Photo shop and V-Ray

Hello,

I’m trying to find out if either V-Ray or Photo-Shop or both is necessary for realism from Sketchup to provide better quality for “natural lighting” such as sunlight and nighttime lighting from such as moonlight, starlight etc., types of lighting and “artificial lighting” from manmade items such as daily fixtures such as streetlamps and indoor lighting for buildings. thanks

A renderer like V-ray is capable of creating photo-realistic images from a SketchUp model. There are many other renderers out there that can do the same thing. You don’t neccesarily need Photo Shop but generally some sort of image editor is useful for making final adjustments and cropping your images.

As for the realism that’s also going to depend a great deal on your modeling process. None of it will be entirely automatic so you need to expect to climb the learning curve.

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Thanks, I have a current subscription from V-Ray, but haven’t delved into it yet because it will wait until prior to the final printouts. I have heard various arguments about the Photo programs in the market. However, since I’ve already paid for V-Ray subscription, I prefer to start with this. I’m assuming like you mentioned, I can always supplement V-Ray with Photoshop or other editing programs later. Does this sound the right path then?

Hi @jabrown . To echo @DaveR, you can pretty much do everything you want now inside of V-Ray with very little need for Photoshop. Photoshop alone with SketchUp would be for creating more artistic or ‘stylized’ renderings…not photo-realistic.

For more information on both methods, feel free to check out our free course on SketchUp Campus for either SketchUp to Photoshop (non-photorealistic) or Getting Started with V-Ray for SketchUp - Just a note that this course was recoredd on an earlier release of V-Ray, the main workflow and principles remain the same.

Happy to answer any other questions you have as your embark on y9our rendering journey.

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Thanks so much ! The advise was clear but since my project is long term, I needed to make sure before choosing the program before using them for the final printouts, the models will have the most ideal work. Because of course the printouts are only as good as the work put in to it

I think it’s important to have photoshop skills to clean up things that might get missed in rendering.

Also when creating large areas in a model it’s really important to be able to create custom textures or to quickly fix textures on the fly. You can link it directly to SketchUp here:

Mac
SketchUp> Preferences> Applications> [search for the Gimp application and accept]

Windows
Windows> Preferences> Applications> [search for the Gimp application and accept]

This means that Gimp will automatically open the texture (image file) when you select edit function in SketchUp.

Note: Gimp is free and open source so that’s a better option than paying high fees for PS. You can also donate to support the software development and maintenance. I use it all the time and it’s a great workhorse.

  1. Set up the link to Gimp (as mentioned above)

Screenshot 2022-12-22 at 14.29.23

  1. In the texture browser right click on a texture and select “edit”

  1. Click on the brown box icon to open the texture in Gimp

Note that with the file function in Gimp there is an option to overwrite the existing texture file so that it automatically updates in SketchUp.

Screenshot 2022-12-22 at 14.35.57

Thanks, I haven’t followed the link to “Gimp” for textures yet. As I’m using the textures in the display table for now. But sounds like it might be additional help along with photoshop. Will try it thanks

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I suggest not waiting until the last minute (or last week even) to begin learning how to create renders of the quality you desire. Depending on your prior experience with rendering software etc. it may require a lot of trial and error and frustration and joy. :slight_smile:

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Thanks, I actually have been checking the learning center on the Sketchup website in both V-Ray and Photoshop video tutorials (and also from Youtube ) over time so that I’m not trying to catch up on learning at the last minute. I know the little bit of learning using the tutorials over time is a good investment in the long run.

Thanks again and well appreciated ! !

Jeff

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