Wednesday, 9 November 2011

Comparison between four SketchUp renderers

In this blog four popular rendering solution for SketchUp will be compared. You need to download & install SketchUp keeping in mind that renderers are accessible from within SketchUp that needs to include an actual plugin. Here we have picked out four renderers, Indigo Renderer, SU Podium, Maxwell and V-ray.
Google offers most common 3D warehouse model is “A house next to water with a boat”. You need to download the model & these plugin, install it and then start doing test renders of the scene.  It’s a simple test and doesn’t include any depth tweaking of materials.
Indigo Renderer
You have to download two components for it to work- IndigoRenderer standalone software and then SketchUp plugin. Once both are installed, you fire up SketchUp & select render from plugin menu.
You make a render of 1374 X 804 pixels resolution and save the image at any location you desire. To start tweaking the result, you can go into the plugin menu and change the setting. You will also find some built in material editor that allows you to modify the SketchUp material. The time you start tweaking, you can gain much better result and you get advance setting depending upon the version you buy. The full software costs €145 or €595.
SU Podium
The next render we used is SU Podium is very old option available for SketchUp. It’s just one plugin and download is even simpler. Once you install it, you can start SketchUp and render right away.
The result of the product is not very impressive and seems to be less option available although it carry its own material. The full version is available for $198.
Maxwell
Maxwell is very famous and standalone render product and now in the recent version it come with plugin. The installation procedure is worse comparing to two older versions. You need to read the “read me” text file to install it. Once it installed go to Plugin menu and select Maxwell Fire to start rendering.
The result seems fairly good from SU Podium. The price of the product is $95.
V-Ray
V-ray is the professional rendering solution and used by many of the SketchUp user around the world. The manufacturer offer trial version for 30 days. Installation is simple but it will slow down SketchUp’s loading time.
With default setting it yields average quality result. V-ray offer most of the options and material features of the four reviewed products allowing very fine modifications. But the price is very high- $800.       
Via Google

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