Bring back the Geometry Respect controls in AI Render

SketchUp Feature Requests
1

Please bring back the Geometry Respect controls in AI Render

The removal of parameters such as the “Respect Geometry” slider from the Text Prompt interface has significantly reduced the usefulness of the AI Render extension for my workflow.

Previously, these controls allowed the generated image to more closely respect the geometry and structure of the SketchUp model. Without them, it is much harder to produce an image that accurately reflects the model I have created. The AI-generated result can deviate substantially from the original geometry, making the feature much less useful when the goal is to visualize an existing SketchUp design rather than generate something loosely inspired by it.

I understand from SketchUp Support that these features were removed when the rendering platform was changed because they were not compatible with the new platform. I also understand that there is currently no guarantee that they will return.

I would strongly encourage the SketchUp team to reconsider this. Controls such as the Respect Geometry parameter are particularly important for users who want AI Render to enhance or visualize their existing models while maintaining the design intent and geometry of those models.

It would be especially valuable to have controls that allow users to determine how strongly the AI should adhere to:

  • The existing model geometry
  • Camera/view composition
  • Materials and surfaces
  • Other elements of the original SketchUp scene

AI Render is much more useful for architectural and design workflows when the user can maintain control over the relationship between the generated image and the underlying SketchUp model.

I hope the product team will consider restoring these controls, or providing equivalent functionality in the new rendering platform.

Please bring back the geometry-respect controls—or give users another way to achieve the same level of control over how closely AI Render follows their SketchUp model.

2

AI Render switched to Google’s Nano Banana image generation model, and as far as I’m aware, it doesn’t expose the same level of developer controls that some diffusion models do.

So I suspect you’ll either need to wait for Google to add those controls, or for SketchUp to switch to a different model, although many would argue that could come at the cost of image quality.

Nano Banana is more closely tied to natural-language understanding than many other image-generation models, so it helps to speak to it almost as you would a person. Think of the prompt as a creative brief, using words and descriptions to explain exactly what you want.The trick with Nano Banana is to be very explicit in the prompt about what it can and can’t change. For example, if you want to change only the materials, tell it to preserve the existing geometry, composition, camera position, focal length and perspective.

Essentially, tell it exactly what you want changed and exactly what must remain unchanged.