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!

@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!

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

Hey, Rayscaper users!

Rayscaper 0.9.13 is available (0.9.11 and 0.9.12 were internal test releases) in the SketchUcation store. There is more good stuff, so I recommend you upgrade to this version.

What Changed?

• Fix flaky material picking. Sometimes, material picking would not work, or pick the wrong materials. This is fixed.
• Fix a cursor problem after viewport dragging; sometimes, the hand cursor would not go away.
• This release also features a simplification of the user interface:
  • Add more readable icons for the Rayscaper window.
  • Improved editors for the scene settings with more intuitive controls.

Reworking the editors was a significant code change, so let me know if something is not working or some things don't make sense to you. I'm here to help!

I'm also on Twitter (X) now: https://twitter.com/Rayscaper3d/ - Please follow the @Rayscaper3d that will help me grow the community!

Happy Rendering!

Great news, on to better days, and keep up the good fight!

Hey, Rayscaper friends!

Rayscaper 0.9.15 is available (0.9.14 was an internal test release) in the SketchUcation store. A lot of fixes and new things so I recommend you upgrade to this version.

What Changed?

Improvements

Desktop Scaling

Some users complained that Rayscaper was not legible on high-res, especially with display scaling enabled. I added a configuration option to scale the user interface to make it more readable on such displays.

Fast Tone Mapping

Improve the speed of the tone mapping operations. All operations now run in real-time, even on big render resolutions.

More Intuitive Exposure Control

Make the exposure slider more intuitive. Negative values darken the image, and positive values brighten it—an exposure step value of one doubles or halves the brightness. A value of 0 means a neutral exposure.

More Zoom Controls

Add zoom controls to the Rayscaper toolbar and the option to fit the viewport.

Fewer Watermarks

Although Rayscaper is commercial ( and I think it is a very affordable piece of software ), I also wanted to reduce the watermarking to improve the experience for free users.

Bug Fixes

• Add the option to scale the user interface. This makes Rayscaper a lot more legible on high DPI displays.
• Bring back the capability to configure the following texture types (cc: @sashapepperspray):
  • Noise Texture
  • Uv Texture
  • Mix Texture
  • Checkerboard Texture
• Bring back the double-sided and fake emission controls for light-emitting materials (cc: @majid).

Help me build the community

I'm on Twitter (X) now: https://twitter.com/Rayscaper3d/ - Please follow the @Rayscaper3d that will help me grow the community and spread the word about Rayscaper!

Happy Rendering!

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

This is a quick tip for those who want to keep the Rayscaper window always on top. You can do this with a nifty utility called Microsoft PowerToys.

• Install PowerToys.
• Bring the Rayscaper window to focus and hit CTRL + WIN + T. The window should have a colored border and stay on top.
• To turn off this behavior, again, hit CTRL + WIN + T.

Will work for other windows as well, not just for Rayscaper

@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.

Maybe the easiest is to attach one of those image files so we can have a look?

Nice, it played a trick on my brain because it took a while before I saw the word "Jesus".

I also have done an animation that show creating "Jesus" one letter at a time. However, I have not found a way to create the animation using Rayscaper. If someone can tell me how to do that, I would appreciate it so a can "bring the model to life".

Currently, Rayscaper does not have animation support. But that will come with the next release, although that will only support SketchUp scene animations (camera & sunlight). How are you animating these letters?

Cheers,
Thomas

And there's still this problem with certain groups containing other groups and components that don't display unless everything inside is exploded. And I can't always explode everything, as I have variations to make in subsequent steps.

@Krass - Do you mind sending me a scene where this happens? I would like to investigate.

Just to confirm, your GPU is working again and your icons are back?

As for objects on hidden tags, it's still the same; objects on hidden tags in the SU viewport are displayed in the Rayscaper render.

Thanks for reporting. I could find a scene to reproduce it. Seems to happen only for components/groups nested within other groups. I will have a look at this bug.

I finally understand how to use the denoiser. You might initially think that a low-resolution render will be calculated faster... But actually, when the denoiser is applied during rendering, especially when the render resolution is high, the denoising is very clean.

It might seem obvious to you, but it took me a while to figure it out. So I leave the denoiser at full power and immediately set the render size to 2k or higher.

I should document that better. The denoiser works on the full resolution image. And it works now as a post-processing step, so enable/disable won't impact the rendering.

Thomas, you asked me why I apply an upscale layer after a ray-scaping render. For scenes with windows, I have to do two renders, like a photographer: a light one for the room's exposure and a dark one to replace the "blown-out," overexposed parts of the window. D5 Render doesn't have this problem because its renders aren't truly photographic; they're a kind of pseudo-pathtracing.

That's a clever trick, thanks for sharing. Does this mean the tone-mapping operations you are getting in the post-processing step aren't sufficient for you? Should there be more options to provide a better image from the get-go?

Regards,
Thomas

@Krass

when I display a SketchUp scene in RS, the hidden tags within that scene are still visible.

Do you mind sharing the scene via e-mail?

And there's still this problem with certain groups containing other groups and components that don't display unless everything inside is exploded. And I can't always explode everything, as I have variations to make in subsequent steps.

Same here, a scene with screenshots of the components would help a lot.

And i no graphic card

Can you check with the latest version I just released? Also check if that version brings the icons back. I think this has to do with your broken installation.

Regards,
Thomas

Hey, Rayscaper users!

Rayscaper 0.9.79 Beta is available. You can get it via:

• The SketchUcation store.
• Direct download: link.

I recommend upgrading to the latest version.

What Changed?

• Add log export feature. You can now export Rayscaper logs directly from the application menu, making it easier to
  share diagnostic information when reporting issues. You can access it via the SketchUp menu bar:
  Extensions > Rayscaper > Export Logs for Support.
• Add a reset button for the post-processing tab. Quickly restore default post-processing settings with a single click.

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 https://x.com/rayscaper3d.

Happy Rendering!
Thomas

I think I figured something out about the blue material bug, I can make it happen in any file if I use the "edit texture in external editor" in the sketchup material editor, It shows up as blue.

That's a good clue. I think it also has to do with SketchUp's colorized textures only. But I haven't looked at that part in depth.

(Another thing I noticed, is that If i edit a material in sketchup, it does not automatically update the material in rayscaper.)

This is by design; You should press the reload button in the Rayscaper material editor. I could add an "auto-sync" option to do this automatically. Rayscaper has a richer set of material capabilities than SketchUp. I assumed you want to edit the materials in Rayscaper, and that it would be counterproductive to override them from SketchUp repeatedly. Maybe that's not a reasonable workflow assumption.

@Krass said in Rayscaper New Releases:

are you both talking about Twilight render ?

Yes, @majid and @Mike-Amos are talking about Twilight render. But I'm not too familiar with it myself. But it seems to have a couple of dearly missed features?

@Krass I will have a look soon to help you out here, stay tuned.

@Mike-Amos

I think my friend @majid requested that before as well He has a keen eye for this.

Given that the Twilight website is offline, is there a source where I can find these things? Maybe I can actually provide tools for using Twilight materials in Rayscaper, or at least the same templates.

@majid said in Rayscaper New Releases:

I have a question regarding material libraries. I have prepared a Carpaint collection and am also going to prepare a water material pack. The question is that if the same name materials will be replaced? i.e. a car paint in my library is called 001red. Imagine there is another material in the Sketchup model by user and called 001red, I am wondering if RS will replace the same name with my material? To be more precise: How do material libraries in RS work?

Nice, users will love those material packs!

No — naming your materials isn’t essential for Rayscaper. Names only matter for finding them in the material library. They are necessary for the user, not for the software.

Behind the scenes, Rayscaper stores each material as a material pack, which is simply a ZIP file. This pack includes a human-readable configuration file and all the texture images used by the material. I will add this format to my documentation. I hope that, in the age of AI vibe-coding, people can build tools to convert materials from other renderers into Rayscaper, and vice versa.

When you apply a material in Rayscaper to any material in your SketchUp model, Rayscaper doesn’t replace the SketchUp material. Instead, it configures the existing SketchUp material using the parameters it reads from the material pack.

You can view the material packs that Rayscaper saves in the %%AppData%%/AssetCache folder (the exact path escapes me, I'm not at my PC right now).

Cheers,
Thomas