V-Ray 5 for SketchUp is powerful yet easy-to-use rendering software in the Philippines for photorealistic and real-time design visualizations – plus it’s relatively faster than the rest!
As an ultimate visualization solution, V-Ray 5 has made everything easier and more engaging. It lets you seamlessly create and showcase high-quality design stories to impress clients and win more projects. A great design and render can boast every detail that your model has to offer, from its exteriors down to the very details such as furniture, accessories, lighting, and people. The best part is, there are 6 tricks to make things even easier for better SketchUp renders, as follows:
1. Setup and Tweak the Lighting for the Exterior Day Scene
When lighting your exterior day scene, begin with enabling the material override toggle in the Asset Editor. This will let you focus on the light contributions without the materials distracting you. You may also want to toggle on the interactive render switch. You can now start a render to view your image. You’ll see a preview of the lighting, which you can enhance based on your likings. When you click the lights tab, you’ll see the sunlight. As you select the sun and click on the right-hand flyout menu, you’ll find the sun system settings. The intensity and size multiplier of the sun will define the brightness and harshness of the lighting.
The V-Ray dome lighting is another illumination option you can try. From the lights’ toolbar, you can click anywhere to place the dome lighting in the project. Enabling the Use Transform will lock the HDRI texture, letting you rotate the dome light straight from the viewport along with the texture and lighting. It’s good to note that the adaptive is also active by default. You can then rotate the dome light and choose a result that you wish. You may also load an image in the texture slot, such as sprue in sunrise HDRI. Upon having the realistic light that you want; you can then prepare the final production render. Turn off the material override, then increase the output to 2000 by 900. Disable the interactive rendering and progressive mode as well, to have a bucket rendering for high-quality render.
If you’re rendering with V-Ray Vision, things are even faster and easier. Since it is not dependent on any ray-tracing or high-end GPU, you can explore your model in real-time. Vision renders still images, export animation, and panorama images to the highest quality possible, up to 8k!
2. Arranging Exterior Nighttime Lighting
Start with enabling the material override toggle in the V-ray Asset Editor at the render settings. It’s good to have your Nvidia AI denoiser on for a speedy noise-free result. Let the interactive render start. You may see that some objects are not materially overridden, such as the glass material, which is a good thing, especially if you want to improve the lights inside later.
In the lights tab, you can find the dome light with an HDRI which is loaded in a color texture slot. You may want to load a different image on this to change the lighting. You can tweak the illumination in the dome light’s intensity. At the texture placement, you may set the rotation value to see changes in the nighttime lightings.
After getting the desired outcome, you can then move on to placing some lights around your project. To do this, stop the interactive render, V-Ray frame buffer (Vfb), and the asset editor. Afterward, you can zoom in the perspective to look closer at your exterior lights. You may choose the V-ray sphere light for lighting the wall lamp. You may intensify the interior light in the house to make it more realistic from the asset editor. The color texture slot will let you tweak the light temperature. When you’re happy with what the project looks like, you can then prepare for the final production render. Make sure to turn off the interactive switch and set a high-quality setting. You may set the resolution to 1600 by 720 and then return the default V-Ray denoiser. Finally, you can press render when you’re ready.
3. Lighting an Interior Day Scene
Once you open a file on your SketchUp Pro 3D modeling software in the Philippines, go to settings under the Asset Editor and ensure that the interactive rendering is enabled. Note that using the Nvidia AI denoiser lets you have a faster preview. As you start an interactive render, you may notice some light gray material on each object on the render but not the glass materials such as windows so the light can come in.
When you head over to the lights tab, click the sunlight and go in the environment settings’ background slot to adjust the lightings that are coming in. You can tweak the time and date in the shadows panel. If you move back to the settings, you may tweak the exposure value as you like. When you stop the interactive render, you can place a dome light anywhere in the project to render the environment sky texture. When done with your finishing touches, you can then do the final production render.
4. Lighting an Interior Night Scene
To focus on the lighting works, enable the material override, then start an interactive render. Head to the lights tab in the asset editor and turn off the sun by clicking its icon. To create a nighttime scene, go to the dome light settings, disable the texture then set the color to a dark bluish color. If you think it’s too dark, increase the strength of the dome light. Go to the options in the dome light and check the invisible box to get the color from the environment settings.
To simulate the light from the moon, head to the lights tab and re-enable the sun. Afterward, change the color to a purplish blue but with a lighter shade. To match the color in the filter parameter, switch the color mode from filter to override. You can still adjust the intensity to tweak the lighting. Increase the sun size multiplier to fix the shadows. Afterward, you can then arrange some artificial light in the interior. As you finish, you can proceed to the final render.
5. Adding and Using Realistic Materials
For a coffee table dining set file open in your SketchUp Pro, head to the asset editor, and ensure that you’re on the GPU render engine but feel free to use the CPU also. Switch on your interactive mode then start the interactive render. In the Vfb, draw a render region around your table set to get a faster preview.
Select the coffee mugs, then click on the materials tab. Click on the left-hand flyout menu to get options for your materials image. Select the materials folder and expand it to get various categories. Then select the ceramic porcelain. Right-click and choose apply to the selection. Next, close the flyout menu and double click on the mug’s component, and duplicate it. Change the color of the duplicate mug and you’ll see the mug material turning into a realistic image on the preview.
There’s a range of settings you can adjust with V-Ray Vision for more in-depth settings. Play around these settings and see what they can do.
6. Creating Fog and Atmosphere
As you open your project, start the interactive render. In the Asset Editor, expand the right-hand flyout menu, then enable the volumetric environment toggle and you’ll see depths in the preview right away.
In the Aerial Perspective, you can adjust the visibility range which determines the distance in meters on how the atmosphere absorbs the light coming from the objects behind it. Lower value creates a denser atmosphere, hence, foggier. Higher value reduces the effect of aerial perspective that makes the image more visible. Another setting is the atmosphere heights that control the height of the atmosphere in layers and meters. Lowering its value can reduce the height yet it adds more contrast to the image. When you’re happy with how your project looks, you can then prepare the final render using the aerial perspective.
When adding a fog scene, switch the type of volumetric environment to Environment Fog. You can then see the fog effect in the preview. To improve this, change the fog’s height and enable the Scatter GI option to scatter the illumination within the fog. Finally, do the final render as you’re ready.
Subscription and Pricing
Buy SketchUp to bring anything you can imagine into life. After your SketchUp trial, avail of a subscription term per annual, 2-year term, and 3-year term, pricing starts at 18,000srp. A subscription entitles you to enjoy all features within your chosen SketchUp subscription for a full-term year. You may opt for an automatic SketchUp renewal if you wish.
SketchUp Pro is a simple yet powerful space to work your 3D ideas confidently. With V-Ray 5, SketchUp allows you to access, review, and annotate top-quality models – all in a single platform, in real-time!
Want to communicate your ideas with the most intuitive yet simple rendering and CAD software in the Philippines? For inquiries, contact Wordtext Systems, Inc. at +63 2 858 5555 loc. 737 to avail the latest V-Ray for SketchUp today.