My sis uses Sketch up + Vray, and maybe other stuff.
What is the best (cheapest, most convenient, etc…) for rendering?
//desktop, laptop, cloud, etc…?
I am asking those who have tried different workflows!
For some reason, your question reminds me of the old saying:
Personally, I use SketchUp Make (because it’s free) and KerkyThea (because it’s free and has a SketchUp plugin). This makes the model/render combo probably the cheapest to be found. Exporting the model and rendering it outside of SketchUp isn’t terribly convenient, but it’s not much of a bother once you get the hang of it. I’m running SketchUp 8 and KerkyThea on a 32-bit Dell netbook with an Atom processor. Sometimes I have to wait a while (especially for the renders), but for a six-year-old $295 computer, it works fine for me. I also run KerkyThea and SketchUp 2015, 2016, and 2017 Make on a 1-1/2-year-old 64-bit Dell XPS8700 with 8GB of memory.
Keep in mind that if you’re planning on using SketchUp to make money, you need to buy the Pro version (KerkyThea has no such restrictions on its use).
These are my favorite SketchUp/KerkyThea efforts to date:
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Like Jim, I use Kerkythea. It does what I need and I actually prefer it running outside of SketchUp. I’ve used several rendering extensions that run sort of in SketchUp but I didn’t like them much. I prefer to let the render run while I continue to work with the SketchUp model. Even more complex renderings I do with multiple lights, reflective surfaces, and glass don’t really take that long. The render time on this little clock was probably 3 or 4 minutes. Time to go refill my coffee cup.
This bench didn’t even take that long.
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This question has been asked too many times (in this forum) for me to remember. There are many threads on this, and all answers are subjective, but still many experienced opinions are helpful to new renderers.
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