Architectural_Design_with_SketchUp

Architectural Design with SketchUp
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Reduce the number of polygons. Every additional polygon increases rendering time
and makes your model more complex. This is true especially if you assign translucent,
reflective or light-emitting materials to the polygon. Therefore, keep your model’s polygons
to the necessary minimum.
This is the case particularly with natural objects such as trees or grass. When they are at
a certain distance from the viewer, it is often a good idea to either reduce their complexity
or replace them with a photograph of the object.
Also keep in mind that while SketchUp is able to handle multivertex polygons, rendering
software usually uses only triangular polygons and triangulates any nontriangular face
coming from SketchUp.
Use fully reflective materials or fake reflections. Reflective surfaces in your scene
increase rendering time, especially if they are just partially reflective (such as brushed aluminum).
Unless you absolutely need this effect, try going with full reflectivity (a mirror
or highly polished chrome material) or a gray gradient texture (faking blurry reflectivity)
instead. This works especially well when the object is not too close to the viewer.
Consider using fake caustics. If you need caustics (the light ripples that reflect off a
pool, for example) but don’t want to expend the additional rendering time that caustics
require, consider faking them by projecting a caustics texture image onto a wall, ceiling,
or other surface.
Handling depth of field, light rays, and motion blur. All of these effects increase
rendering complexity. Consider adding them in postproduction using your photo-editing
software’s filters.
Depth of field can usually be added using Gaussian blur, and motion blur is a filter that
is typically available in your editing software. Experiment with the settings and master
masking techniques to perfect these effects.
Light rays (as you would see coming through trees on a slightly foggy day) require your
rendering software to simulate particles in the air (this is often called volume lighting).
They can often be added in postproduction, especially if they are produced by simple
geometry (a window, for example).
Use postproduction to your advantage. Depending on your image-editing skills, it
might be more efficient to add people, vegetation, sky effects, and some shadows in
your favorite photo-editing software after the rendering is done.
A great resource for learning and discussing techniques is this website: www.sketchupartists.org.
Making Renderings Presentable
While photorealistically rendered images can be produced with a quality similar to that of
actual photographs, sometimes this is not desirable. For example, you might want to create
sketches that have a watercolor appearance but contain effects like lighting or reflections
that you can produce only using rendering software.
To this end, it is often useful to expend as much effort on your renderings in postproduction
as you do in setting them up. The following examples give you some ideas for paths to follow.
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