SketchUp produces simple rendered models of 3D models. Shadows, colors, and textures appear beautifully, but reflections and light sources cannot see.

Introducing Real-time rendering with Light-Up

SketchUp’s Light-Up renderer is the fastest and easiest on the market. Light-Up for SketchUp is used by countless professionals, ranging from solo architecture practices to Pixar filmmakers, to instantly illuminate their models and present them in the best light.

Object-based rendering is unique to only Light-Up’s SketchUp renderer plug-in. In other words, your results will be stunningly accurate and beautiful right inside the SketchUp window.

Light-Up is the perfect tool for designers due to its speed. By tweaking your model, you will see immediate results. Moreover, you won’t have to wait around for minutes or hours as you would with an old-fashioned ray-tracing renderer. As a result, you can view everything rendered in real-time as you move the camera around your model.

Fly-through movies can be created and exported as a file that your clients can view in their web browsers. So, you can design product visualizations, architectural visualizations, and immersive 3D experiences with Light-Up as a single SketchUp extension.

Sky-Dome plug-in for Artificial Sky Imaging

This extension replaces SketchUp’s sky gradient with a real sky image with a sun, cloud, rain, or starry sky. In SketchUp, extensions can render OpenGL textures only when the tool is active, but this extension shows how useful it would be to render textures at any time.

Workflow of Sky-Dome

Extensions for SketchUp → Sky-Dome → Display a sky-dome

1. You can navigate by dragging around, ctrl plus dragging = orbit, shift & dragging = pan.
2. Choose your spherical image for spherical projection by right-clicking. The image must encompass 360 degrees by 180 degrees, including the ground.
3. If you right-click to select a hemispherical image, all you see is a 360°×90° sky, with no ground.
4. Right-click > Set azimuth angle: Rotate the panorama to your liking. Drag the image with your mouse or type an angle into the keyboard.
5. Use the right-click option to create textured SketchUp geometry from the sky-dome.
6. Eneroth Align View

It allows you to select a plane to align the camera to without having to open umpteen components or groups to reach the context menu of an individual face. The view is also aligned without modifying the camera’s position by default, similar to the ‘Look Around Tool’.

However, this feature is useful if you want to adjust the camera just slightly. Alternatively, you can press Alt to center your view on a selected point. If you want to make a larger change to the camera, this can be useful since it allows you to look in a completely different direction while still keeping the clicked face in view. It’s similar to Orbit Tool.

You can also use the plug-in to create a top view that lines up with the previous view instead of the model axes. For example, you can align floors with angled buildings using this plug-in.

Final Thoughts

SketchUp can create robots, sculptures, and 3D printable objects, in addition to rendering architectural views. The 3D Warehouse in SketchUp is perhaps one of the biggest reasons for its popularity. This company’s model library includes everything from individual screws to furniture to entire buildings. It is easy to import models into any project, saving you a great deal of time and hassle.

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