Thanks Gaeius! I think I know what you're talking about. Like a moonlit night hdri?

Ahhh, alright. That makes sense. Thanks for the analogy Jim.

@dale said:

Cool, now I can see it is a desk. Sometimes it is the intention of the person rendering to intentionally make a scene intriguing, and if this was your intention, it worked.

It is meant to be dark, mysterious, and secretive but I never intended for people to not be able to discern what everything is. I guess I don't notice stuff like that until it's pointed out as I know it is a desk because I made it. That's why it's great to get some other people's input. They see things you don't notice. Thanks for the kind comments. If I get around to it, I may run another render based on the advice given here as well as from some other people I shared this with. Thanks again.

@dale said:

Well great to see you jump in with both feet, and if it was anything for you like it was when I saw my first rendering start to appear, you are probably both pretty excited (and hooked).
The only crit is it is reading pretty dark on my computer, so I can't quite tell some of the peripheral elements.
Good on ya!

Thanks! Yeah, it is pretty dark. The only light source is the candle so I figured it should be a bit dark. The first render I did of this was a lot lighter and it just didn't look like a candle could emit that much light so I darkened it a bit. I'll post a raw SketchUp shot to show what it looks like fully lit.

You are right, I was pretty excited. I am also proud of it even though it is far from what most of you guys can produce. I will use this as a learning experience and hopefully improve in the coming months.

I just finished my first "real" render and thought I'd share it with you guys and get some input. Let me know what you think and what would make it better. This is my second attempt at this render as the first render needed a few changes. I modeled the desk in SketchUp a while ago and the rest of the models I downloaded from the warehouse. Then I exported the model and rendered it in Kerkythea just to get some practice. Render time was about 45 minutes. I am still very new at this so comments and criticisms are more than welcome. Just go easy on me as I still need a lot of work. Enjoy and happy New Year!

More please!!!

This is incredible!

Stunning. Keep up the beautiful work.

Obama!!!

ducks for cover

Edit: Aww, Adam beat me to it.

Beautiful ship and the presentation is AMAZING!

We did. The first white Christmas in Charlotte since '47!!!
Got about 3 1/2-4 inches but it's still falling. Started Christmas night and supposed to go through today.

Granted. Your wrist is fine. Your face on the other hand . . .

I wish I actually wanted something for Christmas this year.

Granted, but we all have a horrible New Year.

I wish for a penny.

Granted. It burns.

I wish it would snow here for once.

Nevermind, It worked in Firefox. It's probably just something with Chrome's built in PDF viewer.

That is pretty cool. How do you put a 3d model in a pdf?

Hmmmm. I just see a blank pdf. Am I missing something?

You cannot leave out this Massive starship by Ken. That is of course, if it's alright with him. If you add it, make sure to show multiple views to showcase the tremendous amount of detail and talent involved.

Very cool! I love simple scenes like this!

Looks like an apple corer.

So, when SDS2 comes out will SDS1 become free? If so, I'll probably try that out before purchasing v2.

Layers are what you want. You can make each floor a layer and turn any number of them on or off in any arrangement. Take a look at this SketchUp article. You can also search for some good layers tutorials. I believe this one by Aidan Chopra talks a bit about layers.

Used correctly, layers will save your life.