A finished Sketchup model imported to Lumion takes on average 1-2 hours with adding plants, textures, other details and fiddling about, and you have 10 beautiful renders where you can easily change every mood and lighting in seconds.
Nothing I know can beat that workflow.
That does sound wonderful. And Lumion also has some really great animated people which IMO are best in class. Though I haven’t ever used it, I personally don’t think the render quality is a match for either Unreal or Unity. I personally think even Blender, under the right hands, can create better and more realistic renders and animations.
This video is an example of how fast a scene can be setup in Blender, assuming you have the correct collection of Assets.
But not Layout, which is frustrating. Plus it don’t use scenes in SketchUp.
Really hope, that with increased focus on SketchUp, TC will get better (for SketchUp users).
You can produce better results with the others, but at a huge time expense. I would rather use my time on the creative aspects and delivering more projects.
I’ve seen that video, and it’s cool, but I have no idea what to use it for. There are only around five kits in the store, and the components I would believe takes a lot of time to make.
I’ve used blender a lot, but it’s not ready for production for me anyways. Maybe when BlenderPro comes out later this year.
Thanks for your response. I should clairify I LOVE using SketchUp. The most glaring deficiencies are in reports, handling metadata, scheduling, and layout as a legitimate drafting alternative. Also after reading the release notes I see the work on pushing work from layout into SketchUp and not the other way around. This actually one of those steps in the right direction. I think a lot of workflows including mine rely on third party CADD programs for schematic 2D design on the front end. This could be a game changer. Being able to trust the dimension reporting in LO is an absolute imperative.
All fair points. Like you, I believe in the 80/20 rule. Blender 2.8 won’t go production until probably end of second quarter, so will just wait and see. I believe themed KPACKS are the way to go-- at least that’s the tradition in kitbashing. Create one for Tiny Houses, or SCI FI corridors.
Or a themed KPACK with instruction on how to create a good sampling of designs. Use Genetic Algorithms to create variations. Use neural nets to learn which ones you like and be predictive. Then let it loose on a million concepts overnight…
I would say SketchUp does a tremendously good job at fitting a huge variety of use cases, by concentrate on generic modeling tool in the core and have extensions for specialized tools.
I decided yesterday to transit from Sketchup to blender over the next year. I love Blender with a passion, now only thing left is to find a good workflow on my landscape designs 
Looking forward to see an explosion of addons and workspaces coming our way the next months! Kpacks included!
I don’t find that unique with Sketchup.
Sketchup is for me the fast, easy, sloppy but good enough for many things - software.
A lot of programs have a plugin API, but SketchUp is the only one I know of that tries to keep the core free from clutter and use extensibility as an integral part of the design.
True.
I just wish transparency of layers stacked in Layout was addressed !
It is frustrating that this was recognised as a bug in 2017, and that it was stated fixing this was on the list. But now two years later it seems this is such a entrenched bug, that it will never be fixed.
I understand that my priorities are not necessarily those of the software developers or the end users, so I’ll keep utilising the various workarounds that get the job done.
I’ve got many positive things to say about Sketchup, though I am wondering if the direction of Sketchup will ultimately not be my direction. For the moment I am staying
Hi jbackus.
I thin you completely miss out on the usefulness of trimble connect etc. I dont use it and do not miss it one bit. What would be the uptake over dropbox? Why would we want an ecosystem? Or a sketchup account where that is not needed anyway? Why does Sketchup call home four or five times when I open it and for what? Why does trimble follow us around? Where is the focus on the user and what about userprivacy?
The connection with the 3dwarehouse is also not useful. Too many models are shoddily grouped or oversized, so there is only one option: download seprately, check, clean and then discard or use. NEVER import directly for it will bugsplash or wreck a model.
So some little upgrades, nice. But I agree with others here. Where is the innovation towards the professional user?
I agree completely with this. 3D Warehouse is to the hobby community a place to publish full-fledged project, meaning it’s full of super detailed cars and other heavy models that can never be successfully used as a component. My rule of thumb is to stick to SketchUp’s own components as there are nearly no third party components with a decent polygon count or efficient modeling.
I agree, though I do find content from some manufacturers very helpful, Simpson Strongtie being one to come to mind. It’s not easy to search for just official manufacturer content. Also, I wish I could download a whole collection at a time. If there is a way, I’m not figuring it out.
“We spent more time improving LayOut in the last three releases than most folks seem to have noticed 
”
Well maybe we have not noticed, as we are too busy ripping what is left of our hair out, as it still misses the basic features like the ability to dimension circles/radius, still becomes unusable if you go to Vector (why even bother…
) and that lovely new feature in layout 2019 where it freezes even more on auto save - yeah not a winner!
I agree with all other comments. Release 2019 is a massive disappointment, the ability not to load large polygon models (that every other free and paid 3D modeling app can do) is a long requested and desperately, desperatly needed feature…I feel like I’m driving a Edsel when I paid for a Tesla…
I agree of course that the Warehouse is filled with poorly built models. But I still find it enormously valuable in my work. It’s the diversity of available models that makes it valuable to me although of course the quality varies. One day I need fire trucks and elephants and a jet plane, and the next I need faucets, car differentials, and Simpson strongties. Of course for manufacturing or build drawings I model from scratch, but for concept ideation, the WH is great, warts and all. It’s disorganized I know and annoying at times, but I’d rather have a rich full chaos than a streamlined but more empty Warehouse.
I import directly into a model all the time in a fast paced busy workflow, sometimes I have to resize or clean a bit and I often explode and take a portion then delete and purge, but I still find this faster and more efficient than stopping to model say and elephant trunk when I need one. I do not experience bugsplats or crashes the way you describe.