Very nice renders Rich, and thanks for the Rayscaper plug

And we have another release out, version 0.8.10

The full release notes are here: https://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=76731

Hey folks,

You can get the test build for Rayscaper, Windows, version 0.8.10 Alpha here.

Remember this is alpha software. Have a look here to see what that means.

Yes, we skipped the 0.8.9 release Rich O'Brien found a couple of bugs in 0.8.9, and I decided to fix these issues first and put them in 0.8.10. Thanks, Rich!

Changes since the last build:

• Fix a render regression with clearcoat gloss in the Disney material.
• Tweak the look of the thumbnail components, display a checkerboard when the image has alpha.
• Make sure the Rayscaper data is saved when opening and closing the Rayscaper window in SketchUp.
• Support pan and zoom in the render viewport.
• Fix black edges in the diffuse material on grazing viewing angles.
• Fix a crash when dropping an HDRI environment when there was no previous environment.
• Improve the user interface for image textures.

Quick Tips

• If this is your first time installing Rayscaper, have a look at our installation instructions.
• If you installed Rayscaper before, have a look at our upgrade guide.
• We also have a quick start guide with a free demo scene.
• The documentation is here. Documentation is a work in progress.

Reach Out

When you get stuck, have questions, give some feedback or just want to say hi. Don't hesitate to create a post in this forum (Extensions & Applications Discussions) or send me a private message. We have a documentation section on finding help.

Happy Rendering!
Thomas

@ntxdave said:

@majid said:

Wow, some good news....

Since you are looking for a job, perhaps you should contact Thomas as well.

Really wish I could hire someone talented like you Majid, but I haven’t made a lot of money from Rayscaper yet. Last time I counted it was $0.0

I have been talking to Fletch from TR. He has been very gracious with his time and gave great advice. I asked him to try Rayscaper and give his opinion.

Cheers,
Thomas

Version 0.8.7 is available now. More info in the the release post.

Hey folks,

You can get the test build for Rayscaper, Windows, version 0.8.7 Alpha here.

Remember this is alpha software. Have a look here to see what that means.

Changes since the last build:

• Fix a crash when deleting a material from SketchUp.
• Disable the live-link between SketchUp and Rayscaper when Rayscaper is not running.
• Represent the image texture configuration in a more screen-efficient manner.
• Support copy/past of light components.
• Add a splash screen for Rayscaper. The artwork is by the great Rich O'Brien from SketchUcation.
• Fix viewport matching. Rayscaper will now exactly match the resolution.

Quick Tips

• If this is your first time installing Rayscaper, have a look at our installation instructions.
• If you installed Rayscaper before, have a look at our upgrade guide.
• We also have a quick start guide with a free demo scene.
• The documentation is here. Documentation is a work in progress.

Reach Out

When you get stuck, have questions, give some feedback or just want to say hi. Don't hesitate to create a post in this forum (Extensions & Applications Discussions) or send me a private message. We have a documentation section on finding help.

Happy Rendering!
Thomas

@ntxdave said:

Thomas, I received a PM from Fletch at TR this afternoon. I sent you contact information for them. Apparently they are willing to talk.

Thanks, Dave, for the introduction! I did send them an e-mail a while back, but I sent them another message just now.

Cheers,
Thomas

Release post for the latest 0.8.6 version: https://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=76697

Hey folks,

Another release. This one supports geometry, object, and tag hide/unhide. Several people were eager to get this feature.

You can get the test build for Rayscaper, Windows, version 0.8.6 Alpha here.

Remember this is alpha software. Have a look here to see what that means.

Changes since the last build:

• Fix geometry updates when push-pulling faces. Sometimes, the faces adjacent to the one being pushed or pulled would not
  propagate to Rayscaper, leading to out-of-sync geometry in Rayscaper.
• Support hiding and unhiding of SketchUp geometry and objects.
• Support hiding and unhiding of SketchUp tags (layers).

Quick Tips

• If this is your first time installing Rayscaper, have a look at our installation instructions.
• If you installed Rayscaper before, have a look at our upgrade guide.
• We also have a quick start guide with a free demo scene.
• The documentation is here. Documentation is a work in progress.

Reach Out

When you get stuck, have questions, give some feedback or just want to say hi. Don't hesitate to create a post in this forum (Extensions & Applications Discussions) or send me a private message. We have a documentation section on finding help.

Happy Rendering!
Thomas[/list]

Quick Tips

• If this is your first time installing Rayscaper, have a look at our installation instructions.
• If you installed Rayscaper before, have a look at our upgrade guide.
• We also have a quick start guide with a free demo scene.
• The documentation is here. Documentation is a work in progress.

Reach Out

When you get stuck, have questions, give some feedback or just want to say hi. Don't hesitate to create a post in this forum (Extensions & Applications Discussions) or send me a private message. We have a documentation section on finding help.

Happy Rendering!
Thomas

@jo-ke said:

strange. when I open the file today it works fine.

strange geometrie disappereaed, materials are shown.

Yeah, so SketchUp sends geometry change events to Rayscaper. There are still a couple of outstanding bugs, so if an event is missed, you can end up with the wrong geometry in your render.

When you reload the file, Rayscaper reloads the geometry from scratch, which will be correct. So, reloading the file might work to correct your geometry. This is a workaround and not a fix. I'm working to iron out all the bugs in Rayscaper, and if you see weird geometry, please report it.

Thanks,
Thomas

@jo-ke said:

rayscaper and sketchupdiffusion merging in Photoshop is a nice combination.

weathering and organic forms are really the best in AI rendering.

Very nice render, I like the gloomy look.

Just thinking out loud, but it might be a good feature for Rayscaper to be able to do this out-of-the-box. Send the render to a diffusion model to create another image, then composite it with the original.

As a side note, the HDRI looks pixelated. If you are using the ones that are available in Rayscaper you might want to increase the default resolution. Disclaimer, this will result in longer download times and a longer time to prep your scene for Rayscaper.

@jo-ke said:

yesterday I started a new simple model.

the render looks weird. there is some geometrie, that is not visible at su.
blue faces are still there and they are not changeable

I send you the model.

Thanks for the bug report!

Yes, the bottom windows are not correctly aligned in their frames. Other users have reported bugs before where geometry updates don't propagate correctly to Rayscaper. And still, the cyan faces.

When I open the file, it looks good on my end, but that is because when Rayscaper loads the geometry from scratch, as opposed to modeling it, it will end up with the correct result. So, we need to fix the geometry updates during modeling.

Here's what I see.

Can you send me the log when this happens?

If the geometry does not match in Rayscaper, please tell me how to reproduce it consistently. This is a bug I'm chasing.

Regards,
Thomas

@jo-ke said:

when I try to use the materialsettings it is continously rendering and slowing down my machine.

Gotcha, so it's a matter of interactivity. I'm not sure what your computer's specs are, but here are a couple of things you can try:

You can decrease the number of render threads in the global settings. This will ensure Rayscaper is putting less load on your CPU. The downside is that this results in slower render times. You can configure the number of render threads in the application settings.

You can disable material previews. Rendering the material previews also takes up CPU resources. Material previews are also configured via the application settings.

If you have a capable GPU, switch to GPU rendering. Then Rayscaper won't use your CPU at all. Switching to GPU rendering is done via the render settings.

@fakebob said:

@pixelcruncher said:

@fakebob said:

Hi! This software shows so much promise! I'm excited more than when I first got kerkythea waaaaay back.

I downloaded the newest alpha 0.8.4 today because the 0.8.3 one just crashed my 2023 sketchup pro on either:
a) adding a sketchup texture/colour to a face or
b) opening the Rayscaper Start Render screen (it pops up then everything crashes)

Is anyone else having the same issue? I removed the previous version before installing the update.

Bob

Hey Bob,

Glad to hear you are excited! But it sucks to hear you are having such a bad first experience. Rayscaper creates a log file that should hopefully tell us why it crashes for you. Would you mind providing me with log files for both the crashes you are experiencing?

The log file is called SUEX_Rayscaper.log and is saved under the directory (%AppData%/Rayscaper). If you are unsure, we have more details here. Can you make it crash twice and get me those files? Then I can help you on your way to get something useful out of Rayscaper.

Regards,
Thomas

Oh, my! I'm sorry to have wasted your time, but I read the log file and realised I am using my laptop which has a Radeon RX 5500M graphics card...... which is not CUDA compliant. I should have read the documentation first!

I'll chalk this up to ignorance, and hope there's an Radeon RX version in the future (pretty please!)!

Hey,

Still Rayscaper should handle this case, and you should be able to use CPU rendering. Which is still reasonably fast. Also see our FAQ on this topic.

If it still crashes for you, I’m interested in those log files.

Regards,
Thomas

Nice render! Can you elaborate on your struggles with Rayscaper or how we can improve the material settings? Is it a documentation thing or something that's not working out for you?

Thanks,
Thomas

Version 0.8.5 is out now: https://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=76689

Hey folks,

Another bug fix release. I like to make fixes and good stuff available to users as soon as possible.

You can get the test build for Rayscaper, Windows, version 0.8.5 Alpha here.

Remember this is alpha software. Have a look here to see what that means.

Changes since the last build:

• Fix a failure when opening *.skp files that contain an incorrect path. The result of this load failure was that the Rayscaper settings were not correctly loaded.
• Support saving PNG images with non-ASCII characters in their path names.
• Fix a rendering bug when updating the normal map on the GPU.

Quick Tips

• If this is your first time installing Rayscaper, have a look at our installation instructions.
• If you installed Rayscaper before, have a look at our upgrade guide.
• We also have a quick start guide with a free demo scene.
• The documentation is here. Documentation is a work in progress.

Reach Out

When you get stuck, have questions, give some feedback or just want to say hi. Don't hesitate to create a post in this forum (Extensions & Applications Discussions) or send me a private message. We have a documentation section on finding help.

Happy Rendering!
Thomas

Thanks for the update.

@unknownuser said:

2024-02-04 08:07:38.919 (1293.107s) [PreProcessWorker] ERR| OIDN device creation failed: invalid physical device ID: 1
2024-02-04 08:07:38.919 (1293.107s) [PreProcessWorker] ERR| Failed to create the open image denoiser, disabling AI denoise.

This still looks fishy, do you mind sending me the full log file? This means AI denoise is not working, which is one of Rayscaper's selling points... So it would be great if I could fix that.

Regarding supporting AMD graphics cards. That's in the cards for the future, but that work is not in scope for the 1.0 version.

Cheers,
Thomas

@fakebob said:

@fakebob said:

Oh, my! I'm sorry to have wasted your time, but I read the log file and realised I am using my laptop which has a Radeon RX 5500M graphics card...... which is not CUDA compliant. I should have read the documentation first!

I'll chalk this up to ignorance, and hope there's an Radeon RX version in the future (pretty please!)!

An update, the plot thickens.

So my laptop has 2 graphics cards, an AMD Ryzen integrated and a Radeon RX 5500M that I run my external monitor on. In the interest of sound technical reasoning, I updated my graphics driver software (Adrenalin) to the latest version (24.1.1, released on 11/1/24), did a full reboot, etc. and then got sketchup open. It worked!

And the crashing on picking a material also stopped happening, (even though it did take a little time to get going for some reason).

So, moral of the story: if you're having crashes, update your graphics card software to the latest version first and see if it still happens.

I am getting a message in the log:

2024-02-04 08:07:38.919 (1293.107s) [PreProcessWorker] ERR| OIDN device creation failed: invalid physical device ID: 1
2024-02-04 08:07:38.919 (1293.107s) [PreProcessWorker] ERR| Failed to create the open image denoiser, disabling AI denoise.

What's that all about?

I'm gonna go play with this now!

Thanks for the update.

@unknownuser said:

2024-02-04 08:07:38.919 (1293.107s) [PreProcessWorker] ERR| OIDN device creation failed: invalid physical device ID: 1
2024-02-04 08:07:38.919 (1293.107s) [PreProcessWorker] ERR| Failed to create the open image denoiser, disabling AI denoise.

This still looks fishy, do you mind sending me the full log file? This means AI denoise is not working, which is one of Rayscaper's selling points... So would be great if I could fix that.

Cheers,
Thomas

@ezequiel1982 said:

Hi! I installed on Sketchup 2022 and I'm getting the following error:

> Error; #<LoadError; cannot load such file -- /users/ezequiel/library/application support/sketchup 2022/sketchup/plugins/rayscaper/installed/Mac/2.7.2/0.8.4 Alpha/resources/SUEX_Rayscaper_SetDllDirectory>
> /Applications/SketchUp 2022/SketchUp.app/Contents/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.7.1/lib/ruby/2.7.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb;92;in `require'
> /Applications/SketchUp 2022/SketchUp.app/Contents/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/2.7.1/lib/ruby/2.7.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb;92;in `require'
> /users/ezequiel/library/application support/sketchup 2022/sketchup/plugins/rayscaper/main.rbe;84;in `<module;Rayscaper>'
> /users/ezequiel/library/application support/sketchup 2022/sketchup/plugins/rayscaper/main.rbe;5;in `<main>'
> /Applications/SketchUp 2022/SketchUp.app/Contents/Resources/Content/Tools/extensions.rb;197;in `eval'
> /Applications/SketchUp 2022/SketchUp.app/Contents/Resources/Content/Tools/extensions.rb;197;in `require'
> /Applications/SketchUp 2022/SketchUp.app/Contents/Resources/Content/Tools/extensions.rb;197;in `load'
> /Users/ezequiel/Library/Application Support/SketchUp 2022/SketchUp/Plugins/rayscaper.rb;16;in `register_extension'
> /Users/ezequiel/Library/Application Support/SketchUp 2022/SketchUp/Plugins/rayscaper.rb;16;in `<module;Rayscaper>'
> /Users/ezequiel/Library/Application Support/SketchUp 2022/SketchUp/Plugins/rayscaper.rb;6;in `<top (required)>'
> 

Hey there,

Looks like you are trying Rayscaper on a Mac. We don't have a Mac version yet. We want to stabilize our Windows version before releasing the Mac version.

Regards,
Thomas