No worries, your questions are not silly. It means I should simplify my software.
(1) You can either match the SketchUp viewport via the toolbar:
This will give your render in Rayscaper the same camera position and resolution as the SketchUp viewport.
(2) You can also manually make the field of view for your camera wider:
this is great, thank you very much Thomas. I would be absolutely delighted if you post a short youtube video doing a quick render of an interior, a couple of material adjustments (mirrors and glass maybe), some lights (LED for example) and environment options. this would really help me (this is how I learnt to use Twilight Render) and other users as this software would be great for small interior design businesses such as myself and possibly students studying interior design or interior architecture? thanks again.
I agree that better videos are needed to help users get started. It’s definitely on my list to tackle soon.
I don’t know if you’ve seen this video by Majid yet. It walks through Rayscaper, not specifically for interiors, just a general overview of the software:
yes I’ve seen it or should I say, I’ve tried watching it. Useful for the materials I would say, not great for interiors (Majid’s voice is great for nodding off though)
Rayscaper 0.9.50 Beta is available in the SketchUcation store. More fixes and improvements. As always, I recommend upgrading to the latest version.
What Changed?
Bring back the transparency shadows option for the glass material. This option makes the glass material invisible to
shadow rays, allowing direct light to pass through the glass. This is useful for allowing direct light through glass
in indoor scenes.
Add extra logging to help diagnose failed installations.
Cyrillic glyph support: The user interface now supports Cyrillic characters.
Improved pixel filtering: Fixed an issue where edges appeared overly jagged with the default settings.
Enhanced texture sliders: Scale and translation sliders now have more intuitive ranges.
Help me build the community
If you like Rayscaper, please share your renders (final or work-in-progress, it doesn’t matter)! This is motivating and will help me showcase its capabilities to new users.
It took a while to get this one out. A lot has changed under the hood, making things more robust and easier to maintain. Plenty of bug fixes and improvements too.
As always, I recommend upgrading to the latest version.
What Changed?
Fixed glowing emission on some models.
Example: link.
Fixed metallic presets—no more flipping back to custom settings.
Added a button to reload library assets (useful if you start offline, then go online).
Faster asset downloads.
Larger environment texture thumbnails in the editor.
HDRI thumbnails are now tone-mapped (less dark).
Picking cursor (material, camera, info) is now black & white—always visible.
Denoising is now a post-process step: toggle it anytime without restarting renders.
Renamed “Tone Mapping” tab to “Post-Processing” (includes AI denoise switch).
New lights default to 5600 K.
Material emission also defaults to 5600 K.
Normal map settings (strength, on/off, etc.) are more prominent in the UI.
Fixed scroll issues in the material and lights lists.
Removed archive creation option (will return once stable).
Asset browser now remembers category/tag selections across asset types.
Dropped flip-green for normal maps—now flagged as DirectX or OpenGL (default: OpenGL).
PolyHaven normal maps explicitly set to OpenGL.
Increased max render samples to 50,000 (better for noisy scenes).
Fixed cyan textures in saved materials with embedded images.
Tweaked the material saving panel.
Help Me Build the Community
If you like Rayscaper, please share your renders (final or work-in-progress, it doesn’t matter)! This is motivating and helps me showcase its capabilities to new users.
Make sure there’s no watermark for licensed users.
Fix the render time counter in the viewport.
Fix a crash happening occasionally when updating geometry.
Help Me Build the Community
If you like Rayscaper, please share your renders (final or work-in-progress, it doesn’t matter)! This is motivating
and helps me showcase its capabilities to new users.
Fix weird artifacts in the interactive render viewport.
Fix the upside-down images when saving.
Add transmission support for the PBR material. This makes it possible to create glass or liquid materials with the PBR material.
Fix a regression when renaming light components. Rayscaper lights should now correctly use the name of their SketchUp
light component again.
Fix glass rendering, when multiple glass surfaces overlapped, Rayscaper would render them too dark.
Fix the render timer in the viewport. It will stop counting when the render is paused or finished.
Help Me Build the Community
If you like Rayscaper, please share your renders (final or work-in-progress, it doesn’t matter)! This is motivating
and helps me showcase its capabilities to new users.
Draw overlays for the lights in the viewport. This allows the user to select the lights in the viewport directly. You can enable
or disable the overlay in the viewport toolbar.
Save the layout and position of the Rayscaper window between sessions. You can reset the layout via the menu “File >
Reset Window Layout”.
Fix a crash when minimizing the Rayscaper window.
Here’s the light overlay feature in action:
Help Me Build the Community
If you like Rayscaper, please share your renders (final or work-in-progress, it doesn’t matter)! This is motivating
and helps me showcase its capabilities to new users.
If you like Rayscaper, please share your renders (final or work-in-progress, it doesn’t matter)! This is motivating
and helps me showcase its capabilities to new users.
As always, I recommend upgrading to the latest version.
What Changed?
Rayscaper will now always appear when you open it — it no longer stays hidden if it was minimized in a previous
session.
Fixed a crash that could occur when scrolling through the asset browser.
Help Me Build the Community
If you like Rayscaper, please share your renders (final or work-in-progress, it doesn’t matter)! This is motivating
and helps me showcase its capabilities to new users.
Rayscaper now supports direct integration with the Skatter plugin. Render-only Skatter data can now be ingested directly from Skatter, bypassing the
SketchUp viewport. This offloads complex instancing and geometry handling to Rayscaper, keeping SketchUp responsive and lightweight during rendering.
Perfect for large vegetation or scattering setups — just hit render and let Rayscaper handle the heavy lifting. (@ntxdave Thanks for connecting me with the Skatter people).
Bugfix: push/pull geometry would not properly propagate to Rayscaper.
Fix Rayscaper for SketchUp 2024, caused by a breaking change in the SketchUp SDK. Note: Going forward, Rayscaper will only support the latest three
SketchUp releases because now that it’s for sure that the SDK is not backwards compatible, it’s too much overhead for me to maintain more versions. The
current version supports: SketchUp 2026, SketchUp 2025 & SketchUp 2024.
Make materials assigned to a SketchUp group or component instance work again. cc: @sashapepperspray
Here’s a screenshot of a simple forest I created using Skatter:
If you like Rayscaper, please share your renders (final or work-in-progress, it doesn’t matter)! This is motivating and helps me showcase its capabilities
to new users.
Add Bloom and Glare post-processing effects. Enhance your renders with cinematic quality.
Add visual feedback for render failures. A red “RENDER FAILED” text now appears when rendering encounters errors,
making it immediately clear when something goes wrong.
GUI enhancements: Improved sliders and tooltips. Sliders now have dedicated input boxes for more precise control.
Fix texture environment image update. Loading a new HDRI would not restart the render.
Bugfix: Fix grayscale image display in ImGui. Grayscale images were showing as red due to improper handling of
single-channel pixel formats.
Add procedural sky environment support. You can now create realistic sky environments directly in Rayscaper without
needing HDRI images. Perfect for quick outdoor renders with physically-based sky and sun simulation.
Add SketchUp environment tracking support (SketchUp 2025 or higher). Rayscaper can now automatically track and sync
with SketchUp’s environment settings.
Add PBR material support for SketchUp 2025. SketchUp 2025’s new PBR materials are now supported and will
automatically convert to Rayscaper’s material system with proper metallic, roughness, and normal map values. Note:
Rayscaper does not support power/scale multipliers on image textures, so if your SketchUp PBR material uses a
roughness or metallic texture with a scale value other than 1.0, that scaling will not be applied in Rayscaper.
Bring back archive creation. You can now export your complete scene, including all assets, to a zip archive for easy
sharing and backup.
Separate max depth settings by path type. Advanced users can now configure maximum ray bounce depths separately for
diffuse, glossy, and transmission paths for more control over render quality and performance.
Bugfix: Fix FloatImageTexture color space handling. Float textures (like roughness and metallic maps) now correctly
use linear color space for accurate rendering.
Bugfix: Fix noise texture deserialization. Noise textures saved in previous versions now load correctly and don’t
crash Rayscaper.
Bugfix: Avoid duplicate SketchUp shadow light. The sun/shadow light from SketchUp will no longer appear twice in the
scene.
The following screenshot shows the user interface enhancements:
If you like Rayscaper, please share your renders (final or work-in-progress, it doesn’t matter)! This is motivating and helps me showcase its capabilities
to new users.
Add log export feature. You can now export Rayscaper logs directly from the application menu, making it easier to
share diagnostic information when reporting issues. You can access it via the SketchUp menu bar: Extensions > Rayscaper > Export Logs for Support.
Add a reset button for the post-processing tab. Quickly restore default post-processing settings with a single click.
If you like Rayscaper, please share your renders (final or work-in-progress, it doesn’t matter)! This is motivating and helps me showcase its capabilities
to new users.
Area Light Support: Create realistic soft lighting effects with area lights, perfect for architectural and product visualization
Multi-Selection for Lights: Select multiple lights at once using SHIFT or CTRL from SketchUp, the lights overlay, or the lights tab for easier management in complex scenes
Light Component Preview: See a preview of light components in the light tool for easier and more accurate placement
Light Grouping: Group Rayscaper light components within SketchUp groups and component definitions for better organization
Enhanced Light Icons: Improved visual feedback with new light icons throughout the interface
Material & Texture Improvements
Material Selection Context Menu: Right-click on materials in the asset manager for quick access to common operations
Export Selected Materials: Export materials from your current scene for reuse in other projects
Auto-Wire Alpha Textures: Textures with alpha channels in SketchUp automatically connect to the opacity channel in Rayscaper materials
Float Texture Multipliers: Adjust the strength of roughness and metallic textures with new multiplier controls
SketchUp 2025 PBR Support: Metallic and roughness factors from SketchUp 2025’s PBR materials now properly apply as texture multipliers
Animation
SketchUp Scene Animation: Render animations based on SketchUp scenes, including sun and shadow positions - perfect for creating time-lapse renders showing how lighting changes throughout the day
Interface Improvements
Updated Color Scheme: Refreshed Rayscaper color scheme for better visual clarity
Improved Render Status Bar: Clearer visual indicators make it easier to monitor rendering progress
Better Tooltips: Rewritten tooltips throughout the interface for improved clarity and user-friendliness
If you like Rayscaper, please share your renders (final or work-in-progress, it doesn’t matter)! This is motivating and helps me showcase its capabilities
to new users.
