Recent discussion about AO, a quick test with free software.
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Looks very nice. What was the free software?
Kerkythea for the render and a free image editor to add the edges.
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Nice image Dave, and I love that model.
Is there a way to accentuate the edges more for the ‘Arctic’ effect that the other thread was looking for?
There are some settings for materials to show edges but I find it’s so much easier and faster to combine an image exported from SketchUp using Hidden Line face style. That also makes it easier to control which edges are displayed.
Using the image editor for this sort of thing also makes it dead simple to do things like show internal details if you want. It took me longer to upload the following image than it did to create it in the image editor.
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I really like that effect.
I use Twilight — which has a fair amount of control over edge properties but no (fully functioning) AO render mode.
The Fluid AO extension, which I referenced in the other thread, would need to be used in conjunction with SketchFX to show edges.
Bottom line, it seems, is that to achieve an Arctic Display mode equivalent with Sketch Up, you’re going to need to use an AO-capable renderer — and, depending on which one — possibly an image editor to combine images to control edge display.
Perhaps you are right. Personally I’ll take the renderer and image editor option so I can have more control over the resulting images. Probably a max of 6 or 7 minutes from SketchUp to the images I posted above. including render time.
If I was more adept with an image editor (I have Gimp), I would likely take the same route. Perhaps it’s time to invest in the effort of fully learning it and adding it to my workflow.
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I use PaintDotNet as my default image editor but it’s a Windows only thing. I tried Gimp and PhotoShop. PaintDotNet opens much faster for me and has more than enough capability. I’ve also found it easier and faster to use when editing textures so it’s the one that SketchUp and LayOut are both set to open.
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I thought about this idea when reading the other thread and wondered about using fog, adjusting light and dark etc to soften the shadows then a line overlay, therefore removing the need for a render. After considering it for a bit I decided I needed to trim my toenails.
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As much as I love Gimp, I’ve spent the few dollars to buy Affinity Photo and have not been disappointed. All the power of photoshop and a really nice user interface. It’s not rent-ware, so once you have version, you receive all updates until the next major version is released. They update fairly frequently to take care of any bugs and to tweak things their customers request.
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Yep, I bought all three Affinity products… and Luminar4
I am another using Affinity Photo, love it.
I have just started experimenting with Fluid AO. The results are amazing, but the extensions are expensive - if you want to use Fx and AO together, then it’s around $300.
But the even bigger problem is the processing speed and the final result is only exportable through screenshots - as far as I know. Saving as a scene doesn’t work and exporting as 2D file did not work either.
I like the look tough, so would love to know how to achieve it. Please let me know if there is any available tutorial for this with any additional software which can be master relatively fast.
I used sketchfx and ambient occlusion frequently in the past but the prices have increased and I discovered a cheaper and better rendering engine called Brighter 3D, it’s 75 per year or 175 for a permanent license with all future updates, you have 30 day free trial.
In the case of sketchfx I don’t need it anymore cause I’ve created my own artistic styles using sketchup styles and style builder, the watercolor I created is a lot better than the one that sketchfx has, for me, maybe because it took some time to create it and I put all my creativity on it.
Thank you for your reply.
I was wondering if SketchFX and AO have perpetual licenses or yearly subscriptions.
I was looking into using Twinmotion, but to be hones all I need is Ambient Occlusion with lines. Not a render, especially not a game-like render.
I have also experimented with SketchUp Styles as well as playing with the shadow settings and textures when creating perspective/ axonimetric images of the model. Not much of a render more like a graphical representation of the model.
They’re perpetual licenses but they work only with the sketchup version they were released, that means that they won’t work with sketchup 2024, if you want to use them you’ll have to get the next release paying for them, obviously, or use them on sketchup 2023.
I recommend you to try twilight or brighter 3D, both are great engines for their price, brighter 3D is a bit more expensive but it has more features like ray tracing rendering if you want more realistic results, but you can also use just Ambient Occlusion to render with it.
Twinmotion is a great software, the problem with it is that it doesn’t have ambient occlusion rendering so rasterization rendering doesn’t have the best results, but path tracer on the other hand offers results like vray, cycles, Arnold and other hyper realistic rendering engines, though it takes more time to rendering it’s still faster than doing it with vray. One thing I love about twinmotion is that since epic acquired it, it’s developing hasn’t stopped, it’s close to be as powerful as unreal engine, in fact recently was added lumen, a feature from unreal engine that speeds up the light calculations.
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Exactly. I am very impressed with TwinMotion. My only problem is that my computer, Alienware desktop with an inbuilt cooling system - overheats even with a simple model…
Also, I don’t really need photo-realistic rendering as I have no time for that. I could use Twinmotion as it is good if they would have a simpler rendering. the clay rendering function is almost good…I could quite master it yet.
I haven’t in the past been able to get something I like from Style Builder, but I’d like to. That’s something that just hasn’t been covered much in online instructions or help.
Style Builder is fairly simple to use once you have the lines drawn on the template. As for drawing the lines you could do that on a printed copy of the template which you then scan and save as a .png. Or you can use your tablet with some application. I use Corel Painter for that.