I want to create a rendering like this where the Sketch Up file is simple with soft grey lines. I have all my drawings like this already. But I want to add the lighting and get my shadows similar to this. Does it seem there might be an added extension to achieve this? I’m not looking for a high realist image. I like the line drawings. Just want to give it that little extra oomph.
Also to add - I’ve tried Ambient Occlusion and Twilight already. I know how to use them but I don’t need that level of rendering. Just a few highlighted areas in the drawing that are lit.
There are a number of different rendering options available. I believe some of them have settings to render edges but it’s dead easy to combine a hidden line image export from SU with a rendered image.
Seems to me that Ambient Occlusion could be a good option.
I used AO in Kerkythea (which is available for free) for this and combined it with the hidden line export. There are no materials used in this model, though.
This is an image I did on Ambient Occlusion. The images always look too dark. And the materials not right. The floor is supposed to be wood herringbone.
When I try to save as a higher res it takes a long time to render for not great results. Not sure what I’m doing wrong.
I think it looks pretty good. It is a dark room. Bring that image into a photoshop like program and brighten it up a bit. That a few other tweaks and your there imo.
Here is a brighter room I’m working on. If I want to just have some additional lighting on the sconces over the window and maybe if I add lighting above the island (beams). Then I would be happy. This is just the Sketch Up drawing. If I can just figure out how to add light beams…
One old trick to get light inside a room in SketchUp is to paint the back side of your ceiling face with a transparent material, or to turn off shadow casting for the face. I don’t know how add-ons like Ambient Occlusion respond to that.
While not being as simple to use as AO there is always a rendering engine like SimLab Composer. It imports SU files and has the ability to add better materials and light sources. Here is a simple test with 2 SU objects and I added in a chair from the SimLab library. D@mn good results by just hitting the render button! There is a free version for any purpose that renders up to 1080 resolution.
I still think your best bet is to go back to twilight but use some medium settings for quick results. Make sure to add lights and expose to your liking. Then you can overlay the line work in photoshop and get the final image just like you show.
Those “light beams” in the sample you shared aren’t a result of a setting or plugin. They aren’t even realistic. Most likely just a fuzzy overlay in photoshop as well.
I agree with monospaced that the light beams in your sample image are added in post production and they aren’t very realistic unless someone is burning a pizza in the oven.
FWIW, this is a thing I did long time ago. Intentionally dark. There’s a glow on the walls from the lights but this was just a simple render in Kerkythea again combined with a hidden line export from SU.
Okay. Maybe I will give Kerkythea a try. I think that monospaced might also be correct. I thought Ambient Occlusion would be my answer for fast renderings. I don’t know how everyone else is getting such nice lighting from AO??? I have no luck. It’s actually quite terrible. I wish I could get my $99 back. In fact I live in Canada so it was more than that!
