I purchased sketchup pro in 2015, and have happily used it well since. I'm extremely upset over the fact now I can't convert 2017 content (using Sketchup Make 2017) down to 2015 for use. This is almost like a forced situation to force me to cough up money for something I don't really need (like sketchup 2021).
Am hoping someone writes a convertor out there to be able to convert 2021 files down to 2015. Infuriating to say the least!
The Visualizer website is down! Does anyone have a list of enhanced material names for the different reflection levels?
I only remember gloss and matte
I recall paint plastic / metal somewhere...
thanks-heaps!
Some sought after renderer engines are priced SAAS - at fair value of
$20/month = $240 / yr
same here... renting plugins suck. Some plugins are used once a in long while.
could be really useful for drawings such as these :
hi fluid, I think you are trying to make this a full renderer somewhat, which makes it really slow on normal systems. Anyhow, is there any way to make a image like the one attached, where I manually photoshopped some kind of occlusion / radiosity in the shadow edges where I think would be appropriate, and leave the lines crisp and clean from direct skethchup output? I it were possible - would it be still as slow as what's happening now? the intention is the give the image more depth than the lack of due to the flat shadows generated in sketchup.
A basic material editor has been added to the beta. Worth a shot, CPU renders are insanely fast
Yeah, if you get too concerned about dimensions like these, then you have to account for the size and thicknesses of the blades that will cut them, usually they slice a few millimeters off what is the actual intended and exact dimension.
Brad Schell and Joe Esch need to start up a new company. They had a huge following, they sold out, they retired, and they should be tired of retiring by now and do something meaningful like come up with a better Sketchup!
I'm not doubting Thea's potential or reasons why it's so popular here. It's just that I'm probably the super impatient type and cannot wait for instant renders. Perhaps I should personally invest in a proper and real workstation after all. The office recently spent Euro$10k on the 3D Max / VRAY machine. It renders like a true workhorse able to pump out a forest in minutes. When we get to that stage of speed, I start to believe that photorealism matters, and that's where some renderers are better than others. I kind of stumbled into Corona after reading this blog post :
http://theambitiousoutsider.blogspot.com/2014/10/vray-vs-corona.html
quick test scenes one is Thea... the other one is twilight at the exact same time for cooking... 4min 34seconds.
do note that my PC has no CUDA or GPU. It's onboard graphics due to its laptop nature (it's a Mac Mini running Windows 7)
Both set on unbiased render. You can see the obvious difference.
https://www.thearender.com/site/index.php/downloads
Windows
download-line
Thea Render v1.5.04.1413 Installer 67.1Mb
Requirements: Windows Vista/7/8/10, SSE2 CPU
Presto GPU (included) Requirements: Nvidia CUDA graphics card (Compute Capability 2.0 or bigger)
Hey Skalp, those professional drawings you put up by mekers broekx - is that Layout or AutoCAD?
Ok, I done a short trial run of Thea, I'm sorry but I am not convinced, as it is somewhat too slow in rendering and the interface is a little too convoluted for my tastes. Much prefer Podium's interface and Twilight's simplicity. Still sticking to Twilight for now...
You can't download it yet, but Beta testing is open and invite only. If someone can point me to a high quality modelled skp scene, I can use it to test it right out of the box - ie. press render immediately without any materials reflections or bumps set up (doesn't have that feature yet because the SU team on board is fresh and still sorting out these features I believe, and Corona has always tethered of the basic functions of Max / Blender including the material editors). Will post the results here, it normally displays the timings as well on my old and slow machine.
If you want to be a beta tester you can sign up on their forum which I won't link to from here.
srx, thanks I'm downloading the trial to try it out, and will feedback to you my thoughts and feelings on it.
thanks pilou, you always find the strangest and coolest plugins! I suppose there is instancing with this Skatter function? Otherwise the model will break with so many polygons in Sketchup!
srx, I don't believe a lot of money was paid or some "high class CG stars" are backing it as you put it. It seems many stumbled into it and almost all have come from the Vray background. That is why it still has a small and humble niche but steadily growing base, most of them seasoned Vray users - just like how Vray started small and pushed through to mainstream over the years.
One of the reasons why so many of these VRAY users make the switch is because they swear by the ease of use to get a very high quality render instead of pissing around with a thousand VRAY settings that have to be tweaked like crazy to come to something decent. Corona almost has the same Keep It Simple Stupid philosophy as Sketchup but with insane quality. It's hard to say that of VRAY. The beautiful thing is that they started like that and expanded on it. It is not like Windows 10, where they come up with an insane beast with layers upon layers of cancer on it and slap a new skin on it that is supposed to simplify things, but ends up making it slower and dumber.
Look, I don't own a copy or license of Corona, nor am I promoting it or helping them promote it. I love the ease of Twilight Renderer though though it is CPU based, and I believe I am fair when it comes to judgement of these rendering engines. I thought I would just settle with my bought versions of SU Podium, but that's history now after Twilight, which apparently is also based on Kerkythea. But this is all old tech and older algorithms, so I am a fan of better and improved algorithms that don't require people to buy fancy schmancy hardware and crazy GPUs to perform simple tasks.
With this remarkable algorithm I can now render from a lower end laptop to get the same speed and results as a souped up GPU machine with a GPU based renderer. I was super excited when this announcement was made and I formed a small part of that vote to make it happen.
Also a couple of long timer guys like Pilou and Solo kind of have seen me around in a past life, lamenting about the lack of adequate rendering quality and speed that most of the renderers seemed to produce. I gave up after purchasing Podium and stuck with that for awhile. Only the mid of this year I only ever heard of Corona and did the homework... and boy, has woken me up to the art of the render again.
It's a high speed unbiased renderer. The quality is unmatched as shown in this attachment and the link to it here :
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bbb3viz/22717378466/in/photostream/
It's not normal CPU based, and not the usual raytracing combined with global illumination. Normal CPU is super slow, it uses some special new algorithm to calculate something called Path Tracing. Unbeatable.
Here's a demonstration of the extreme power of Corona CPU rendering with scatter :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43wxk0BhNOU
Good news! The Corona Team has begun Beta testing for Sketchup... It is going to be sweet 
The unintuitive and slow VRAY is going to have some serious competition now.