Take care @majid !

Hey folks,

Just wanted to let you know that @majid is safe and trying to ride out the rough times.

Let's keep him in our thoughts.

Dear Thomas,
I hope you and your lovely family are doing pretty fine.
After weeks of internet blockage, now the only working service is "gmail" 
though not fully functioning!
Reached out to say we are doing fine and hope it passes with minimum 
life-loss heading off a better world, brighter minds and more peaceful 
communication despite all intolerance and dogma we are witnessing.
Take care and convey my best regards to your lovely ones and friends 
on Sketchucation. 
Regards.

Hey, Rayscaper lovers (and haters?),

Rayscaper 0.9.8 is available in the SketchUcation store . It has more improvements, so we recommend upgrading to the latest version

What Changed?

1. Fix a self-intersection bug causing dark lines in CPU renders.

2. Add support for a near-clipping plane to the camera. With the near-clip plane, you can configure a near-clip plane at a distance orthogonal to the camera, and Rayscaper will cut away all geometry before the clip plane. It's not as powerful as section cuts (which are planned), but it can help for some use cases.

3. Improve the sliders in Rayscaper:

   • Every slider now supports dragging.
   • Scrolling is consistent across sliders. Each mouse scroll wheel increment/decrement will step up/down by one slider step value. Holding shift will step up or down with 10x the slider step value.

4. Make global illumination (GI) the default render method for new scenes. Using approximate GI as the initial render method might give new Rayscaper users the wrong impression because of its non-physical hacks and limitations.

Happy Rendering!

Hey @Mike-Amos ,

As @Rich-O-Brien mentioned, the metal material is a physically correct metal shader. So, there's no accurate artistic control. Rich made a metal library available, and I will also put that in the next release. For complete artistic control, the Disney material is what you want.

I will have a look at the picking bug. Out of curiosity, is the material directly painted on the faces, or is it painted on the object?

Cheers,
Thomas

@Rich-O-Brien What an amazing result! Keep those Rayscaper renders flowing

@Box Thanks for sharing those pictures. It must be a hard life for sure I assume this is somewhere in Australia based on the Whitsundays reference.

Hey, Rayscaper users!

Rayscaper 0.9.10 is available (0.9.9 was a test release) in the SketchUcation store. More good stuff so we recommend you upgrade to this version.

What Changed?

• Support for SketchUp 2024.
• Add a panoramic projection mode to the camera.

• Add an orthographic projection mode. The camera is the Rayscaper equivalent of the parallel projection in SketchUp.

• Optionally sync the SketchUp field-of-view with the Rayscaper perspective camera. Note that the FOV in SketchUp differs from the value displayed in Rayscaper because SketchUp uses a vertical FOV value while Rayscaper uses a horizontal FOV.
• Add a focal length control to the perspective camera. This is coupled to the horizontal FOV. I introduced this for users who prefer to work with focal length instead of FOV.
• Add a toggle to turn DOF on/off explicitly.
• Express the depth-of-field effect with a blurriness value instead of lens radius. This should make it easier to control the DOF effect.

• Bugfix: Ensure the rendered image keeps panning when the render restarts. Before this change, the panning would reset on every render restart, which was annoying.

Happy Rendering!

Very nice renders, they make for excellent Rayscaper marketing materials

@Mike-Amos

I would like to set GPU as the render default please, is this in the timeline?

Yes, this is in the timeline. @Rich-O-Brien asked for something similar. The idea is to save a particular configuration as the default and then load your preferred configuration whenever you set up a new scene. So, let's say your preferred default is "Approx GI" + GPU rendering. Every time you set something new up from scratch, that would be your starting default.

Also, the hearts un favourites (HDRI) seem to breed like bunnies on a motorway centre reservation. Can this be turned off please?

That's a nice way of describing it It's definitely a bug. The next release contains a big UI rework, and this should be fixed. Tap my shoulder if it isn't after the next release.

The orange and white (?) checker on the 'all HDRIs title here, what is that? Aberrant or intended?

Another bug, should be gone in the next release.

@majid Hang in there friend, an opportunity for someone as talented as you will come.

Nice! Looks expensive.

Hey folks,

Just wanted to let you know that @majid is safe and trying to ride out the rough times.

Let's keep him in our thoughts.

Dear Thomas,
I hope you and your lovely family are doing pretty fine.
After weeks of internet blockage, now the only working service is "gmail" 
though not fully functioning!
Reached out to say we are doing fine and hope it passes with minimum 
life-loss heading off a better world, brighter minds and more peaceful 
communication despite all intolerance and dogma we are witnessing.
Take care and convey my best regards to your lovely ones and friends 
on Sketchucation. 
Regards.

Hi @gabrielaher ,

You can buy a Rayscaper license here (if you are logged in): https://sketchucation.com/purchase-smart.php?plugin=rayscaper

To manage a license you already have, you can do that here: https://sketchucation.com/webshop/my-licences.php

Let us know if you need more help.

Regards,
Thomas

@Krass

Thanks for the report, I can confirm the error with GPU rendering. Would you mind sending me the scene so I can try to reproduce the error?

Thanks,
Thomas

Hey @Mike-Amos,

Could you provide a screenshot? Here's what I see when hiding the assets panel. As you can see I still have a progress bar, so I think we are talking about different things:

Rayscaper users, a heads up: I accidentally uploaded the previous 0.9.92 version to the SketchUcation Extension Store. If you installed Rayscaper in the last 4 days, you may have reinstalled the previous version. (@mike-amos Thanks for the heads up!).

I’ve uploaded the latest 0.9.93 version now. If you download and install the extension again, it should install version 0.9.93 correctly.

Apologies for the hassle.

Happy Rendering!
Thomas

Hey, Rayscaper users!

Rayscaper 0.9.93 Beta is available. You can get it via:

• The SketchUcation store.
• Direct download: Rayscaper_Win_0.9.93_Beta.rbz.

I recommend upgrading to the latest version.

What Changed?

• Fix SketchUp tag visibility updates for nested groups and components. Nested geometry now appears and reappears correctly in Rayscaper when you toggle tags in SketchUp, matching the SketchUp viewport more reliably.
• Fix material picking when hidden or invisible objects sit in front of visible geometry. The picker now selects the material you clicked instead of the hidden object blocking it.
• Fix crashes after exploding SketchUp tag folders and then changing tag visibility.
• Improve viewport navigation and panel controls with a simpler pan/zoom path and a fixed panel layout.

Full release notes: rayscaper.com/manual/release-notes

Help Me Build the Community

If you like Rayscaper, please share your renders (final or work-in-progress, it doesn't matter)! This is motivating
and helps me showcase its capabilities to new users.

Follow me on X.

Happy Rendering!
Thomas

Hey Mike,

I'm sorry to hear you're running into these issues with Rayscaper. Would you mind sending me this scene so I can have a look?

Summarizing your woes:

• Auto-exposure is behaving strangely. Mike, I'm still not sure what you mean by this.
• Geometry does not appear in the renders.
• Viewport shows CPU, while you have enabled GPU rendering.
• Rendering fails.

I think it's easier if you send me the scene and, preferably, the logs when such a render failure occurs (https://www.rayscaper.com/getting-help/report-a-bug/#1-export-the-log-files), so I can try to reproduce/fix these problems.

Thanks,
Thomas

That’s definitely also a bug with software. I’m away this week so the next release will come a bit later, but it I will try to fix this there.

Good stuff mike!

You mentioned that auto-exposure is doing funky things? Is the image below using auto-exposure? If so, what does it look like without auto-exposure?

For the window glass, make sure you are using the glass material with thin & transparent shadows:

Cheers,
Thomas