Thanks all for advice. I've bought Thea, and so far I really like it. I find it fairly intuitive to use, and like using it in interactive mode with the sketchup model. The rendered results I think are pretty impressive from it.

Thanks again!

Thank you both for replying.
Haha valerostudio, yes I see what you mean! What I guess I'm saying is is that I am happy to learn something, I just want to make sure before I go through with one over the other that it is the correct one - rather than learning it all and realising that it will never give me the results that I want! So, I've downloaded a trial of V-ray and Thea, and guess I'll give both a try, and see how I get on.

S

Sorry this has taken so long to report back. In short the answer was that I could only render reliably at 9999 x 9999 pix. I couldn't get to grips with splitting the image using camera tools. I ended up enlarging the renders in perfect resize and got pretty good results from this.

Hey everyone
I'm looking for a little bit of advice please!
I am yet to purchase V-Ray for sketchup - but am looking at it as a possibility. I haven't really got any rendering experience - I bought podium and used that a bit, but mainly just clay renderings which I've edited in Photoshop. I want to create something more photo-realistic for classical architectural renders with lots of marble textures in. I know this is something I can do in Podium - but by the looks of it it seems a little cartoony. Do I persevere with Podium - or am I asking a too basic program to do something that I want to look very high end? Also, I need to print out very large images from the work I make, Podiums maximum render size was 9999 x 9999 px, any idea what the maximum output is for V-ray?
Many thanks as always for everyones help!
S

haha, sorry Roland Joseph - thank you!

Thank you so much JQL - I'm going to try this now. I'll let you know how I get on! Roland Joseph - how did you manage to render at such a high resolution for such a large image? Did you also cut yours into pieces?!
Skyla

Yes, you're right Aureus - it's for an art gallery, and it will be printed in pieces, so perhaps I don't need to join it up after. What I think I need to do is find a plugin which can keep the image as a still object, other than to move to different areas of it, but all on the same plane, because as soon as I use the hand to move around, it changes the angles. I hope what I've written makes sense, and does anyone know if this plugin exists?!

Anyway, I'll keep this thread updated on my quest for large scale printing!

Thank you all for your responses. I've been researching a bit further, and you're all right - perhaps 300 DPI is too high! But I think it will need to be 150 DPI, as it is important the images are kept sharp because although you get full effect from a distance, people will still be able to view them closely. So, it'll still need to be 3 times larger than podium can offer. I am using photoshop as my photo editor. So, I guess I should try to work out thomthoms camera tools and try exporting in segments and see how I get on from there!

I've created a large model in sketchup and am using Podium to render, and I need to print out a very high quality art image (as opposed to a lower quality poster/ bill board). This will be seen up close so ideally needs to be 300 dpi (or ppi _ - I get a little confused between the two..). The time this takes to render and money are not an issue, however, I can only seem to get Podium to render as large as 9999 pixels. I need to print something that will be around 5m square - so around 60,000 pixels square, does anyone know how I might go about this???
Many thanks in advance, as always, for you invaluable insight!

S

I have a model that I am trying to purge - its a fairly large project, 270mb, but every time I try and do this sketchup stops responding - does anyone know why this might be?
Thanks
S

Yes that does help! I thought it rendered it as a 3d object and couldn't work out how to save it!! Haha. Hopefully I'll have more success now! Thank you

Thank you very much!

Yes it offers both, but in other download it is also a .max file unfortunately!

I am totally new to V-Ray and have been playing around with it for a couple of days but I can't quite figure it out... (I'm certain I'm being stupid!). Can V-Ray render an entire model? Or does it only render a scene? I'm rendering objects in V-Ray, but I can't see them save in Sketchup - is this because I can only render a scene and save it through the V-Ray frame buffer? Thank you in advance for your advice!

Does anyone have 3d max, and are you willing to convert these models to .Obj's so I can import them into sketchup? I have a mac so I can't get 3d max and these files both download as .max which no online file converters seem to be able to use. I would be eternally grateful, and am happy to pay you for your time!

http://www.3dmodelfree.com/models/27051-0.htm

http://www.3dmodelfree.com/models/29570-0.htm

Thank you both!
S

I have a drawn a building and want to put bricks around the outside - I have tried using the plugin 'oob' but this doesn't work around corners so is a little annoying. I don't want it to be rendered, I want physical 3d bricks. Does anyone know a different plugin that could help me with this? Thank you!