Sketchup-Ur-Space

Review of Rendering Software

IDX Renditioner: IDX Renditioner is a wonderful rendering software which works directly inside SketchUp. According to the manufacturer it is “one button easy and powerful enough for professionals.”

The main attractions of IDX Renditioner are the quick set up, ability to adjust the look of materials, reflectance levels, or bumpiness and production of high definition result. Along with that change cone width, intensity, or colors, and highlight items in your scene or enhance a particular mood are also among the main features of this rendering software. The three render buttons named Preview, Standard and Presentation. The natural lighting is controlled by selecting a weather conditions like clear sky, cloudy, hazy, twilight or full moon and many more things. The facility of artificial lighting is also provided with this rendering software. The use of materials in the Sketchup can be possible by IDX Renditioner. This plug in automatically generates bump map for each and every texture and allows you to make items smoother or bumpier or reserve the bump.

 

Indigo Renderer: Indigo Renderer is well known for the excellent image quality in SketchUp. It simulates the physics of light to achieve photo-realistic rendering as well as keeps the setup times and trials and error to a minimum. According to the manufacturer company, Indigo Renderer uses unbiased physically correct rendering methods which produce the highest levels of realism demanded by architectural and product visualization. This well integrated rendering with SketchUp enables you to do a fast workflow. The user friendly attribute along with fast responsive development makes it a popular rendering plug in for SketchUp. For its high quality image quality sometimes it is very difficult to differentiate the computer generated Indigo Renderer SketchUp model and photo image.

 

IRender nXt: IRender nXt is a rendering software which has wonderful features like exceptional image realism, easy set up and quick set up. With the feature named exceptional realism you can communicate the design from concept through to the details and add a new degree of realism to your design presentations and marketing materials. This rendering plug ins also very user friendly in nature. You don’t have to be ‘rendering geek’ to generate impressive realistic rendering image. IRender nXt produces early image very quickly as well giving you the opportunity to make a change to the view. This rendering plug ins works inside SketchUp using its geometry, material, textures and sun position. You can also add reflection, glow, plants and trees to make spectacular images.

 

LightUp for SketchUp: LightUp for SketchUp is a wonderful rendering plug in which has many unique features. According to Google the features of LightUp for SketchUp plug ins are Soft shadow, Area lights, Point lights (including IES), HDR image-based lighting, Skybox backdrops, Ambient Occlusion, Analysis modes with realtime light-meter for spot reading such as: Insolation in kW per meter per day based on geo-location information, Lux contours, Daylight, Realtime editing material properties: Color, Bump, Specular, Index of Reflection (IOR), Exporting: Instant Still anti-aliased images at unlimited resolution, Instant movies as AVI files, Export lit model as Autodesk FBX for instant import into authoring applications such as Unity. All these features along with real time walk through enhances the functionality of this rendering plug in.

 

Podium: Podium or SUPodium works with SketchUp groups. The modeling features of Podium is very similar to the Sketchup. That’s why any SketchUp user will find the comfort level from the first time he will use. It uses the surfaces, materials, textures, views, background colors and shadows of SketchUp. The photo realistic images produced by this wonderful rendering software are the proof of its efficiency. Anyone can use this plug in without learning a lot of complicated rendering techniques. It basically has two sliders for light and reflection. You can also set anti aliasing and speed versus quality of the render.

 

Shaderlight: Shaderlight is a quite famous for its interactive and photo realistic features. It provides you the choice of rendering modes and intuitive tools to optimize the workflow. There are two versions available of Shaderlight: free and pro. It can choose between progressive rendering with auto-updates afor interactive feedback then switch to single shot for production renders. The material editor applies most suitable Shaderlight parameters to SketchUp library materials which will have to fine tuned by adjusting the type, finish and bump map. To give your visualization a edge it uses lighting features which is physically based and advanced global illumination. You can achieve your required quality in the given time by the present custom resolution settings and a simple quality slider. You can capture the progress of work with the ‘snapshot’ feature as well as you can use zoom and pan to explore the details of the image.

 

V Ray: This is another rendering plug in which works in Sketchup. It can incorporate the task of rendering within the workflow to visualize the models with the utmost quality and realism. According to the manufacturer the features of V Ray are true raytraced reflections and refractions, Glossy reflections and refractions, Indirect Illumination (global illumination, global lighting). Different approaches include direct computation (brute force), and irradiance maps, Area shadows (soft shadows), includes box and sphere emitters, True HDRI support, includes support of proper texture coordinate handling for both cubic and angular maps, map your images directly without distortions or cropping, fully multithreaded raytracing engine, Native SketchUp materials supported and integrated into V-Ray Materials, Antialiasing. Includes fixed, simple 2-level and adaptive approaches, Reusable irradiance maps (save and load support), Incremental sampling for fly- through animations, Displacement, V-Ray Material Editor with Material Preview, V-Ray Sun and Sky, V-Ray Physical Camera, Depth-Of-Field camera effect, Distributed Rendering allowing a single image to be process over up to 10 machines, Per Material GI, Background, Reflection, and Refraction, Caustics and Animation Support.

 

Twilight Render: Twilight Render adds another excellent chapter of rendering inside SketchUp. It can render Sketchup models with biased and unbiased methods on an unlimited number of processors. You can continue to work on Sketchup while the Twilight Render keep rendering on the background. It offeres physically accurate materials, photometric lights, image based lighting, a long liet of easy to optimized present render settings, animation with Sketchyphysics and ProperAnimation and many more things. You don’t need to export your models because it integrates with SketchUp seamlessly. The easy to use attributes of Twilight Render has several intuitive and powerful ‘Easy’ render settings. You can add new spot-light, new layer in this rendering plug in. if you have multiple scene then you have to render from any saved view or render them all in an animation.

 

3DPaintBrush: 3DPaintBrush is a rendering plug in which produce photo realistic images and videos of SketchUp. With an intuitive user interface and a rich toolset, you can start producing creative images and animations within seconds, with no learning curve and zero programming skills. With this rendering plug in, you can create near photo-realistic content in seconds, maximize 3D data usage, reuse & enhance your models, capture 3D Data from any application, create animations and combine multiple files. 3DPaintBrush can browse and use content from 3D Warehouse. You can apply materials, lights, background, component and animations to create a perfect picture.

 

Artlantis: Artlantis allows the SketchUp user to export models into the native file format. It is recognized as the fastest and more powerful solution for photo realistic 3D rendering and animation. The latest version has more accurate radiosity engine, new management of geometry by layers, better management and enrichment of media and simplified control of optimized lighting. It has a rich online gallery eloquently demonstrates that media play a key role in projects. With the new transparency slider you can add the transparency of billboards and 3D plants to get a better view of the project without doing photo editing. Artlantis can detach elements of the 3D model and keep them as internal components using the polygon selection tool. The Layer Management tool has new structure of layers: scene, objects, 3D plants, lamps, animated objects and billboards. It has nine different types of customized lighting accessible by a drop down menu.

 

Maxwell Render: Maxwell Render is a rendering plug in with the help of which you can simply model your scene in SketchUp applying materials and other settings inside SketchUp using it and render the scene. The new version of Maxwell Render has many excellent and improved features which helps you to have photo realistic images. The key features of this rendering plug in are Multilight, Maxwell Materials, Full Global Illumination and Physical Sky. It has become hugely popular as well as useful to the animation and film industry.

 

Kerkythea: Kerkythea is a standalone renderer, using physically accurate materials and lights, aiming for the best quality rendering in the most efficient timeframe. To simplify the process of standard rendering in the most efficient timeframe by supplying the required tools to automate scene set up, such as staging using the GL real time viewer, material editor, general/render settings editors and many more things under a common interface is the main target of this rendering plug in. The rendering quality of KerKythea is top notch and the materials library is also very good. Overall, you can say that Kerkythea 3D rendering software works well with Google SketchUp.