Some time ago I undertook to test the most popular rendering applications used with SketchUp. It took far longer than I’d anticipated! So I didn’t get any further than Kerkythea, Blender, Podium, Irender, Truespace and Vue. What I can tell you, for what it’s worth, is my conclusion on that small group.
Best overall renderer for SketchUp
My best buy recommendation for 2008 based on SketchUp integration, power and quality, and the ease of obtaining help, goes to Kerkythea. It can be downloaded for free at www.kerkythea.net/joomla
Best buy for external renders
When doing any amount of outdoor Architectural Visualization work it becomes painfully apparent that we are at the mercy of the “entourage” creators. A great render can be utterly spoiled in a moment by placing a dodgy tree in the scene. So when thinking about what render engine to use, you need to spend a lot of time weighing up how easily, cheaply, and render time efficiently you can put foliage into your scenes. My search ended with Vue Esprit. It’s simply a wonderful piece of sofware.
Example using 2d face-me component
If you decide to go for either of these, I’ve had an attempt at easing the pain of the lack of people entourage by producing some photo real people and other items. These can simply be inserted into SketchUp and exported along with the rest of the scene, and are designed in such a way as to work “out of the box” with any renderer, or indeed SketchUp’s own output.
They take a very long time to create so there’s a small charge to download them.
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