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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.

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Integrate expert training in V-Ray for SketchUp with your existing workflows

If you’ve been wanting your 3D design skills and processes to deliver more value for your business or your career, our expert training in 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 visualise planting schemes or create accurate topographical 3D models. Our training in V-Ray for SketchUp can help set designers create immersive sets in 3D and realistic concept images that tell your story.

Expert training in V-Ray for SketchUp to improve your knowledge of 3D design.

Get training from V-Ray certified instructors

Archilime Academy is the first authorised V-Ray training centre in the UK. You or the designers, architects, and artists on your team will be learning from multiple industry award-winners with extensive experience.

We’re the people who produce visualisation that V-Ray developers Chaos use to market the software itself, so we really do know what we’re talking about.

The learning process is just like that which all of our artists go through when they join Archilime. We’ve tried to make it just as supportive, positive, and open for you and your team, with multiple ways to ask questions, receive feedback, and track your progress so far.

Deliver real-world projects while you learn

This isn’t the sort of training where you or your team member needs a lot of time off. Instead of distracting from your daily work, our expert training in V-Ray for SketchUp is designed to fit in around and support your ongoing projects, be it designing a building in 3D, better visualising your latest set, or delivering a Land and Visual Impact Application in a much more persuasive way.

Rapidly improve your studio’s CGI output

3D design or CGIs might not be your main sell. But mastering the use of incredibly powerful tools like V-Ray for SketchUp adds a huge amount of value to your business processes or your personal skillset.

From visualising plans and conceptual ideas more easily to maximising the value of your deliverables to selling high-quality 3D images for profit, our V-Ray certified artists will help you start leveraging everything high-quality CGI can do for you.

Our V-Ray for SketchUp masterclass finesses your existing talents, enables better conceptualisation of projects and processes, and helps you draw attention to the quality you already deliver. All while being smoothly integrated with and even supporting the projects you are currently engaged in.

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Palm Springs: A V-Ray 6 for SketchUp Project