What are some great rendering extensions for SketchUp?

I don’t know why Thea render is looking as such a secondary renderer at this post.

Want biased render like Vray? Thea can do it with quality and fast!

Want Unbiased like Maxwell and Indigo or Octane? Thea Can do it with CPU only TR1/TR2/AMC with extraordinary quality and full caustics calculations. Or you can go fast, really fast, with Presto MC (CPU, GPU or CPU+GPU) ubelievably fast and not many renderers can pull of full power from GPU+CPU.

You can go even faster if you want to use Presto AO wich will give you extraordinary results in the least amount of time…

Is it the best renderer around? I would say so without a doubt, if I didn’t know that is a very subjective question. Best in what aspect?

Omg could I please be the one you share your podium license with? I’ve been trying out the free or demo versions of various renderers and podium seems really nice and simple. I think I could really get used to it.

I would probably wait for a mac version, lars.

And to the other cat down bellow; its personal preference. Tried both Thea and Vray, both were slow and expensive (more so at the time of my trial). Now I render an image in mere seconds. Presto simply isn’t fast enough, and its result doesn’t really stack up.

Well we use Lightup to create realtime flythru’s , its not like Vray, super realism but by god its quick… I consider render times of secs to minutes…with atmospheric results but also can give technical information as lux levels, total insolation etc.

Its quirky… sometimes frustrating, and developed by one man (adam) who seemingly struggles to keep pace with manuals and technical support .

Allows realtime rendered flyarounds in sketchup, realtime materials editing in sketchup, realtime post production in sketchup… creates self-contained rendered model files (luca) that you can send to clients that they can fly around with a simple viewer… has an android /ipad viewer app…

Remember these are completely rendered models, not rendered static scenes… for me if a final presentation render takes more that 10 minutes I’m not happy… I don’t have time for single scene renders waiting for hours…

But be warned, it is quirky and you have to delve thru lots of user forum feedback to isolate issues sometimes…but you will be flabbergasted at how quick it is and if you stick to defaults will get reasonable results that will surprise you.

Eg, we created a virtual rendered model for a apartment showroom, reflections, hdri backgound, ies lights, furniture, flowers, interior nick nacks… render time 4-5 minutes… notebook i7 16gb ram, gtx970 gpu…

Visualizer is great for exterior renderings, but I use Kerkythea for interior “shots” because you can apply lighting fixtures.

I recommande Twinmotion. It’s an architectural rendering tool, easy to use and very user friendly interface. Import from SketchUp is stable too. It’s not free though, but if you are student or teacher, they have free educational version.

Hi Tommy. Thanks for the “thumbs up” on Visualizer.

I’m intrigued to try Visualizer myself. Their help page https://getvisualizer.com/blog/where-to-start.html offers a 5-minute, getting-started video that seems to have disappeared.

In a classic case of “Where’s my … HERE it is!”, I found the video after posting a question about it. The video at Visualizer for SketchUp: How to Start on Vimeo appears to be the Visualizer tutorial missing on the above page.

I hope this helps

EDIT: oops too late…

@August, this is a ping to see if @LesterP has a copy of the video as he’s written a plugin for the plugin…

john

Thank you for the “thanks.” It’s good to see you in the forum again :smiley:

I’ve haven’t come across any updates or references on the Kerkythea website later than 2009. Are they still actively supporting the software?

See this forum thread on Release Candidate 2.5.2:

http://www.kerkythea.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10661&start=90#p94152

It sounds like an update might not come. That said, Kerkythea still works fine, at least for my needs. And the SU2KT extension works fine in SU2016.

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Related Question: What Rendering Programs Store Data In the Sketchup File?

For example, are there any rendering programs that have lighting, reflection, and transmission stored in Sketchup’s attribute dictionaries that allow the rendering behaviors to be completely stored in the Sketchup file?

Then you could go to the 3D warehouse and download a model that renders without additional work?

I don’t think SketchUp is able to store all that info in the SKP file. Nice idea, though.

@dave, @BruceYoung, I split this off as another topic but didn’t add an obvious link
john

I used LightUp for a while. I switched to UnrealEngine. Superior materials, interactive walkthroughs (like LightUp), lots of possibilities and a ziliion things to learn from a large (gamer&archviz) and very active community. Tough to master and your workflow will need a third party mapping tool (Blender for instance) for UVmapping.

Likewise. I am starting to use Unity3D gameengine. The learning curve is flat, but no limits to what you can do. I can export a interactiv exe-file, html-pages for the web or for Android and Iphones. I have tried Vray, Twilight (which I use now since it can render both SU animations and Sketchyphysics), RenderIn, Shaderligth, Vizualizer (which actually makes the best outdoor renderings), LumenRT, Lumion, Podium and I couple more I do not remember) but many of them have one thing in common - they can not utilize my Geforce GTX980 GPU, and all have two other things in common - it takes them a lot of time to render one image i.e. 15 minutes and the result is not interactive. Unity3D renderes in realtime and the result is interactive walk throughs to the user.
But normally I use Twilight or Vizualizer.

Does Unity3D allow you to animate geometry? I model car washes and would like to show a car going through the car wash and the equipment working. I would also like to be able to animate water and foam spraying as the car goes through.

Unity has an animator object, and controller, and it would be possible to do animations from scratch. People often use tools like 3DS Max to do the animation, and export that as FBX. I don’t think SketchUp works in an FBX or Collada animation friendly way, but I would be happy to be wrong about that!

Unity also has particle effects, and there is the Asset Store, where you can get free or paid for add-ons, that would bound to include water and foam examples.