@simon le bon said:

And here is a comparison table (in french) with the main actors in this area
++simon

You should look also at Sugar Sync, it starts with 5GB, +2GB sending 20 invitations, +500MB for each friend joined, +750MB for starting tasks. And it's more versatile than dropbox to syncronize the folders

Simon (or any other), remember to sign in with a invitation link from another user in order to earn additional space, it should be +500MB each

you're right, it's not going to be easy...in Kerky I'd say the translucent component corresponds to the transmitted with zero shininess, it's a sort of fake SSS since the final aspect is not related to the thickness. Nevertheless the correct parameters for SSS (the panel "fog") are a bit difficult to be managed, and very time consuming

Agree with Charly, the frosted glass is a good starting point, with a very low transmitted shininess value. The IOR of ice is quite difference than glass, it should be 1,30...I wonder if it makes any noticeable difference.
Though, I think the hardest thing to figure out is how the surface should look

since the image is perfect, the only lack I notice (not your fault) is a odd behaviour of Thea with the out of focus areas, some metal reflections look crisp and fake. I already saw this effect in other works before.
Do you agree with this? perhaps is related to the render method you used?

@unknownuser said:

What's the setting on the filament?

@massimo said:

Nothing special Rich

a realistic bulb lamp is one of the most difficult thing I have ever tried
...without success obviously

I cannot recall anyone having shared such a material...there's a translucent library in the KT site but the ice is quite transparent there.
Ice and snow can appear in very different ways indeed, have you a reference image?

First of all I suggest to read the Getting Started Guide, from official website, then some good tutorials for beginners can be found here
http://www.sketchupartists.org/tutorials/sketchup-and-kerkythea/
majid's "KT Fast Start 4Architects" is quick and very good
Even I have written a book, but it's for a bit more advanced level...and only in italian, so far

As for the light settings, unless you use emitter materials there's not a exact corrispondence between the light intensity value and real-world measures. Let's say values from 0.5 to 5 cover most of needs (I'd start with 1-2 for artificial lights and a bit more for the sun, but usually the sun is correctly imported from sektchup), then you can adjust the exposure and gamma in the rendering window

well, once you have the html code it's quite simple changing the images as you want...a while ago I used it for a rendered orbit view.
What about unity? Could be very interesting...though, I tried it in the past but was not so simple to use, do you know a quick workflow to do what you said?

Hi, welcome
I believe "background color" is the worst option to get realistic images, you'd use instead "sky color" or better setup a lighting studio with a spherical background, you can find something also in the KT site.
About where applying lights and materials, is not so important...each person has his own workflow, I mainly put the lights directly in KT but sometimes I do it in sketchup, so the same for the materials...there's not a rule

No, same behaviour both with 2008 and boost version

Interesting...I get the same result. I never use background or sky colors then this is the first time I notice it.
In background color mode the render shows the color at full intensity value, like you had set 1.00 in the wizard
In sky color mode, but only with Photon Map, there's kinda ambient light depending from the hue but not affected by the intensity color.
I cannot figure out... perhaps is related to echo boost version?

@sojourner said:

Yeah, Kerky has been acting strange for me. for the last couple months I have had 2 issues.

If I set the sky setting to background color and use a nearly black color, I instead get a bright blue background.

Or if for example I use sky color, suddenly I can't turn off some kind of global lighting. Even if I have no other lights in the render besides the sun and reduce it or disable it, the rendered image still looks like it was done with the sun at %100.

Here's the kicker, I built a new machine last week. fresh install of windows, sketchup, kerky, everything. New hardware except for the drives which were formatted clean. Start a new drawing, I still have the same issue. The only thing I can think of is that I am still using an Nvidia chipset video card and there must be something in one of the driver updates from the last couple of months.

Since KT works with cpu, the graphic card doesn't affect the render, only viewport issues could be. It's a very strange behaviour what you described. Can you post some screenshot and a sample scene, here or at KT forum?

@tridem said:

actually I believe it's hard finding something better than KT
..
At least not for free!

great work, the lighting...the materials... very good!
Only something looks strange in the specular surfaces... perhaps artifacts from the denoise?

actually I believe it's hard finding something better than KT especially if you're used to its flexibility and powerful material editor.
At least not for free!... unless you move to blender and the engines related to it like yafaray and lux

I cannot open your file, perhaps you should save it in a 2000 or 2004 dwg version

SU versions earlier than 7.1 could open dwg/dxf, you can keep both vers.7 and 8 in the same machine without problems

Interesting, thanks for sharing

@unknownuser said:

if mankind were not a curious species anyway, we would still be sitting in the trees

couldn't agree more