blurry reflections, dispersion, subsurface scattering, displacement mapping, motion blur, full spectral rendering, proxy objects (we really need a way to overcome the limited support of SU for high poly models), render passes, multi-light... just to keep this interesting.

This tutorial was not about render features. Of course, you can compare the features of the various rendering engines to help you in your decision. ...

Ok, so correct if I am wrong... you happen to only test features that IRender do support. So how one can actually choose a render based to this, if only limited set of common features are accepted to test, is that biased? Would it be more honest just to call this IRender feature demo? Othervise, I don't see any difference to a advertorial. Note in some countries advertorials are required to be clearly marked.

@al hart said:

Based on some user comments, we realized that the tutorial left out sun position, sun intensity, sky color, ground color and edge lines.

We may modify the model and tutorial to add a scene for these, or else just recommend that the user turn the sun on to make sure it works properly.

What about caustics, blurry reflections, dispersion, subsurface scattering, displacement mapping, motion blur, full spectral rendering, proxy objects (we really need a way to overcome the limited support of SU for high poly models), render passes, multi-light... just to keep this interesting.

I think, the proper question should be "Does the render suite that you use, have a guide for rendering a photo match?". For a user, I think it would be better, first to evaluate the need and then find a render that can deliver - someting like here.

A keeper.

If you are interested about bias in rendering, I suggest reading this http://www.cgafaq.info/wiki/Monte_Carlo_Bias

@pixero said:

After a quick test I couldnt find where to make settings like anti alias quality and such? (Shadows were a bit grainy.)

I think there is no direct setting for AA and such, but presets are just xml files. Reasonable easy to tune, if needed.

@kwistenbiebel said:

What is the difference with Thea Render and Kerkythea in terms of quality and speed?

This is a bit off topic. There is no such comparison available yet as Thea Render code is not optimised, but you should expect improvements in both fields. I would expect speed comparisons when public beta is launched. About quality, there are some renders at thearender.com so you might judge your self. Although those are mainly technical renders... but you should get a impression.

But if you did mean Twilight ws KT, those should be quite similar... but it's much up to engine version and used settings. Twilight is just much much more streamlined.

but more important...
Congratulations of the release!