I recommande Twinmotion. It’s an architectural rendering tool, easy to use and very user friendly interface. Import from SketchUp is stable too. It’s not free though, but if you are student or teacher, they have free educational version.
Hi Tommy. Thanks for the “thumbs up” on Visualizer.
I’m intrigued to try Visualizer myself. Their help page https://getvisualizer.com/blog/where-to-start.html offers a 5-minute, getting-started video that seems to have disappeared.
In a classic case of “Where’s my … HERE it is!”, I found the video after posting a question about it. The video at Visualizer for SketchUp: How to Start on Vimeo appears to be the Visualizer tutorial missing on the above page.
I hope this helps
EDIT: oops too late…
@August, this is a ping to see if @LesterP has a copy of the video as he’s written a plugin for the plugin…
john
Thank you for the “thanks.” It’s good to see you in the forum again 
I’ve haven’t come across any updates or references on the Kerkythea website later than 2009. Are they still actively supporting the software?
See this forum thread on Release Candidate 2.5.2:
http://www.kerkythea.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10661&start=90#p94152
It sounds like an update might not come. That said, Kerkythea still works fine, at least for my needs. And the SU2KT extension works fine in SU2016.
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Related Question: What Rendering Programs Store Data In the Sketchup File?
For example, are there any rendering programs that have lighting, reflection, and transmission stored in Sketchup’s attribute dictionaries that allow the rendering behaviors to be completely stored in the Sketchup file?
Then you could go to the 3D warehouse and download a model that renders without additional work?
I don’t think SketchUp is able to store all that info in the SKP file. Nice idea, though.
I used LightUp for a while. I switched to UnrealEngine. Superior materials, interactive walkthroughs (like LightUp), lots of possibilities and a ziliion things to learn from a large (gamer&archviz) and very active community. Tough to master and your workflow will need a third party mapping tool (Blender for instance) for UVmapping.
Likewise. I am starting to use Unity3D gameengine. The learning curve is flat, but no limits to what you can do. I can export a interactiv exe-file, html-pages for the web or for Android and Iphones. I have tried Vray, Twilight (which I use now since it can render both SU animations and Sketchyphysics), RenderIn, Shaderligth, Vizualizer (which actually makes the best outdoor renderings), LumenRT, Lumion, Podium and I couple more I do not remember) but many of them have one thing in common - they can not utilize my Geforce GTX980 GPU, and all have two other things in common - it takes them a lot of time to render one image i.e. 15 minutes and the result is not interactive. Unity3D renderes in realtime and the result is interactive walk throughs to the user.
But normally I use Twilight or Vizualizer.
Does Unity3D allow you to animate geometry? I model car washes and would like to show a car going through the car wash and the equipment working. I would also like to be able to animate water and foam spraying as the car goes through.
Unity has an animator object, and controller, and it would be possible to do animations from scratch. People often use tools like 3DS Max to do the animation, and export that as FBX. I don’t think SketchUp works in an FBX or Collada animation friendly way, but I would be happy to be wrong about that!
Unity also has particle effects, and there is the Asset Store, where you can get free or paid for add-ons, that would bound to include water and foam examples.
Right now I am trying to learn Blender. I did look at the Entity3D and it sure looks interesting.
Someday, I will hit on the right solution. I am also trying to expand my knowledge of drawing in the 3D environment. I sure am not an artist nor am I an engineer. Fun learning and exploring all of this stuff.
I find it kinda sad that this thread is the second most viewed thread on the forum and yet the original poster appears to have never viewed it.
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I am still learning but my two favorites are Indigo and V-Ray.
Yes, Unity can animate, have physics and has a particlesystem that can do water spray. And in assetstore you can by more realistic particlesystems. Just think of a game. Watch this video showing the top five games made with Unity.
That should give you an idea of what you can do in Unity. But I myself is a 100% novice, and I am sure that it is not easy to make all these things happen in Unity 
Thanks for sharing. Yes, it is informative.
I would like to see something where someone has used a SketchUp model. Do you have to same your model as a .dae or.obj? When you use a SU model in Entity, does it give you full access to all groups/subgroups or component/subcomponents?
I have not looked at it in any depth yet but will look at it in the future.
I would like to hear some more feedback from others who have used their SU models in Entity3D.
Unity 5 can import SU-files directly without conversion.
I have a SU model that I have importet to Unity and with succes exported from unity to a stand alone exe-file, in which you can navigat like af FPS-game.
How ever I have som issues with materials that are transparent from the backside.
I dont know if this will work – here is a link to Dropbox where you should be able to download the exe-file and datafolder. You need both to run it.
This build from unity is work in progress – the characterse are proxys from LumenRT (where they are animated) and therefore looks like ■■■■ in Unity, and I have som issues with materials that are transparent from the backside.
The truck, the lavvoes and the charakters are SU models directly imported to Unity.
I hope that you can access and download the files and play the ”game”. Use WASD and mouse to walk, SPACE to jump and SHIFT and WASD to run.
Mads:)
Fra: ntxdave [mailto:no-reply@sketchup.com]
Sendt: mandag 18. januar 2016 17.00
Til: malbertsen@gmail.com
Emne: [SketchUp Forum] [SketchUp/Pro] What are some great rendering extensions for SketchUp?
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http://forums.sketchup.com/users/ntxdave ntxdave
January 18
Thanks for sharing. Yes, it is informative.
I would like to see something where someone has used a SketchUp model. Do you have to same your model as a .dae or.obj? When you use a SU model in Entity, does it give you full access to all groups/subgroups or component/subcomponents?
I have not looked at it in any depth yet but will look at it in the future.
I would like to hear some more feedback from others who have used their SU models in Entity3D.
To respond, reply to this email or visit http://forums.sketchup.com/t/what-are-some-great-rendering-extensions-for-sketchup/195/90 What are some great rendering extensions for SketchUp? - #90 by ntxdave in your browser.