Sketchup rendering - paid gig
Out of context: Reply #4
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- evilpeacock1
While I'm mostly a 3D "generalist" I've done this kind of thing many times — as in rolling SketchUp sources into Cinema 4D or other "full" raytracing apps, then fully lighting and applying shaders and generating rendered camera views or animation.
The big thing is that this is often more work than stakeholders expect or realize — especially if you want good or great photorealism. Most of the time I was doing prototype level things for pitches and presentations, and sometimes full retail designs I was making based on architect sources.
The workflow is messy partially due to SketchUp sources lacking any flexibility outside of SketchUp (though this improved over the years, e.g. C4D's native SketchUp importer). Other factors are the source models only being "good enough" for what SketchUp does best, which basically translates to there being a lot of work enhancing or re-doing modeling to support the higher quality render engine that is used. Also, SketchUp only does texture mapping, not full shaders, so all the materials you "inherit" in a project need to be completely re-mapped to an existing material library or re-done from scratch to be accurate to specced finishes. It can be a lot of work; Definitely much more than photography.
Of course there is always the benefit of having high quality 3D source for use in marketing materials/promo things later as 3D is quite scalable once you have the foundation laid.
- All this is true. The way V-Ray integrates into SketchUp is a smoother path, but you still have to re-do all the materials, etc.monospaced
- V-Ray and the other "bolt-on" renderers can be OK. However I find them to be more work and *far* more proprietary to what I can do in C4D.evilpeacock
- ...as in I'd rather set up V-Ray with C4D as the host than SketchUp. Been burned already by how clunky add-on rendering engines are with SketchUp.evilpeacock
- you are clearly far more advanced than me :)monospaced
- Perhaps. Sadly not much doing much 3D work since 2020 shake-up.evilpeacock
- I taught myself SketchUp in 2013 to handle a complicated installation concept, and now my whole team uses it regularly.monospaced