Saturday, October 31, 2009

Rendering Workshop - Model Cars





We started a new rendering workshop on SketchUcation.

Take a look and add some of your own rendering ideas as well.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Rendering Tip - Use 2 pt Perspectives

Due to the type of default perspective that SketchUp use, sometimes buildings can become distorted. Using two point perspective can correct these types of distortions.

Two point perspective, sometimes called ‘2D’ in SketchUp, will keep the vertical lines of your model parallel to each other.

If your rendering software supports 2 pt perspective, use it for better renderings when ever you are looking up or down on models with vertical lines.
 
SketchUp image in 2 Pt Perspective. Vertical lines are vertical.

SketchUp image in 2 Pt Perspective. Vertical lines are vertical.


SketchUp image in normal perspective. Vertical lines angle out.

SketchUp image in normal perspective. Vertical lines angle out.

Read More

See all Rendering Tips

Monday, October 26, 2009

Use reflective surfaces for better detail

Kitchen with reflections


When making your first renderings you will probably think of adding mirrors and lights, but you may ignore the value of adding reflective properties to other surfaces.

A reflective floor can make the difference between a flat image and a realistic look image. The same is true of metal, wood, plastic and other surfaces... Read more...

See all tips

Sunday, October 25, 2009

NPR Interiors

Here is an example of an interior with Sketchy Edges - but also with reflection and lighting.


Image



This was done with the IRender nXt Clay Rendering mode, and the automatic "SketchUp Edges" foreground overlay.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Rendering Tip of the week - Use section planes for better interiors




When rendering the inside of a room it is sometimes a challenge to place the camera properly.
If your renderer supports section planes, you can create realistic renderings of the room itself with a camera position outside of the room.

New Rendering Challenge

We all had a lot of fun with the Lego Rendering on SketchUcation, so lets try something new.

Here is a 3D Warehouse model of a Bath Room Sink:

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/ ... 942633ab6e

Image

Lets place it in a room and try some rendering ideas on it.
(It is OK to put other geometry into the room - but lets keep this a "Rendering Challenge" not a "Modelling challange")

Place your entries in this SketchUcation Thread

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

sepo posted a pencil image and some watermark example on the SketchUcation forum

I used it to create this soft-pencil shadow drawing using NprTools 






Saturday, October 17, 2009

Lego Rendering



I was feeling like "Lego" this morning, so I grabbed this model from the 3d warehouse:

Lego Star Wars Snow-Speeder

And gave it a quick rendering:

Friday, October 16, 2009

Water Renderings



SketchIng Ypsi (see next post) could have added some water to his fall scene (see the next blog post), it he had read these tips on the IRender nXt forum by Richcat

Fall Scene from Ypsi



Sketching Ypsi decided to render a fall scene.

"Apples from the folks at SketchUcation,
leaves by me [Sketching Ypsi].
Rendered in IRender Nxt"

See: Sketching Ypsi

Tradigital Drawing


We recently added SketchUpArtists to the All SketchUp Blogs page.

They have a nice article about Jim Leggitt and his work with Non-Photorealistic renderings from SketchUp.

Take a look: Tradigital Drawing

Friday, October 9, 2009

3D Warehouse models


Many IRender nXt users are using Photorealistic renderings to make better images for their 3D warehouse models. By placing the image in the model, as well as the model itself, you can get the 3D Warehouse to show the rendered image to the users.

See this example on the 3D Warehouse: Tempio della Concordia della Valle dei Templi

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Render Tip of the Week - Use edge lines for greater detail

Edge lines can be very useful for users who are trying to show off detail in a rendered image. Many times details can be washed out in renderings because of lighting and material choices but showing the edges in the rendering can help to make that detail stand out.

Kitchen rendered with edge lines .




Kitchen Rendered without edge lines - edge line detail is lost

Users could use a program such as Photoshop to blend two images together, one of the rendered image and one of only the edge lines, but this is time consuming and difficult, a better option would be to have it done for the user with their rendering program. If your renderer does support edge lines, then you will have the added advantage that the edge lines will appear in reflections, as well as the rendering.

See: Rendering with Edge Highlighting

(Model from the 3D Warehouse, Images and text from Dennis)

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Renderings on You tube.


Some IRender nXt users have been posting their work on You Tube.

Here are a couple.



Winding Machine
by: RoyLim3D
(This is a full animation)


by mihalovsin
(This is a slide show showing a couple of renderings)

Friday, October 2, 2009

Rendering Tip of the week - HDRi Skies

This weeks Tip of the Week will show you the advantages of using HDRi skies to create better renderings. (Thanks to Dennis for the renderings and much of this text)

HDRi skies are a great way to improve any scene you are rendering. It is a quick and accurate way to give the user a high quality background image and illuminate the scene using the HDRi light intensity and colors.

One of the benefits of HDRi skies is the fact that the background image is in the shape of a dome, providing a full 360 degree background. This means that no matter what angle you are viewing your model from, there will always be a high quality background image. This also makes them valuable for scenes which contain reflection - reflective surfaces like this Camper, or windows.

And the separate lighting channel contained in the HDRi image provides better shadows and illumination than just the sun, or plain sky. This lighting information allows some parts of the sky to illuminate the scene more than other parts even though they have the save RGB (red, blue, and green) values and look identical.

Comparison between HDRI and non-HDRi renderings

Image
Image of an Airstream rendered with an HDRi sky. The HDRi image provides a background as well as the correct illumination, shadows and full 360-degree reflections.

Image
Same model rendered with just the SketchUp sun. Note the harsh shadows

The second image was rendered using the default SketchUp Sun. Compare this to the image above which uses HDRi skies. There are a number of notable improvements in the HDRi image including softer shadows, softer lighting and reflections that match the background image.All of these improvements help to add to the realism of the model.

See: HDRi Skies

Thursday, October 1, 2009

New Video for NprTools

Dennis has made a new video tutorial for NprTools.

If you haven't tried NprTools yet, (or if you tried it, but found it too complex to use),
this video might be a good starting point.

You can view the new video on YouTube.

Image
(Soft shadows created with NprTools)

To read more about NprTools go Here

    Soft Shadows
    Sketchy Shadows
    Soft Edges
    Crayon Colors
    and other Non-Photorealistic effects