Great renders guys! I agree with your comments it is a little flat looking and materials could be better. Saying this the idea of this project though was to set a studio up in Sketchup with actual area lights etc saying this the studio also needs work so it produces better looking reflections. I will try to get some renders of it in a HDR environment to though.

Hi heres my latest rendre this time of a Bugatti veyron in a studio. With this project my main goal was to test Shaderlights lighting which seems to work very nicely. The model was downloaded from google warehouse and I set up the studio and lights for rendering. Hope you like it!

Hi heres my latest arch project, this time of Vastu house. My main goal here was to get as close to photorealism as possible using SU and Shaderlight. The whole project took me 2 days which included texturing, modeling, render and post. Hope you like it...

Hi SketchupNoobie, the far corridor is supposed to be lit by the two lanterns which you can just about see down in that orange far portion. I was originally planning to have an interior lit window in that region as well, spilling warm light out onto the street which would justify that amount of orange light. Your right about the lanterns, they were simply taken from google warehouse and do not fit with the era of the scene, I will model the correct type in 3dmax though.
I will get the scene over to 3dmax early next week and I will add some progress shots of it from there. Thanks for the feedback guys..

Well the main thing I would like to improve is the material setup and overall detialing. For example the next step for me would be to take this scene into 3dsmax add some realistic ivy here and there, take the mesh into zbrush and add displacement detial to bricks etc. I would then add extra texture mapping to the materials such as reflection maps, spec maps, normal maps etc. Also I think I could take the lighting further in 3dsmax/MR as you have more light types and better GI solutions. I could not really get a defined light direction which was my intial plan. Saying all of this for two days work im happy and I think ive captured my inital concept.

Well the arch style I was going for here is typical of the arch in Rhodes Greece. Alot of the alleys and streets there look kinda like this except alot older looking and more weathered. Do a google search for Rhodes you will see what I mean..

Hi heres my latest image, this time of an old Rhodes alleyway. I have been working on it for two days now and although im not totally happy with it I think this is as far as im going to take it using Sketchup and Shaderlight for now. Crits comments welcome...

Hi guys, heres my latest render this time of two grounded Helicopters in a desert type scene. The Helicopter model was downloaded from google warehouse and then setup and rendered in Shaderlight. Rendertime was around 30mins and then I spent some more time in Photoshop adding the final atmosphere and details. Hope you like it...

Hi guys heres my latest Shaderlight render, I started this on tuesday in the hope of capturing the Halloween spirit. Render time was very quick around 10mins and I spent aound an hour in Photoshop adding the finishing details. Hope you like it...

Heres my latest render, this time of a boat interior. The scene is lit using skylight portals and area lights. Hope you like it.

Good render Sepo, I like the mood you have created here!

I had a single photo this house which I used as a starting point for texturing. The textures were then heavily re-worked in Photoshop to get rid of distortion, unwanted lighting information etc etc. By the end of the texturing process your pretty much left with hand painted textures, but becuase you have a good starting point its alot easier to get good final results.

Heres a screengrab of model in SU. Very simple setup as you can see here, of course some details were done in photoshop the same time model was integrated into backplate

Hi heres my latest render using Shaderlight. It was rendered using Shaderlights exterior lighting using a HDR image, the model was then intergrated into the backplate which was also taken at the same location as the HDR image.

Hi your main problems are coming from tone mapping and exposure, if you adjust your image so its correctly exposed before you start adjusting material properties you will get a much better render. Im a bit out of practice with Vray but in Vray for 3dsmax you can adjust your exposure in the camera settings using tradition camera settings like F-stop and shutter etc.

Hi Bryan, portal lights are like area lights except they use the lighting environment to light the interior, in this case the lighting environment was a HDR. If you enable GI (goto Shaderlight render settitngs and turn on "interior GI") it will use portal light information and give you a much more realistic lighting model. Most of the time you can leave your portals intensity to 100% which will take the lighting information from the IBL on a 1:1 basis and then simply adjust your exposure and things should start to look photorealistic depending on your texturing etc. Portal lights and tone mapping will be available in the full release of Shaderlight due on 5th october.

Hi heres my latest Shaderlight project, rendered using portal lights and Shaderlights GI. The main goal of this project was to get as close to photorealism as possible, its not quite there in places but I think it shows what Shaderlight for Sketchup is capable of.

Yes I agree it does look slightly off now I look at it. I will try get another render out to fix the problem.

Heres another attempt at integrating a google warehouse model into a backplate using Shaderlight. I had to hand painted a IBL image to get lighting to match backplate as closely as possible. Hope you like.

Im pretty sure it was in Big brother recently.