[Sandwich]

I've got a business idea I'm trying to make a few renders for, and I've got things somewhat set up in SketchUp. I looked for free renderers, and the only decent one I found was Kerkythea. Is anyone around here familiar with Kerkythea, or does anyone have better suggestions? I'd like to be able to do "advanced" things (meaning I don't know how to do them) such as light cones (like you'd see in dusty air in a movie theater).

In case it matters, the renders would all be internal, architectural renders of facilities, not external, sky-lit gardens or anything like that (although the building might have small plots of greenery like you might find in a mall).

[Thaeris]

Ever heard of POV-Ray? I've used it time-to-time with a respectable degree of success. Blender also has a built-in rendering engine.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Hmm, I'm not a sketchup user, but I suspect that for the really advanced stuff you'll need Blender...

[Sandwich]

Has Blender's interface improved in the last 10 years?

[Thaeris]

Yes, actually. 2.6 is pretty user-friendly in comparison, though it's still not what one would call intuitive software. Unfortunately, it seems it has lost a bit of functionality (last time I checked) in comparison to some of the earlier versions.

[headdie]

have they reintroduced bevel since 2.5 dropped it?

[sigtau]

Yeah, Bevel's back.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Has Blender's interface improved in the last 10 years?

[rant]
Yeah, yeah, Blender's completely unusable etc, heard that all before Blender's interface has been polished, optimized and streamlined by the very people who use it; one hand at the keyboard, one hand at the mouse, and you'll be able to model at a staggering pace. It's like EMACS (or VI, if you so desire) for modelers: takes some getting used to, but once you get the hang of it it's absolutely amazing.

So yeah, if you don't wanna take the effort to get into it, don't use Blender. However, without any effort, you shouldn't expect the greatest renders either
[/rant]

[Sandwich]

[rant]
Yeah, yeah, Blender's completely unusable etc, heard that all before Blender's interface has been polished, optimized and streamlined by the very people who use it; one hand at the keyboard, one hand at the mouse, and you'll be able to model at a staggering pace. It's like EMACS (or VI, if you so desire) for modelers: takes some getting used to, but once you get the hang of it it's absolutely amazing.

So yeah, if you don't wanna take the effort to get into it, don't use Blender. However, without any effort, you shouldn't expect the greatest renders either
[/rant]

lol - I was asking simply because I loaded up the program about 10 years ago (in the height of my Rhino3D/3D Studio Max/trueSpace days), closed it back up again pretty rapidly, and haven't checked it out since.

[headdie]

dont know what it was like back in the day but the main trick upto 2.49 was remembering keyboard shortcuts, cant really speak for 2.5x/2.6x as I dont use them

[Sandwich]

Alas, somewhere in the Sketchup -> Collada -> Blender process, the models got blended and all mixed up, so I can't really evaluate things properly.

[BrotherBryon]

I've never had any luck with the Sketchup -> Collada exporter, try using .3ds instead it seems to work much better. Before you export though make sure you triangulate all your faces first. Once you have your model imported into blender the first thing you are going to want to do is to select the whole model and remove any doubles (There will be a lot) and then recalculate the normals. Then you will need to start looking for non manifold edges, this seems to be the most common problem with sketchup to blender conversions. Some times there will be only a few of them and others loads of them depending on how sketchup created the faces in the first place. I think freespacefreak's blender tutorial in the modding board covers how to do most of these items.

[Hellstryker]

I'd just export it to .3ds and import it into Max, as you come out with a pretty solid mesh that way. Then you can just do the the rendering there.

[Sandwich]

I've never had any luck with the Sketchup -> Collada exporter, try using .3ds instead it seems to work much better.

Can't export to 3ds from SketchUp...

I'd just export it to .3ds and import it into Max, as you come out with a pretty solid mesh that way. Then you can just do the the rendering there.

I'm not entirely comfortable with rendering something for a potential business use in, uhm.... the version of Max that I (used to) have... *ahem*

[Hellstryker]

I've never had any luck with the Sketchup -> Collada exporter, try using .3ds instead it seems to work much better.

Can't export to 3ds from SketchUp...

I'd just export it to .3ds and import it into Max, as you come out with a pretty solid mesh that way. Then you can just do the the rendering there.

I'm not entirely comfortable with rendering something for a potential business use in, uhm.... the version of Max that I (used to) have... *ahem*

You can export to 3ds if you uh, acquire sketchup pro by totally-legitimate-not-shady-at-all means.

But yeah you're pretty much screwed then, as far as I can tell.