A new era of rendering with Trimble Connect Visualizer

For over half a year I hadn’t used Trimble Connect or the Visualizer plugin so decided to try the latest version.

Aaaand WOW, the new features just blew me away!

Added Skymaps, Depth of Field, color grading, shadow quality, reflection, bump maps, animated water and good quality exposure controls.

You can save images in 4k quality but still no option to save animation.so I used screen capture.

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Visualizer is Windows only, it looks like.

This is for SketchUp? A google search turns up no useful results.

It is mainly used to display Tekla models, but, as it comes with Trimble Connect, in SketchUp Pro subscription, then can be utilized by SketchUp user as well.

Today I’ll be making a short tutorial of it

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Turorial is ready!

One correction for installing -

1. You need to first install TC for Windows
2. Then install Visualizer
3. Then open TC and sign in

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Didn’t know about this! Very cool!

Hope it gets Vegetation and macOS compatibility.

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All 3d and good quality 2.5.d plants looked really good. Only issue I saw was with 2d-face me vegetation as it is going to be stuck in the position you saved the model.

I have a feeling that we won’t see a macOS version so soon as not so many Tekla users are on Mac :smiley:

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Hi Speaker,

I’ve just been looking into this, visited the Tekla website (which I didn’t know existed!), signed in using my pro sub and I’m not sure that it can be used by non-Tekla users. Do you think that’s right?

Tekla or Trimble Connect?
I don’t have Tekla either. I see the download options from both of my account’s that are SketchUp Pro and Studio subscriptions.

Oh, I don’t see that option on my trimble account? I went to Tekla and it seemed as if an account and payment was needed. I downloaded what could be the visualizer, but judging by the file extension of the downloaded file (“tsep”), I suspect a Tekla paid account is needed. This is a best guess.

Here’s my trimble account view.

You have Trimble Connect business. launch it from the AMP, then, upon opening, click on the grid or squares at the top right, it should bring you to the apps that are available for your plan.

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Thank you, found it with your very clear instructions.

I downloaded and installed the MSI, but nothing appeared to confirm the action was successful.

Then I figured it might need more software, so downloaded trimble connect.

I opened this signed in.

Then I uploaded a model to it.

Then I opened it up in trimble connect. I didn’t see an icon as shown in this youtube video I found

Unfortunately in my instance I was able to find that icon.

I pressed a few other buttons, with no success.

I uninstalled and reinstalled the visualizer, no change in outcome.

I think I’ll give up, shame though.

I had trouble installing it the first time as well.

I think what I saw in the Trimble Connect forums was that you need to launch some TC project first, close TC and then install Visualizer. This worked with the first time on the latest TC version. That is why I mentioned it in the video.

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I’m glad it’s not just me.

I did roughly as you described and seem to have no success.

I’m going to discontinue my efforts I think, it seems highly convoluted and hit and miss - ironically not suitable for business use.

I am very grateful that you’ve raised this as a rendering app all the same.

I will not rest until I see a “Send to Visualizer” icon in the SketchUp toolbar for Trimble Connect :smiley:
I think this is an awesome rendering solution and, as it is based on Unity 3D, has a lot of potential still.

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I look forward to the day :grin: It’ll mean saving £400-500 on a separate rendering app like V-Ray or Enscape (I do really like the latter).

I wonder, does it tie in with VR easily? I’ve used Sketchup with my HP Mixed Reality headset, it was superb and I actually used it to design the office I built, as well as a few New Builds I designed from scratch.

It’s not quite done…

I just tested in with Oculus Quest 2.
The moment I pressed the VR button Steam VR opened and I could see the Visualizer model. Navigation works only with keyboard. No stereo effect.

It should probably work with oculus air link as well. Need to test that.

Did some testing:

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That’s very good to hear about VR, keyboard navigation is a good start.

The testing video you did is fantastic, well done and that is exactly the kind of thing that would be welcome from the SketchUp team :+1:

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Thanks for highlighting this. How strange that Vray is bundled with Studio but then there’s Visualizer as well.

Is visualiser realtime or still/camera path?

“Send to Visualiser” does sound pretty good. I long for the day when we can add “raytraced” mode to layout views ( as well as Raster, Vector and Hybrid. )