0003-21AA-Chaos-Group_-SittingroomView02-REV01-1200x511.jpg

We teamed up with Chaos to talk about how V-Ray 6 for SketchUp helped us create this beautiful home by Koto Design in a recent blog hosted by Chaos. If you like what you see below, we offer a variety of courses, including our Access into SketchUp and Access into V-Ray for SketchUp courses. You can also try V-Ray 6 for SketchUp for free by using the free trial offered by Chaos.

Discover how V-Ray 6 for SketchUp joined forces with Archilime to visualize a stunning sustainable home.

Jack Dicker, Managing Director, and Daniel Stone, Head of Operations at Archilime share their view on what ensures successful collaboration and how the harmony between Koto Design’s sustainable prefabricated home design, along with the rendering power of Nvidia RTX GPU’s and V-Ray 6 for SketchUp running on a Lenovo P1, all resulted in a compelling visual story that is nothing short of amazing.

Watch the video below to see the Palm Springs project unfold in action, then keep reading to get a deeper understanding of the process and people behind it.

Can you share how the concept of the Palm Springs project was born and what led to the collaboration?

Aesthetically, it’s clear to see that Koto Design is a master of the art of crafting beautifully sculptural homes that sit in sync with their surroundings. When we got the opportunity to collaborate with them on a project in Palm Springs, CA, we relished the opportunity to visualize one of their iconic designs.

For this project, the team at UK-based Koto Design used SketchUp as a tool in their early design concept stage, allowing them to develop the 3D forms remotely over online video calls with their client based in California. After several design iterations, we were introduced to begin adding detail to the conceptual SketchUp model, which became a seamless transition into the refinement stage as we are big SketchUp users ourselves.

Given the sleek, modern design; Koto were able to offer us an abundance of reference imagery and architectural sketches to ensure that their Japanese-Scandinavian-inspired home came to life within our images and animation (if you want to see how we rendered out our animation, check out our blog post here). The gardens were crafted by influential landscape architect, Steve Martino, who is renowned for his work with desert landscapes.

Palm Springs Project - V-Ray 6 for SketchUp case study - Ensuite

Technology has advanced to allow artists to work together on a diverse range of projects regardless of location. What factors are important to keep in mind in order to ensure a seamless workflow and effective communication when working with professionals from around the world?

Palm Springs Project - V-Ray 6 for SketchUp case study - Aerial 2

Can you explain the different stages in the buildup of the V-Ray 6 for SketchUp scene’s environment?

Typically, we find that visualization projects fall may fall into two categories; those with a finalized design, and those that will undergo a degree of design development during the visualization process — Palm Springs was more of the latter.

To build a base upon which to discuss design details and iterative development, we used Koto’s concept SketchUp model and reference material to develop the ‘massing’ of the main structure and its immediate environment. Once the initial positioning and forms had been resolved during interactive rendering sessions, we progressed to add topography and some further detailing to our SketchUp model.

Considering the weather conditions in Palm Springs; careful emphasis was placed on how the building was to be designed around the passage of the sun throughout the day and year to optimize solar shading and maximize airflow. Geolocating our SketchUp model and hosting interactive render solar studies ensured our model was a perfect mirror of the site, informing Koto and the client in the design development process. Once resolved, we opted to use the sun as the protagonist in our animation, tracking its movement throughout the day as it interacts with this beautiful home.

Once our lighting was resolved, the next step involved creating and importing photorealistic materials to be applied to our model, including several Chaos Scans throughout the scene (can you spot them?).

Palm Springs Project - V-Ray 6 for SketchUp case study - Bedroom Window

What is the most important thing to keep in mind in order to achieve powerful visual storytelling?

To tell a story, the viewer has to feel fully transported into the world that you are showing them. As visualizers, this means ensuring that your work contains a nice blend of microscopic detail and macroscopic context to ensure that the key messages are communicated effectively.

Spending more time working on a specific material that will be captured up close is time well-spent, as it builds congruence between the viewer and the narrative of high quality that you are looking to share.

Equally important is ensuring that your wider scale context has been addressed. Developing the hillsides beyond the site could have been avoided to save time, but we felt it essential in giving the audience an understanding of how the home is so well integrated into its environment.

We advocate for the creation of ‘paper edits’ or storybooks to map out how you would like the viewer to journey through the site. Primarily used in filmmaking, these are used to convey the brand, message, and mood of an animation or film before the rendering stage.

Palm Springs Project - V-Ray 6 for SketchUp case study - Office

The attention to detail in the interior is amazing. Can you explain the process of creating tangible textures on every surface?

With the textures implemented for this project specifically, we were able to use Poliigon textures for the entire project, apart from the roof tile material that we created ourselves and the rocky terrain that we displaced from an old Grant Warwick pack of ‘ground’ textures.

Each texture came with full high-resolution specular, normal, displacement, and reflection maps that we were able to place into the relevant bitmap slots and start testing the scene.

The collaboration and consultation between Archilime and Koto design helped us understand the end goal in regard to the mood and styling of the final output. This design had to showcase each beautiful raw material in the best light, right down to the roughness of the plaster that can be seen on the interiors to the ‘Shou sugi ban’ exterior cladding – a traditional Japanese practice where cedar is charred, to preserve the wood, giving it more longevity and durability. With this very rough, burnt matte black-silver finish we needed to really customize the maps and bring them to the right roughness seen in the renders.

Palm Springs Project - V-Ray 6 for SketchUp case study - Dry riverbed

Can you share how V-Ray 6 for SketchUp’s Enmesh helped to create the Gabion walls in the exterior?

The gabion walls are a prime example of Enmesh. The cage that contains the stone presented the perfect opportunity to experiment with different options.

After creating a couple of 3D patterns and applying Enmesh to the grouped boxes which surround the stone, we have the ability to control how the 3D patterns are tiled on our chosen surfaces.

In the past, we would have modeled this before likely creating proxies. However, Enmesh now gives us an opportunity to experiment with several different options and tweak the distributions whilst keeping our SketchUp scene light and optimized.

Palm Springs Project - V-Ray 6 for SketchUp case study - Bedroom

What was the most challenging aspect when creating the lighting and how was it solved?

This project presented unique lighting challenges. We needed to respect the position of the sun in relation to the site, so geolocation was required to ensure that the sun paths were correctly positioned. This means that we were locked into using the V-Ray ‘Sun and Sky model’, which allowed for accurate shadows, but relatively uninspiring skies … until the launch of V-Ray 6 for SketchUp’s procedural clouds. These allowed us to add interest to the sky whilst also preserving the sun’s position.

Whether adding light cirrus clouds or denser cumulus clouds – we found this new feature to be very intuitive and easy to use.

Another cool feature is the dynamic clouds option, which gives us the capability to animate the sky, which is a technique used to create more natural and realistic sky conditions within our V-Ray 6 for SketchUp scenes.

Palm Springs Project - V-Ray 6 for SketchUp case study - Outhouse

Archilime Academy offers an amazing 12-week V-Ray for SketchUp Masterclass which starts from teaching how to produce conceptual ideas all the way up to making a marketable 3D visualization. The Palm Springs project is the basis for this masterclass. Can you tell us a bit more about what students can achieve?

Essentially, we want to be able to train anyone to be able to produce high-quality, photorealistic visualization like us by understanding their business model, adapting companies’ efficiencies, and putting better structure and process in place to ensure they are capitalizing on the profit of a new service. We don’t just teach people to build visualization, we show them how to use it within a business environment just like we do at Archilime Visualisation and showcase at the Archilime Academy.

If you’ve been wanting your 3D design skills and design processes to deliver more value for your business or your career, our V-Ray for SketchUp Masterclass could be just what you’re looking for.

These tools can help interior designers create lighting or materials studies or explore 3D furniture layouts. They can help landscape architects visualize planting schemes or create accurate topographical 3D models and they can help Set Designers create immersive sets in 3D and realistic concept images that tell your story.

And that’s far from all. As 3D artists ourselves, we know that there are always new techniques to learn and existing processes that can be streamlined. But we also know that better 3D output can do a lot for you and your business. Especially if the way you improve those skills is designed to fit in around and support your existing workflows.

This isn’t the sort of V-Ray for Sketchup training where you or your team member needs a lot of time off. Instead of distracting from your daily work, our V-Ray for SketchUp masterclass is designed to fit in around and support your ongoing creative projects, be it designing an architectural structure in 3D, better visualizing your latest set design, delivering a Land and Visual Impact Application, or offering a series of conceptual design options as an interior designer, it could all be done in a much more persuasive way.

Your team can continue with real-world projects while they study. In fact, they’ll do so with their course mentor – as well as the very engaged wider Archilime Academy community – on-hand to talk everything through.

The masterclass takes place over 12 weeks, with a half-day webinar per week and ongoing course material, empowering you or your team to slot it into existing workflows. This makes it an easy way to invest in yourself and your team and grow your offering without interrupting your day-to-day. You can find out more by signing up here.

If you’re looking to take your SketchUp skills to the next level, learning how to render animations can be a great way to showcase your designs. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to create a professional animation using SketchUp and the photorealistic rendering plugin V-Ray. Our first step will be to create a simple camera animation and then animate the sunlight changing throughout the day. After that, we’ll animate the clouds to make a time-lapse sky and learn how to share our final rendered clips with others.

The right animation can really help bring architecture and design projects to life. By creating a 3D animation of a proposed building or space, architects and designers can get a much better sense of how it will look and feel when it’s built. Viewers can better understand the scale of the project, see how the sunlight interacts with the design over the course of the day, and imagine what it feels like to inhabit the space.

How to animate a camera in SketchUp

In the first part of this tutorial, we’ll create a simple animation of a camera moving through the SketchUp scene. Our SketchUp scene is based on a custom-designed energy-neutral home for a private client from the renowned architectural firm Koto Design. The first step is to set the starting position of your camera and save the view in the scene tab. Let’s label this tab Scene_Start. Next, move the camera to the desired end position and create another scene tab. Let’s label this tab Scene_End. The duration of the animation can be set by entering the scene transition length in the model info box. Here, I’ve set it to five seconds and checked Enable scene transitions. After we check the Include in Animation option in the Scenes settings, we’re ready to export a preview.

Before rendering the clips, I like to first export them as a SketchUp preview. Select File > Export from the menu to begin the process. Choose .mp4 as the format and give the file a name. You can adjust the resolution and the frame rate in the settings, and for this preview, I’ll make sure that Loop to starting scene is turned off. After you press export, the preview should be ready in just a few minutes.

How to render an animation in V-Ray for SketchUp

With the preview animation looking good, it’s time to render the final in V-Ray. I recommend starting with a few low-resolution test renders to make sure the lighting and materials look the way you want them to. It’s also a good idea to enable Safe Frame so you see the right aspect ratio, and then render at least one full-resolution frame at the final size and quality before rendering the animation. When you’re happy with your tests, turn on the Animation switch in V-Ray, select the file name and folder for your images, and press render. V-Ray will render the animation sequence as individual frames that you’ll later compile into an animated clip.

How to Render an Architectural Animation in SketchUp and V-Ray - Image 6 of 16 — Courtesy of Archilime Visualisations and Chaos

Courtesy of Archilime Visualisations and Chaos

Depending on your hardware and your scene, V-Ray offers multiple rendering options. You can render with CPUs, GPUs, or a combination of both. I rendered the test frames on a Lenovo P1 laptop and then switched to my desktop with an NVIDIA RTX A6000 for the final frames. You can pick whichever option suits your setup best. To render animation frames even faster, you can use render nodes across multiple machines, or you can even send them to the Chaos Cloud rendering service.

Playing back your rendered animation

Once the frames are rendered, you can view the sequence in a frame player or video editor. In this case, we’ll load the sequence into Chaos Player for fast and smooth playback. Simply drag and drop the folder of images into Chaos Player and press the spacebar. (Chaos Player is included with the V-Ray Premium subscription plan.)

Courtesy of Archilime Visualisations and Chaos

How to animate the sunlight

Now that you know how to create a camera animation, let’s animate the sunlight. This type of animation shows how daylight affects a building throughout the day. I recommend geo-locating your SketchUp model so your sun positions will be accurate. In the Shadows panel, you can set the duration of time you want the sun to move. In our case, I’ve set it to 30 minutes, but you could set it to be a much longer time if you want.

The sun positions shown in the Shadows panel will be recognized and rendered by V-Ray. And we can render the sequence of animated frames just like we did earlier for the animated camera. Not only will V-Ray give you accurate sunlight, but you’ll also get correct bounced light, as well as correct sky illumination.

Palm Springs Project - render animation in v-ray for sketchup — Courtesy of Archilime Visualisations and Chaos

How to create time-lapse skies with animated clouds

Finally, let’s add some clouds to our animation to create a time-lapse sky. This is a new feature added in V-Ray 6 for SketchUp, and it’s a simple way to add visual interest and movement to your scene. The settings for the new procedural clouds are available in the Sunlight light source in the V-Ray Asset Editor. Here, you create any type of custom sky, from partly cloudy to overcast, by adjusting the settings for density, variety, cirrus amount, height and more. To animate the clouds, you can enable the Dynamic Clouds checkbox and set the wind direction, speed, and phase velocity. Once you have the clouds looking the way you want, you’re ready to render your animation with V-Ray

Sharing your final animation

Now that you have your animation clips ready, it’s time to start thinking about how to put them all together. This is where a video editor comes in handy. With a video editor, you can rearrange your clips in any order you want, add transitions between them, and even add a music track. Once you’re happy with your sequence, you can export your animation and share it on Youtube, Vimeo or your website. Here’s a look at the final animation. When you do so, tag us in your posts at @archilime_academy

Animation is one of the best ways to tell a story, communicate an idea, and bring your designs to life. With the help of SketchUp and V-Ray, you’ll be creating impressive animations in no time.

Thanks for following along with our tutorial. I hope you learned something new about rendering architectural animations in SketchUp and V-Ray. Whatever your level or learning style, feel free to check out our courses at Archilime Academy, where you can read up on Access into SketchUp and V-Ray for SKP courses, development programs or top-up sessions. Our 3-month masterclasses teach all the steps involved in creating photorealistic renderings using the same techniques that we use in our studio. Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, our masterclasses combine one-on-one coaching, live group sessions, and online learning to help you create high-quality architectural visualizations.

About the author

Dan Stone is Head of Operations at Archilime, a creative agency and visualization studio that works on high-profile property development projects around the world. Dan is also a certified V-Ray trainer with a decade of experience using SketchUp and V-Ray. He loves to teach aspiring artists at Archilime Academy, the first V-Ray for SketchUp authorized training center in the UK.

About V-Ray for SketchUp

V-Ray is one of the most popular photorealistic rendering plugins for architectural visualization. Available now, V-Ray 6 for SketchUp includes tools for creating custom skies and detailed geometric patterns along with new and improved materials that deliver more realism and speed. V-Ray 6 also introduces new cloud collaboration and Enscape compatibility to bring teams together like never before. Visit chaos.com for a free 30-day trial.

We chat to Dan and Jack, Head of Ops and MD of the Archilime Academy, for a look behind-the-scenes into how a lifelong love for Architecture evolved into the creation of a leading academy teaching the art of visualisation.

How did you get started in the CGI industry? Why are you passionate about “creating your world”?

Dan: For me it all stems from a love of Architecture. Hours spent playing the Sims after graduating from Lego sowed the seeds for an interest in the built environment, which naturally culminated in a desire to study Architecture at University.

Uni was great in exposing us to the different roles that an aspiring architect would have to play. It was more than simply teaching us how to design, but how to create your vision so that others can buy into it. ‘Communications’ was one particular module that introduced us to the different techniques and technologies that we could use to present our work.

Personally, the 3D modelling aspect of this really piqued my interest. Coincidentally, Jack and I met during one of these lessons, and ever since then we have fed off this joint interest in visualising the world around us.

As a visual thinker myself, the ability to create my ideas in 3D and then intuitively edit them to my liking was just what I needed. In its most basic form, the only things needed were a laptop, an idea and a few hours.

The real watershed moment for me was when we discovered that it’s possible to take our cartoony SketchUp models to the next level by bouncing light around our models using ray-tracing programs like V-Ray.

As we approached the end of the course, I discovered that my passion to visualise overtook the drive to design, which explains why when the opportunity came to join Jack and become a full-time CGI artist, it became a no-brainer.

Jack: My passion for Architecture came when I was thrown into a two week work experience stint back when I was in year 10 to keep me out of trouble!

My head teacher originally signed me up to get a work experience placement working as an elf in the Peacocks shopping centre in Woking which I regretfully had to decline (true story).

I loved to paint, draw and the shapes of architecture which always flowed through my art but I never knew what path I wanted to pursue.

There was no motivation or drive to really pursue any of my artistic passions so just stumbled along in school. I was then offered a placement within my first ever Architecture practice in Guildford called The Hall Design Group.

One of the directors that took me on is now a client of ours and the feeling is incredible to have been able to go full circle!

architect-offering-archilime-academy-vray-sketchup

I came to my final year of University and tried to apply to about 100 Architects practices all over Devon to absolutely no avail… Realising that there were too many students looking for the same position, I decided to see what else I could offer an architect that maybe another student didn’t have in their locker.

This seemed to be the ability to offer 3D modelling that the Architect could then take on a small cost and return to the client for a high value result. I started re-approaching the same contacts that never got back to me and soon started to get a response. It was slow at first but it was something I knew could grow if I was consistent.

To this day, we still have clients of Archilime that were Architects I approached for part time office work 9 years ago. The rest is history, we grew according to the ongoing clients needs.

When did you spot the need for an Archilime Academy?

Dan: Primarily as a visualisation company, we are massively lucky to have clients who really see the value in 3D modelling and CGI. We were often asked for tips by proactive and inquisitive clients who would like to try their hand at visualisation. So, the tips that we offered, quickly turned into mini sessions, which then evolved into full-fledged courses as they gained popularity!

archilime-academy-work-flow-team-chemistry

Something which is often overlooked is how we ensure that our standards internally are always met with multiple artists working on projects together. Besides the evident need for strong team chemistry, workflows need to be standardised to some extent so that any member of our team can pass their project to another without the quality of final output dropping.

I guess you could say that the Archilime Academy is a product of both external and internal drivers which fundamentally teaches the same workflow to ensure cross-compatibility to the point of photorealism.

Jack: I always knew Dan and I had a very similar thought process about focussing on some sort of community. We both agree that natural skill can be found from anyone, it just needs nurturing and sustaining so that person has the best opportunity to flourish into the person they want to be. Ensuring their ownership and career journey being the most important part of the company growth.

We carry that exact same philosophy to the way Archilime hire staff in the way that we find positive, good attitude, productivity and coach the industry skills across over the space of 2-3 years.

From this we wanted to form a friendly community that could offer support to any creatives that surround our industry. Dan has always had experience with coaching people especially younger kids and it’s a really natural gift he has.

The discussion of bringing an Academy to the business was had between the two of us and then Dan immediately started to build the foundations of the courses whilst generating ideas and scope of how this would run operationally.

There was definitely a massive need for creative professionals to learn how to showcase their proposals and designs in 3D form and this stretched across lots of SME’s within the creative industry, the main few being Interior Designers, Architects and Landscape Designers.

If we could add value to their service and provide them with a skillset they could then upsell to their own clients, we knew that it had a place.

What is the most rewarding thing about getting delegates through your courses?

Dan: Looking back and seeing how far they have come. For me this is evident especially on our 3-Month Dev. Programs, which (as the name suggests) spans several months, which highlights the increase in quality of output greatly from beginning to end.

First and foremost, it is a pleasure to be able to help anyone learn anything – so to have the opportunity to teach or coach concepts which we absolutely love is a huge honour for me personally and us as a whole.

Jack: Agreed with Dan on this really, the reward of seeing someone succeed after trying so hard to better themselves. That’s the point of why we are doing this. Yes, to help them find more value within a business service offering but also to offer support to companies and freelancers who wish to expand their know-how.

What has been your biggest challenge since starting up the academy?

Dan: I feel that Jack and I would give very different answers here, but my biggest challenge would be the number of different hats that I need to wear on a daily basis! Besides coaching and managing our amazing visualisation team, we need to keep an eye on how we market the Academy and look for business development opportunities outside of the daily duties that take up the majority of our time.

We are all learning lots as we grow the Academy ever more in 2022 as this presents plenty of opportunities for growth; both as a company but also professionally.

Jack: Definitely the most recent change in business climates damaged us and threw us a few obstacles to overcome, just like everyone else in some way. We invested a lot of finances into building a business plan that was then shook by Covid and forced us to essentially redesign the whole business model.

Going from a face to face, on-site coaching academy to shifting the business online to offer a single ‘zero to hero’ master class for anyone worldwide has taken a long time re-building this.

The effects of Covid pretty much froze the Archilime Academy for almost a year whilst the visualisation & design departments had to take priority for cashflow reasons. The silver lining to all of this is that it has allowed Dan and I to seriously re-sculpt the business model and do this again but learning from everything we had done before. Looking back, Covid has forced us to plan for the next 2-3 years and really look into how this could scale up.

What do you find to be the biggest challenge in your industry when it comes to educating artists?

Dan: I love this question! For me it comes down to adoption.

Everyone appreciates a beautifully composed and high-quality image, but an awareness of the know-how to be able to create it requires investment in time and money – both of which may be limited when it comes to the fields of property marketing & architecture.

We have noticed that since the first Covid lockdown, the world has seen the value in CGI and embraced the industry out of necessity – mass adoption will continue with the emergence of VR, which from our point of view is a hugely positive sign.

Jack: I honestly don’t see it a problem when educating artists about what we can offer from the Archilime Academy. I believe in what we are doing – we add value for the delegate to pass onto their client. The most tricky aspect of sharing the value is trying to understand how the course can benefit individuals.

Every delegate will use it differently but this is exciting for me. I love the business development process of doing this! A lot of Architects use Revit or similar – what we are offering is something to come hand in hand to that. We aren’t aiming to to replace their already adopted process.

Can you tell me 3 words each that underpins the WHY of the Archilime Academy?

Dan: Market your ideas.

Jack: Learning, creative community

Lastly, what are your hopes for the future of the Archilime Academy?

Dan: To reach a wider audience and expand our offering.

We know how popular CGI is currently, and how widespread VR will be in the coming years. We genuinely feel that we are uniquely placed to be able to help people into these industries as new technologies become available and widely adopted.

Jack: What Dan said! To try to be the support arm of many creative industries looking to develop their technology offerings and add value to their client services.

VRay-SketchUp-Technologies-Industry-Leader-Archilime-Academy

314-18-Woolacombe_-Devon_-DrinksCorner01Night-REV01-1200x675.jpg

A look back at the past year and a preview of what’s ahead

It’s a new year and we’re excited to take a look back at the past year at Archilime Academy. We’ve had some amazing milestones, completed lots of projects in our CGI “lab”, and have been planning for 2022. Ultimately, creating more amazing content for our delegates.

As the World felt like it was closing in, Archilime Academy broadened their offering:

Moving our courses to being completely online, we began hosting live Q&A’s and are now preparing pre-recorded content for our Archilime Academy Masterclass to be released in the Autumn. We made our courses accessible to anyone with an internet connection and tried to utilise working-from-home. Did you know over 50% of our audience are based in the USA? So going “online” is perfect -whilst also not forgetting our native delegates!

Human to human interaction is still key:

It’s no surprise that online learning is great in terms of accessibility, reach and convenience. However, we really wanted to ensure we had real-time human to human interaction, ensuring everyone felt supported. With an aim to be as hands-on as possible, we’re often praised for our attention to detail and guidance. Getting involved in our community and creating a sense of belonging is also key for any course we deliver.

human-to-human-learning

The industry is constantly evolving, be open to change:

We’ve been working behind the scenes on a brand new course and as we did, trends in CGI evolved. We quickly adapted and pivoted our content to be bespoke to the new V-Ray for Sketchup update which will be released in September. Working alongside Chaos, our new offering will be one of a kind, world-class and will contain decades of industry knowledge packed into one masterclass.

Upgrade marketing efforts

In the fast-paced world of CGI and property marketing, it’s becoming crucial to invest in marketing and really showcase the academy, tutors and software. More importantly, what it can do for our delegates and how you can use skills learnt in “real life”. From festive scenes to a slight brand refresh there’s so much in store for 2022.

Glow-Up-Your-Renders-Marketing-Archilime-Academy

It’s true when they say Keep Calm and Carry On

It’s been a tough couple of years for most and the world has seemingly lost the plot! However, our delegates have been more dedicated than ever and their drive has pushed us further. We are truly committed to bringing you the best in V-Ray for SketchUp training, support and know-how. From snazzy new renders to pushing the boundaries of SketchUp, we are working harder than ever before to ensure that our delegates can do the same.

If you haven’t already heard, there’s a discount code running through January! Just input JANWITHDAN22 at checkout for any course booked during January.

Jan-with-dan-discount-code

If you’d like to be kept in the know about upcoming courses, projects and events sign up to our newsletter here or give us a shout!

Improve your V-Ray Textures using these 5 top tips!

We are often asked for guidance on how to improve the quality of V-Ray textures, so we want to give you our 5x top tips which will supercharge your workflow and boost the realism of your work!

1. Never leave the reflection colour as black

Reflections are visible in almost every material – there are very few exceptions to this in the world around us.

Improve V-Ray textures | Reflections are present on every surface.

Consequently, as CGI artists, we need to represent this within our work and ensure that our materials are always programmed to reflect light.

Improve V-Ray textures | We must program our materials to reflect light

As you can see, when we have our reflection colour set to black, we do not see any reflections…

Improve V-Ray textures | Reflection colour of black gives us no reflections whatsoever

Whereas when we set our reflection colour to white, we see really intense reflections.

Improve V-Ray textures | Reflection colour of white gives us intense reflections

Note the difference between reflection intensity and reflection glossiness

There is a difference between reflection colour and reflection glossiness - note the difference here

We cover this on our Access into V-Ray for SketchUp courses, held at the end of every month over Zoom!

Key takeaway to improve your V-Ray textures: always change the reflection colour from black

Improve V-Ray textures | Never leave reflection colours as black

2. Pay attention to repeating textures

There are few aspects to life as inconvenient as repeating (or tiled) textures…

Improve V-Rat Textures | Tiled textures are lacking in realism

An great material could be ruined if it repeats itself too often, and you can see visible repetitions within your work

Improve V-Ray Textures | High quality materials can be created in V-Ray, but we must address how these are applied (or wrapped) onto geometry within our model

It is fair to deduce that we must take measures to prevent this from happening… there are a few things that we can do.

Try and use the largest scale images possible for your materials. Think large-scale!

Improve V-Ray textures | Always look for large scale textures where possible

This fundamentally reduces the number of times that a material must repeat itself on a given surface.

We can also use something called Stochastic Tiling…

Improve V-Ray textures | Adding stochastic tiling is done as follows

Using this technique, V-Ray automatically randomises the positioning of your materials – reducing the tiling effect!

Key takeaway to improve your V-Ray textures: use large-scale maps & add stochastic tiling

Improve V-Ray textures | Recording made by Archilime Academy showing the effects of Stochastic Tiling within the V-Ray 5 for SketchUp

3. How to fix glass errors

Does your glass sometimes show up as black, or just generally looks strange?

Improve V-Ray textures | Black glass is fixed within V-Ray for SketchUp by ensuring that the faces are facing the front

You’re not alone!

You may have glass applied to back faces – V-Ray hates this! Turn on the monochrome face style to check

Graphic of glass applied to back faces - checking with View, Face Style, Monochrome

V-Ray requires 2x faces of glass, with front (or white) faces facing outwards.

Improve V-Ray textures | A gif made by Archilime Academy showing the correct setup for glass — We also recommend using one of the preset glass materials – they work great!

If you follow these rules for glass, you will never have any more issues with glass!

Key takeaway to improve your V-Ray textures: glass in V-Ray requires 2x faces, with front faces facing out. Check this using the monochrome face style

Improve V-Ray Textures | It is crucial that we ensure that we address incorrect glass materials

4. Add specular or gloss maps into the reflection glossiness texture slot

Do your textures look uniform and flat?

Flat reflections are a result of adding a value in the reflection glossiness

Have you ever seen one of these maps before?

Create Realistic Textures | A specular map dictates where on the material we will see glossy or matte reflections — A specular map dictates where on the material we will see glossy or matte reflections.

Add them into your reflection glossiness slots to create varying levels of gloss across your material.

Using maps, we can create variances in reflection across the material

If required, you can wrap these gloss maps in a colour correction to enable to adjust this further

Colour corrections can be added to any type of map to change the appearance of a material

We can see the comparison between a material with & without a map inside the reflection glossiness slot.

The difference between using a gloss map and not using one

Check out more on how to do this on our blog on how to create realistic textures!

Key takeaway to improve your V-Ray textures: using maps to control your materials’ glossiness makes them more realistic

Improve V-Ray Textures | An advanced V-Ray material — An advanced V-Ray material

5. Add imperfections to your textures

Nothing is ever perfectly smooth…

Surface imperfections are often what tells us that a material is photorealistic

Not even seemingly ‘flat’ surfaces…

No surface is ever truly flat in the real world

Motes of dust, minute scratches or greasy fingerprints – top-level CGI artists look at add these details to our finishes.

Improve the Lighting in your CGI - An interior CGI of The Priory in Tetbury

It is possible to add black and white alpha masks into the reflection glossiness and/or bump slots.

Scratches are seen everywhere in the real world - as much as we hate it!

Wrap these in a colour correction, and tweak the brightness and contrast of these maps to achieve the desired results.

Scratches can be added to surfaces by adding alpha maps into the bump sections of the asset editor

Key takeaway to improve your V-Ray textures: use alpha masks to simulate surface imperfections.

Improve V-Ray Textures | The use of alpha masks to break the uniformity on flat surfaces is crucial for realism

Want more tips like this?

Join our mailing list for professional, technical content like this as well as offers on courses, updates about upcoming webinars and prize giveaways!

Brought to you by the Archilime Academy

5 time saving techniques for SketchUp or V-Ray

1. Hotkeys

When extrapolated for the full working day; the everyday SketchUp user may spend upwards of 10 minutes simply searching for the correct tool to use.

Introducing Hotkeys.

Also known as shortcuts, hotkeys are a defined as:

A key (or combination of keys) which give you quick and immediate access to a particular function within SketchUp.

The particular function that the definition above refers to would be different for each SketchUp user – meaning that we need a way to manually assign certain shortcuts to assist us with very specific tasks.

Head over to your preferences window, and click on the shortcuts tab.

Simply search for the tool that you use frequently, and tap the key (or series of keys) that you would like to assign to activate the function.

A simple concept – but within a week, we guarantee that this will make you feel more fluent within SketchUp.

5-time-saving-techniques-for-sketchup-or-vray - a keyboard showing sketchup hotkeys

If you would like to hear about other ways that you can feel more fluent within SketchUp, why not try our Access into SketchUp course?

2. Components

The second of our 5 time saving techniques for SketchUp or Vray is, in our opinion, components are THE best way of advancing the quality of your 3D scenes in the most time-effective manner possible.

How do they work?

Right-click on one of your groups within your scene, and ‘Make Component’

This simple process now gives this entity new editing properties. When you make copies of this component, you will notice now, that editing one of them enables all of the others to be edited simultaneously!

The sky really is the limit when it comes to the applications that this offers us.

How do we use them?

Vegetation.

Make loads of copies of a piece of vegetation; randomising the rotation and scale as you go…

Here, we’ve used something called a V-Ray Proxy – which explains why our ‘vegetation’ looks like a box! When rendered, this box in-fact looks like a small patch of meadow grasses.

As you can see, the same principle still applies – an edit made to one of these affects each and every other instance!

We cover components in great detail on our Access into SketchUp courses, which tend to run at the end of every month. Click on the link to find out more!

3. Parametric Modelling

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way where, as if by magic, you could pre-program a set of rules into an intelligent program, which could generate a whole host of different modelling elements, with minimal input from the user?

Well, I’m very glad that you asked…

Rather than manually modelling, duplicating and generating profiles and components, take a look at parametric modelling plugins such as Skatter and Profile Builder.

When it comes to creating realistic vegetation, Skatter is the sharpest tool of the lot.

As the name suggests, this intuitive plugin allows you to scatter vegetation components around your model, allowing you to randomise the distribution in ways hitherto impossible using SketchUp’s native toolset.

We have been using this plugin for years, and it truly is the cornerstone of our landscaping workflow, which enables us to apply and produce complex and detailed landscaped imagery.

Building complex, parametric models is achieved through Profile Builder 3‘s intuitive interface, which gives you the power to construct detailed and future-proof assemblies with labour-saving in-mind.

Download preset assemblies or create your own – we really do vouch for the efficiency of this powerful SketchUp extension!

We are often asked for bespoke training in these plugins – take a look into our Top-Up courses if you would like to know more.

4. Test Rendering

If you have done some rendering in the past, you will be well aware that this is not instantaneous… unfortunately.

That said, there are certain techniques that you can use to speed up this rendering process, depending on the quality of the output that you require.

When ultra-high quality is not necessary for the early stages of a project, using a Denoiser in conjunction with a low-quality draft enables you to understand the design without waiting a long time for the render to finish.

After running a few tests of our own – adding a Denoiser to lower quality drafts buys you time to spend elsewhere.

Another pro-tip is to use region renders whenever possible – as the name suggests, this allows you to test-render only a small portion of the overall image.

The same principle applies when interactive rendering when using the ‘follow-mouse’ technique. After pressing the icon highlighted below, the render engine will focus its attention on the position of your cursor – another very useful technique if you need a quick solution.

We cover rendering techniques in great detail on our Access into V-Ray courses, held in the middle of every month – check out the link to find out more!

5. Distributed Rendering

This time for V-Ray not Sketchup, one of our 5 time saving techniques Many hands make light work.

Imagine being able to harness all of the computing power of your office or home, enabling you to ‘borrow’ computing power from all the machines within your local area network…

Introducing the V-Ray Swarm.

Intelligent render engines like V-Ray allow the user to break-up and ‘distribute’ the rendering workload across many machines.

Depending on the number of cores within your CPU (the brain of your computer), you will have varying amounts of buckets (which are the small squares that can be seen above).

When you add another machine to your V-Ray Swarm, you will notice that the number of buckets increases – which means that your render will finish much faster!

Let’s have a look at a real-world application for this…

Whenever anyone purchases a new V-Ray license, you automatically receive a free V-Ray Render Node accompaniment.

Imagine that we have two machines in the office, one that we will work on, and the other that will act as our render node.

We then install V-Ray on both the primary machine, and also the render node.

Once we are ready to render, we then turn on the V-Ray Swarm at the bottom of our Asset Editor, and then go to add a new node. You reserve the right to name your nodes anything you like – if you are cool like us, you can also name all of our machines after characters within the Marvel cinematic universe!

We truly believe that these time-saving techniques are useful to anybody, regardless of your level of SketchUp and V-Ray – which is why we cover all of the above on our Access into SketchUp and Access into V-Ray for SketchUp courses – head over to our shop to find out more!

All of our courses are now held online, and we truly believe that the quality of the course is only improved by being able to attend within the comfort of your own home or office.

Brought to you by the Archilime Academy

V-Ray 5 for SketchUp: Exteriors Masterclass

Thu, Nov 19, 2020 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM GMT

V-Ray 5 for SketchUp: Interiors Masterclass

Fri, Nov 20, 2020 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM GMT

V-Ray 5 for SketchUp is here! Join us for a free two-part masterclass to learn the latest features and how they can supercharge your workflow. Ivan Kozaliev, V-Ray CG specialist at Chaos Group, and Dan Stone, Head of Operations at Archilime, will take the digital stage to showcase the new features and their specialist tips and tricks. You’ll also have a chance to ask any questions after the session. See you there!

For every attendee (one in each session!) there will be the chance to win a free V-Ray License from Elmtec along with a free 4 hour online top-up course from Archiime Academy!

Until then, why not take a sneak peak into the video from Archilime, in partnership with Chaos Group where Dan shares how these features enhance workflow in the studio.

Schedule

5 mins: Welcome and introduction from Elmtec’s Marketing Manager and MC extraordinaire – Lauren Donnebaum

40 mins: Ivan Kozaliev, V-Ray CG specialist at Chaos Group, masterclass showing you the new features he loves (exteriors on Thursday, interiors on Friday)

25 mins: Archilime’s V-ray Licensed trainer Dan Stone, showing you the new features he loves (exteriors on Thursday, interiors on Friday)

15 mins: Open forum – your chance for your questions answered from the experts

5 mins: Close – Announcing winner (one each session!) of a free V-Ray License from Elmtec along with a free 4 hour online top-up course from Archiime Academy

Earlier this year, as a result of the pandemic, many companies had to make the bold leap of faith from face-to-face training to online lessons. Quite a terrifying concept for some, especially for those whose in-person training sessions were already a huge success – why would anyone want to change this for something that seemed less personal and more disconnected? And, some people asked, what even is Zoom?

Fast forward a few months, and companies and delegates have realised the amazing benefits of online learning. In many areas, the balance has been tipped, with online lessons coming out as having advantages that can outweigh face-to-face training. However, not all training providers are as good as each other, and you should choose wisely. Look for a high quality training academy that will offer the best teaching from industry experts who will take you on a learning journey to further your skills; and offer you support over the years ahead. Find an academy led by teachers who are specialists in a specific field, rather than a generic training provider; and you’ll be in good hands.

What Should I Expect from my Training Academy?

For your experience to be relevant and worthwhile to you personally, your pre-course care should not be overlooked. This involves having contact with delegates in advance of the online course, to chat through your needs to ensure a more targeted and tailored course. Neither you nor your tutor should simply rock up, without finding out, in advance, what your current skill set is, and what you would like to get out of the course. Building up a bit of a rapport before the online learning session begins, ensures that you feel more at ease at the start of the course, and makes it easier for your tutor, too!

So, you’re all set up, laptop on, poised and ready for the Zoom session to begin: this situation is easier for some than others. You might well already be a tech whizz, or your buzzing social life might mean that you have virtually clinked a few glasses of prosecco over the lockdown period with friends during Saturday nights in. For others, this may not be an experience that feels so comfortable, and this is where delegates often feel the benefits of that pre-course introduction. You also have to remember that 2020 has got a whole generation of Grannies on the Zoom software – enough said.

Zoom’s Sophisticated Software

Using Zoom for training purposes is very different to using it to toast your cousin’s birthday at a weekend virtual gathering. Used to its full capacity, it is a very efficient, smart and sophisticated piece of software thanks to its many interactive capabilities. Being able to annotate everyone’s screens actually puts training via Zoom a step ahead of face-to-face courses where the tutor potentially needs to go round the room attending to individual delegates; possibly holding up the natural flow of the course. WithZoom, screens can be shared, regularly rotating throughout each of the delegates during the course; meaning that everyone can see what everyone else is doing. This sharing experience can also build a sense of camaraderie equivalent to in-person courses.

The ability to have easy, group interaction is a feature of Zoom that should not be underestimated, as it can bring a much needed sense of community at a time when currently many are working from home and feeling quite isolated. This way of upskilling in a social setting also offers a renewed sense of optimism and empowerment for those who can’t get to face-to-face training at this time, yet want to improve their skills and future job prospects.

Networking opportunities might be an added bonus too – as often happens when a like-minded group of people come together. Furthermore, online learning has logistical and monetary advantages, as it fits in well around tighter timescales and finances: no travel or overnight accommodation needed here.

Once the course is over, that shouldn’t mean the end of the support – personalised help and post-course support should be readily available. The online lessons can, and should, be screen recorded. Your training provider can then hand this to delegates (preferably free of charge), with other useful course materials. This post-course care is just as important, if not more so, as the pre-course involvement.

Do your Research

When choosing a course, look at both the quality of the course and tutors, as well as the after-care provision. Full support through video calling, emailing and phone should be offered, and delegates should be encouraged to utilise this service. Hopefully, this will then ward off the dreaded ‘forgetting curve’! The forgetting curve suggests the decline of memory retention in time; a graph showing that humans tend to halve their memory of newly learned knowledge in a matter of days or weeks unless they consciously review the learned material. Now, there’s no point shelling out money on a course to simply forget half of all those gems of wisdom a couple of weeks later! Therefore, these post-course materials and support are a huge benefit to your online-learning experience.

Finally, make sure you check out the reviews of any course before signing up. You should be trained by experienced, industry experts who are passionate about what they do. Find the right training academy for you, and you’ll be zooming to online learning success in no time!

To find out about the Archilime Academy and our range of courses, including SketchUp and V-Ray for SketchUp Pro, do get in touch – we’d love to hear from you! Call us on: 01364 654 267 or email: academy@archilime.com

How to Align CAD

Modelling from CAD within SketchUp – where do I start?

If you are modelling within SketchUp, you will need to know how to import and align CAD drawings. Whether your own or somebody else’s; well-aligned CAD drawings are the literal foundations upon which you build your SketchUp models.

Let us explore how to align CAD in the most efficient way possible. To clarify; the plan is for us to import CAD before tracing over it to create our 3D model. Let’s get started!

Importing…

When initially importing a CAD file (in .dwg format), it normally enters the SketchUp workspace as a completely flat group.

CAD imported into SketchUp — Next step; organisation

Organisation…

Something else that you will notice is that all of the CAD layers are visible as tags within SketchUp. We don’t need all of these so we can compress these tags down into one which we’ll rename CAD. I would now recommend creating a tag to be used for the massing of our 3D model.

GIF showing the layers brought in during a CAD import to SketchUp — When importing CAD into SKP, layers are preserved

We also need to ensure that each floor plan and elevation is grouped separately.

CAD plans and elevations are grouped seperately after being imported into SketchUp — Grouping geometry protects it from being warped when manipulating later.

Reposition…

Now that we have organised our drawing, let’s begin positioning the plans and elevations. Take the ground floor and move it over to the origin as shown (also remember to align right angles on the plan with the red and green axis as you can see here)

A ground floor CAD plan within SketchUp which has been moved to the origin for ease of use — Moving the GF Plan to the origin is a great way to ensure that you are modeling using the red and green guides (or axes)

The next step is to align the elevations around the ground floor plan. Pay special attention to things like window and door openings, because we use these features to resolve whether or not we need to flip our elevations.

Elevations are lined up with the corresponding plans — Move and rotate your elevations to ensure that they are aligned with your plans. Remember to cross-reference to ensure correct alignment!

We can now stand up our elevations by using the rotate tool. A tip from us is to use the direction buttons on your keyboard once the rotate tool is active, as this will better enable you to lock the orientation of your rotation!

Align CAD drawings by rotating elevations in SketchUp — It is best to use the rotate tool to ensure that all elevations are stood up in preparation for modelling later.

Now simply place your first-floor plan over the top of your ground floor plan and lift up to the correct height as shown on the elevations. Repeat this step for each additional floor.

And hey presto you have now successfully aligned your CAD drawings!

Aligned CAD drawings imported into SketchUp from AutoCAD — Next step: start modeling!

For more information on how this is done in practice, check out our Access into SketchUp and Top-Up courses, taught online with the Archilime Academy!

Brought to you by the Archilime Academy

CherryTrees_Scene06_REV01-scaled-e1600269718832-1200x1200.jpg

Dome lights: how do I use them to create a night time CGI?

You may not know it yet, but a dome light is the answer to creating ever-more realistic lighting setups within your CGIs…

Let’s break it down…

In a day-time scene, we have direct sunlight to illuminate our scenes. Direct light also scatters through the atmosphere and illuminates our environment.

A preview CGI from Peter Guthrie. Used to light a 3D scene using a HDRI within a dome light — HDRIs from **PG-Skies.net**. is a great way to illuminate your night scenes.

V-Ray considers both direct and indirect illumination as two separate light sources.

To create a night-time scene, we require a technique to remove direct sunlight, whilst being able to create a night-time environment.

To do this, we use something called a Dome Light

A flattened, spherical HDRI from Peter Guthrie. Used to light a 3D scene — A flattened, spherical HDRI from PG-Skies

A Dome light is a type of V-Ray light that surrounds our entire model, forcing light inwards. Images can be loaded into these light sources, which enables the user to simulate real-world environments by using panoramic HDR images.

Learn more about the benefits of a Dome Light on our Access into V-Ray for SketchUp course

I like to think of a Dome Light as a giant snow globe – with our model in the centre. We can choose what the sky looks like by swapping in different panoramic images.

Now that we know what dome lights are; what does this mean for you?

Select the highlighted tool to add a Dome light into your scene. Putting this into practice is straightforward. Pick out the Dome light tool from your V-Ray toolbar…

Loading a bitmap image into our Dome Light. — Click on the chequered box to import your HDRI…

Load in your HDRI…

Preview of a scene lit by Dome light using a spherical panoramic, HDRI image — Rotate to ensure that your shadows are pointing in the correct direction!

Hit render! Don’t forget to rotate your dome light to adjust the position of the sun

Over the years we have come across many different sources for dome lights…

We would like to recommend just two…

A preview of a 3D scene, lit using a Dome Light. The HDRI image used is from PG-Skies. — **PG-Skies** provide rendered previews so that you know what the sky will look like once rendered.

For variety, we highly recommend taking a look at Poliigon. Besides offering free assets; they operate a simple, subscription-type service where, depending on your package, you obtain different amounts of credits every month to spend on HDRIs, textures or models

If you are looking for top-quality HDRIs, look no further than Peter Guthrie’s shop – PG Skies. This in-depth collection of ultra high-quality HDRIs contains skies for all occasions. The handy preview renders show each of these in action, to make picking out your favourite that much easier!

Brought to you by the Archilime Academy

Older Posts