Thanks for the comments! Here is another render, I tried to make it a bit brighter.

Here is part of the model I have textured, I rendered it in V-Ray attempting a evening look. I have included the visopt settings at the bottom, renamed as a ruby script.

Evening render settings

I have been looking for some good .visopt settings for a night or exterior render. Any help appreciated!

Try this for the roof,

http://www.cgtextures.com/texview.php?id=13675&PHPSESSID=5eb628e1d5e686ea3801e8a0eb0b7990

and this for the bricks,

http://www.cgtextures.com/texview.php?id=27095&PHPSESSID=5eb628e1d5e686ea3801e8a0eb0b7990

for the grass

http://www.cgtextures.com/texview.php?id=3409&PHPSESSID=5eb628e1d5e686ea3801e8a0eb0b7990

These should help a lot

Very creative work Oli

+1

@resistor said:

smokinbakin,

Can you tell whether you get accurate model (exactly the one you made in SU) after you followed steps you described (to export from SU to Lux) or there are some drawbacks/deteriorations in resulting Lux' model if compared to original SU model?

p.s.: i'm choosing between KT and Lux for rendering SU models --> if SU models are imported well into Lux i would prefer Lux over KT.

I am not a heavy user of Luxrender, but when I do use this method I sometimes have problems with materials, but the model is never harmed. (except for being upside down occasionly) It is a lot of trouble to go through this process though. I would definitely recommend Kerkythea and the soon to be released Thea as rendering programs bridged with sketchup.

How did you achieve that final render?

@sepo said:

Part of believeable render is that it resembles real and correct. If your arch does not read correct it will always poke you in the eye...

Well I will do what I can to fix the problem, If you want to have a go fixing the problem, here is the Arch.

the arch

The textures on those are definitely some of the best I have seen.

@sepo said:

Exactly...arch is same thickness all around, otherwise it would collapse.

I think I will just make all the little stones near the top bigger, and just ignore the fact that my arch would collapse in real life

Excellent work Pete

Here is and update, including a reference photo which a am mostly modeling after, but I will change a few things to my liking.

@sepo said:

The size of the stones at near top of the arch look way small. It looks like it could fall any minute.

Thanks for the help I will fix that shortly.

@sir said:

its not symmetrical

That was intentional to give it a worn down old appearance.

@sepo said:

Looks good so far, but that arch looks dodgy

The shape, or the rocks?

Thanks for the help

Update: (Still fixing the part of the road has a little "tear")

I have been looking for some good Photoshop plugins to post process renders, and I was wondering what some of the common favorites are.

Very nice work, an excellent use of photo match.

@solo said:

It's free:

http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/~luft/ivy_generator/

Thanks for the help Pete. Some of the example screenshots look amazing! Do you know a way I could use this without having the ability to import/export .obj? (I have the free version of sketchup 6)