Render by solo (Pete Stoppel)
The Open Beta of Thea Render has finally been launched as has been posted on the Thea Render website. As you may know, the development of Thea Render started a while ago (see our “related artickles” below) and now has come the moment when it si finally released for beta testing to the public. The developer is the same Giannis (Ioannis Pantazopoulos) who developed the popular and free Kerkythea Renderer and the exporter for Thea is also written by the same TomaszMarek who developed su2kt for Kerkythea.
Read more about the features of Thea Render here. Download the Beta Release and the plugins here (I am definitely going to download it right now).
Related articles:
As was announced today, the new, second beta of Podium 2 had just been released. This build represents a stable code base where all features are working, although some may need some modification before final release. There will be additional features as well. V2 uses a new, higher-quality render engine. As a result, scenes set up in V1.x will not look the same in V2.
Feature List
- Global material properties
- Physical sky
- Bump mapping
- True’ reflection – not fake specularity
- Refraction with presets
- Blurred reflection
- Blurred refraction for true translucency
- Light emitting materials
- Omni (point light sources)
You can download the new build on the Podium site.
Render Plus is launching a new IRender nXt rendering contest. It starts on Feb 15, 2010, and will run until March 15, 2010. Results will be announced on March 30, 2010. You do not need to own IRender nXt, Render Plus will provide a free copy during the contest.
This years contest is designed to highlight the features of their new Version 3.0 of IRender nXt. In particular:
- The new Materials libraries of over 6,000 materials for you to use.
- The low res Arroway texture library of 100 textures
- The new library of 49 RpTreeMaker Plants
- RpTreeMaker to create your own plants
- ArchVision RPC Objects
- HDRi Skies
Each entry will make use of at least 4 of the new features. There are great prizes such as
- NetBook – Samsung NC10 or Toshiba NB205 – Value $334.00, or Render Plus Combo Pack, including IRender nXt – the premier rendering product for SketchUp – value $549.00;
- Spyder 3 Pro mouse – value $139.00, or IRender nXt – the premier rendering product for SketchUp – Value $449.00;
- Vis Tablet – value $100.00, or nXtRender – quality SketchUp rendering at an affordable price – Value $99.00.
For more details, please, visit the Contest page at Render Plus.
As developer Jernej Vidmar has just announced, a new version of Modelur, a revolutionary 3D application for parametric urban design, has been released. Version 0.2.2 brings some serious performance optimizations (i.e. 10-50 times faster opening of large models) and fixes some minor issues. It is also available in Chinese now, thank to Huaqiao Wang. Modelur is available for SkectHup 6 and 7, both for Windows and Mac OS.
Main features include:
- rapid design of built environment,
- quick response to changed conditions of planned site,
- automatic change of built environment,
- quick creation of different variants of urban design solution,
- avoiding mistakes issued by wrong building articulation and
- continuous supervision of achieved urban control values.
For more details and to download the application, visit their website.
A new version (1.8) of LighUp, the realtime rendering plugin for SketchUp, was released as developer Adam Billyard has just announced in the SketchUcation Community Forums. The new version that introduces the first in a series of GPU-based features like adjusting Exposure, Contrast, Saturation and Temperature all inside SketchUp during realtime navigation.
Other features include:
- Realtime adjustment of image Bloom
- More controls over processing
- Improved performance
- Better motion blur handling
- A variety of bug fixes
See details and download the plugin (or its fully functional, 30-day trial version) on the LightUp website.
Click on the image to open the collection in Google Earth
Not even a fortnight ago, forum member Jack B. Erhart – aka “Jax” or “Jaxcoffee” after his Coffee House and Roastery in Paso Robles CA – started a project; to model all existing Carnegie Libraries in the US. As a first step, he started with his home sate of California and already three members of the SCF community (him plus “leedeetee” and “MuseumMaker“) together with others from elsewhere, as can be seen from the project’s Google Group site are working on the models in the 3D Warehouse collection page. So far there are 13 models – that would roughly make one a day which is quite impressive – so the collection is growing.
Hopefully the project will flourish, more and more skilled and enthusiastic modellers join and these fine, historic buildings receive the attention they deserve and the Carnegie Foundation will eventually find a way to support the project. Congrats Jax and the others and hooray for the project!
Piranesi 2010 not only converts your 2D and 3D designs into breathtaking presentation images for clients and prospects alike, but expresses your team’s creative and professional abilities with maximum dramatic impact.
Anyone who has presented an initial design concept understands the power of the artist’s impression. At the early stages of a project, where specifications are limited and it’s simply not possible (or even desirable) to present detailed treatments, Piranesi can and does work wonders.
Piranesi’s unique ability to generate stylish and atmospheric illustrations, with a truly hand-painted feel, sets it apart from other visualisation tools. In your hands, Piranesi will produce subtle and emotive impressions which allow the creative idea to shine, drawing the focus to the key elements of the design proposal.
Piranesi 2010 doesn’t need a heavily-detailed source model that was time-consuming to produce – you can rapidly create stunning images even from simple models. At the later stages of your project, after your initial concepts have been approved, Piranesi is used to produce finished visuals (either photorealistic or non-photorealistic) for distribution to all parties involved, or for competition submission.
Piranesi 2010 is unlike any other painting application. Designed to work in conjunction with all popular AEC 2D and 3D modellers, it has the ability to ‘remember’ the dimensional information from your model. This enables you to paint freely whilst locking to a single material (removing the need to generate masks), and also paint with textures in perfect perspective. By remembering the depth dimension from the original 3D model, Piranesi allows you to place cutouts with automated scaling in relation to both your original model image, and other placed entourage elements. Piranesi even allows you to place cutouts behind your model (e.g. trees behind a building) and applies automatic masking to the placed cutout.
Quick, simple and stress free.
From here, we simply and eloquently let the Piranesi Gallery at www.piranesi.co.uk do the talking!
Piranesi 2010 Pro
As the name portrays this is the all encompassing version of Piranesi 2010. Although fully loaded with the tools needed to tackle the largest and most complex of projects, and based on new layering technology, it still remains highly competitively priced by the clever use of a range of multi-user, term and enterprise price-point options that mirror the needs of a vast array of different business models. Included in these price are two massive raster “Entourage” galleries, an optional twelve months upgrade and email support cover, a private Pro Forum, 3D glasses for viewing the amazing new 3D Anaglyph Images, and a choice of 64 or 32 bit Windows or 32bit Mac implementations.
Piranesi 2010 Lite
Lite only in name and by price, this product contains all the functionality that was found in the full blown 2009 version of Piranesi (Piranesi 5.1). And to further bring Piranesi 2010 Lite to its staggeringly low entry price-point the two raster entourages have now become optional selections for the product. Available as a 32bit Windows or Mac implementation this product will now make the “Piranesi Experience” affordable to the smallest of businesses.
As Whaat (Dale Martens), author of the plugin announced, Skindigo 2.2 for the rendering application Indigo 2.2 has just been released. Usability has been greatly improved along with integration with the Indigo material database. Main features are
- Integrated Indigo Material Database Search
- Sun Position Override Tool
- New Color Picker Interface for Emitter Color
- Custom Light Layer Names
- Save Custom Defaults
- New Interface for Setting Absorption
- Select Camera Response Function
- Network Rendering Settings
- New Material Presets
- New Subdivision Settings
- Support for Surface Color (Absorption Layer Transmittance)
- Support for Preview Thumbnails on Mac
- Support for Back Face Export
- Scene Tab Object Animation Support
- Automatically Check for SkIndigo Updates
- Recalibrated Background Color Gain
- Many bug-fixes and usability improvements
See the new features detailed on the “What’s New in SkIndigo 2.2” page and download the plugin here.
Integrated Indigo Material Database Search
As Simlab Soft has just announced, the new version of their 3D PDF Plugin for SketchUp is available. With the plugin, one can easily export a SketchUp model into 3D PDF that can be viewed on any computer without any additional software other than the free Adobe Reader. The new version includes an existing list of features:
Control over the PDF page:
- Size of the page
- Margins
- Back color (or image of the PDF page)
Control over the 3D Section:
- Default light to be used
- Render mode
- Navigation mode
- Back plate for the 3D section
Other, new features:
- Show or hide the 3D tool bar in the created 3D PDF
- Use the optional password parameter to protect your documents
- Merge with other PDF files, this allows you to append the generated 3D PDF file to the end of your project description file (generated using any PDF generation tool)
- Add background music to make your interactive 3D PDF more interesting
- Exporting the scenes from SketchUp. The new generated file will include all the scene views created by the user, so the recipient can navigate between the scenes easily. We also added automatic camera mode, which automatically switches between the different scenes
- More control over the header and footer text. Now you can select the appropriate fonts for the header and footer text, also you can select the appropriate font color and size
- Advanced users now have the ability to insert their own Java Scripts, for the document and the 3D sections
Read more details about the new plugin and download a free, fully functional trial on the plugin’s page linked above.
While we have abundant educational materials and tutorials about SketchUp, there are not too many on LayOut, the accompanying application for SketchUp Pro since version 6. Bonnie Roskes has now released a comprehensive guide to LayOut as an electronic (PDF) book at 3DVinci. Hopefully it will be a useful guide for those only now learning LayOut as well as for more experienced users.
