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.

Here is how we troubleshoot V-Ray for SketchUp errors

Are you often having to troubleshoot V-Ray for SketchUp errors? Does your machine run slowly when trying to render? Do you often experience crashes?

Troubleshoot V-Ray for SketchUp errors | Bug splats indicate a crash has occured and SketchUp needs to reopen the file

We want to give you all something a little different with this blog…

If you would like to understand how we troubleshoot our problems at a professional CGI studio – grab a drink and read on!

How do we begin to troubleshoot V-Ray for SketchUp errors?

To troubleshoot errors or crashes, we must always begin by trying to recreate the problem first, and then gradually rely on the process of elimination.

If we are able to recreate the problem, we know that the problem exists within the file and it is not an external issue caused by other running programs or drives.

If we encounter the same issues when we reopen the file after restarting the machine, we can be confident that the problem is confined to SketchUp & V-Ray.

Learning from these processes, we can over time become more experienced with troubleshooting V-Ray for SketchUp errors early on and ‘smell the smoke’ with new projects whilst putting in place new optimised ways of working after each resolution.

Eventually, your scenes will rarely run into problems and if they do, you will most likely be able to cross-reference previous projects and either resolve them quickly or have the knowledge to know how to find them.

Most hardware-related questions that we are asked by former delegates are solved by using the optimisation tricks that you will find below, rather than by investing in expensive new hardware.

Hardware is expensive and does not necessarily mean that you are solving the problem. It may be that you are merely increasing the power of your setup to deal with the problem quicker, but the problem and lack of optimisation still exists and remains unsolved.

My scene is really heavy and starts to lag when I orbit, what can I do?

Naturally, we’d immediately turn to hardware issues, but firstly we should think about the scenes’ complexity.

Are we utilising proxies? This keeps geometry within SketchUp to a minimum, whilst preserving the level of quality that you need when rendering.
Have we run a clean-up to make sure we do not have multiple faces within complex imported models? We recommend using CleanUp³ for its ease-of-use!
Are we working with our SketchUp edges turned off? By turning off our edges in the SketchUp ‘view’ tab, we can immediately smooth out any orbital lag that we may encounter.

Remember, orbital lag is GPU (graphics card) based and loading or processing lag is CPU based (the main processer, or brain of your PC)!

Check the points above before investing your hard-earned cash on a new GPU.

SketchUp really does not need much GPU power. At Archilime HQ, we rarely need to troubleshoot V-Ray for SketchUp errors when it comes to GPUs – we all use Nvidia GeForce 1060s (which are relatively middle-of-the-range when it comes to power) with absolutely no graphic issues whatsoever.

During our Access into V-Ray for SKP courses at the Archilime Academy, we practice key techniques to troubleshoot V-Ray for SketchUp errors of your own, so that you can have the confidence to fix your own problems when they arise!

My SketchUp file size seems too big in comparison to my scene, why could this be?

Everything that we put into a SketchUp file impacts the file size; whether that be models, proxies, HDRI’s, or textures maps.

Sometimes if we are struggling with file size this will directly affect the RAM usage for SketchUp and will naturally put the program under strain during the render stages.

It is unlikely for a Sketchup file to crash due to RAM limitations because Sketchup will automatically control its usage.

RAM crashes will not usually occur until the file is starting to render so it is worth keeping an eye on the filesizes of the textures that you are using (use JPEGs where possible and try not to exceed 10-15Mb in filesize).

If you do not keep an eye on this, and you start to use PNG’s or TIFF file types (which are generally many times larger files than JPEGs), you can very quickly see your render load-up times increase, which is when RAM bottlenecking can occur and crash your renders.

My loading times are taking forever, why?

When we set out to troubleshoot V-Ray for SketchUp errors, there are different types of loading issues that we can identify before we then go through the process of elimination. These types of loading scenarios use the CPU.

For SketchUp processing, we have the dreaded ‘wheel of death’ where the mouse cursor circulates and forces Sketchup to temporarily freeze.

This usually occurs when SketchUp has to work extra hard to complete a function – this often happens when using plugins such as Skatter, Profile Builder, Roundcorner etc, or computing a native modeling technique like a copy & paste. Check out some of our favourite plugins here.

We also have V-Ray loading times which would occur on the load up of the VFB (V-Ray Frame Buffer) or the LC (Light Cache) stage of the initial render.

Then, we have the actual rendering process whereby the buckets (threads) process the image through progressive rendering or bucket rendering.

Troubleshoot V-Ray for SketchUp errors | The number of buckets relates to the number of cores within the CPU

All of these load styles for SketchUp and V-Ray are slightly different from one another as they use the cores/threads of the CPU differently. One thing to pay attention to is the clock speed (GHz) of both your base clock-speed and turbo clock-speed for processing and rendering.

SketchUp is a CPU-based modeling package that benefits from single-core performance so the number of cores is almost irrelevant for SketchUp use only. The key thing to pay attention to is the turbo clock speed and the CPU architecture because the only time turbo clock speeds are put to use is when a single core is being operated – like processing Skatter.

The newer the architecture of the CPU (generally speaking with Intel) the better the core performance will be. For more info on CPU benchmarks, take a look at V-Ray’s standalone service where you can see how your own hardware ranks in comparison with others.

If we turn to V-Ray rendering, all the cores available to the CPU will be used and split and will naturally run at the base speed, this is called Hyper-threading.

What is hyperthreading?

Hyper-threading is a process by which a CPU divides up its physical cores into virtual cores. When rendering, these are treated as physical cores by the operating system and all of those virtual cores (buckets or threads) will then be used – so the more cores, the better!

Troubleshoot V-Ray for SketchUp errors | Hyperthreading allows for twice the number of buckets, which means quicker renderings

You can manually ‘overclock’ your CPU for the best results, but this process can be complicated and needs to be done by someone with the right skills, if done incorrectly instability issues and crashes may occur.

This balances out the higher clock speed over all the cores as opposed to the turbo only focusing on one or two cores depending on the CPU type.

If your loading times are becoming an issue, I’d recommend looking into a more suitable CPU for your desired purpose but remember, depending on what CPU you chose you may need different components to run it, especially if you are looking at threadrippers! They are hungry for power!

Before I troubleshoot V-Ray for SketchUp errors; how do I check RAM usage?

There are two ways to do this which will depend on whether you are utilising the V-Ray Swarm with configured nodes linked to your network as a local render farm or If you are using a single desktop.

If the latter, you can simply press ‘CTRL, ALT + DELETE’ and then go to the task manager.

On the task manager, you can find one of the top tabs called ‘performance’ which is where you can monitor your usage for all your hardware if you think you are getting RAM issues, this is the first place to start looking to see how that RAM is being delegated and if you are finding your RAM is bottoming out, try closing all your other programs as a short term fix.

Your task manager contains your running performance of your machine

If you are running nodes through the swarm, you can check the nodes’ RAM usage from the V-Ray UI.

The V-Ray Swarm interface is accessible by a web browser which then gives you access to all the machines visible on the local network and includes options for configuring and controlling the V-Ray Swarm node machines.

You can get into the V-Ray Swarm web interface by opening a web browser window and typing the following address: http://localhost:24267 where 24267 is the default port number used by V-Ray Swarm for communication.

Use the V-Ray swarm UI to check up on the machines within your network — **Bonus points for imaginative names for your PCs – we Archilimes are big fans of Marvel!**

Remember though, your nodes will be bottlenecked by the amount of RAM your localhost (your desktop PC) has. For example, if your nodes have 64Gb RAM and your local host has 32Gb RAM, then the nodes will be capped at 32Gb not then utilising the power of the full render farm.

If usually your RAM is capable of rendering your scenes, but a particular scene is causing issues, try changing your render type from bucket rendering to progressive, this then handles the RAM in a different way and dumps each pass once it is done.

Bucket rendering is more efficient and faster however progressive rendering gives you immediate results at poor quality and then computes ‘passes’ naturally being able to deal with RAM differently.

Progressive rendering could be much slower to achieve your desired noise limit though, so it’s up to you to test it!

What questions must we ask before building a new machine or upgrading a PC component?

This has got to be the most asked question we receive from our delegates, which requires another question:

What do you need your machine to do?

Before we think about building or buying a new machine we must understand what we need it for in the present and in the future (maybe you have contemplated producing animation in Lumion or Unreal Engine but currently only use Sketchup & V-Ray).

Different programs use different pieces of hardware more efficiently than others so it’s important for us to understand what requirements certain programs have and how those programs operate with that piece of hardware.

The first step is to identify and refine your workflow so that it is as optimised as possible. If we are running into freezes or crashes whilst still looking to then spend money upgrading hardware, we likely need to reassess how we are working before purchasing any new equipment.

Think about how much programs use GPU and CPU and then start to build a list of parts that suit that.

To know how to troubleshoot V-Ray for SketchUp errors, you need to know what each PC part does…

CPU

V-Ray Next CPU rendering is the ‘normal’ version of rendering. V-Ray uses the CPU to calculate light ray traces as they bounce around your scene. It scales very well with both clock speed and core count, so we recommend that you invest in a powerful CPU with a high base GHz speed and multiple cores.

Video Cards (GPU)

For V-Ray Interactive the video card selection is the biggest single factor in rendering speed/performance. If you own an Nvidia GPU, you can use the Nvidia Denoiser (see Denoising section for more details).

RAM

The exact amount of RAM you need is going to depend on how ‘heavy’ your projects are with difficult to render elements such as vegetation, glass materials, etc. We recommend that you opt for 32-64Gb RAM to be on the safe side. For reference, we use 64Gb and manage to operate efficiently.

Hard Drives

Whilst more expensive than their HDD counterparts; we recommend using an SSD for the primary drive that hosts SKP & V-Ray as the high speed of SSDs allows your system to boot, launch applications, and load files many times faster than any traditional hard drive (HDD).

What are SketchUp Plugins?

If you are here searching for SketchUp plugins, then you already appreciate how easy-to-use and versatile SketchUp can be when 3D modelling. Using the basic toolsets that SketchUp provides, it is possible to build detailed and complex 3D models for many different industries.

SketchUp plugins are tools that have been developed by members of the SketchUp community to add additional features or improve on the functionality of the native SketchUp toolset(s).

The Extension Warehouse allows you to browse the thousands of plugins that are available to install – with most of these being free-of-charge.

SketchUp Plugins, The Extension Warehouse is a great source for plugins. — The Extension Warehouse within SketchUp is a great source for plugins.

Why use SketchUp Plugins?

Depending on the desired outcome, there is a strong possibility that there is a plugin out there which can complete a certain task for you quicker and more accurately than modelling something manually.

As a team of highly driven creatives, we are always looking for that ‘next big thing’, that improves the quality of our work and saves us time doing it.

This list is the product of an accumulation of over 30+ combined years across the team as professional SketchUp & V-Ray users, so take it from us – these plugins are bone-fide game-changers, and the work that we produce today is testament to these incredible SketchUp plugins.

SketchUp Plugins, V-Ray offers us the ability to render our 3D models — One of our most-used SketchUp plugins; V-Ray offers us the ability to render our 3D models.

SketchUp Plugin #1: Artisan

When you think topography, you should think Artisan.

A far cry from the typical rectilinear forms for which SketchUp is most well-known; this SketchUp plugin allows users to create and edit organic, free-form models such as terrain, furniture, fabrics and much more.

You can sculpt, smooth, flatten, inflate or pinch your quadmesh geometry to mould it into any forms that you could imagine!

When modelling the terrain on each of our projects, we usually begin by importing the contour lines into SketchUp as a CAD drawing, and then using TopoShaper to create a quadmesh to allow us to create the existing topography.

We then use Artisan to edit the newly-created topography quadmesh by flattening, sculpting and smoothing areas to conform with the desired form of the surrounding landscape.

SketchUp Plugins, Artisan is our go-to tool to mould terrain. — Artisan is our go-to tool to mould terrain.

Is there a free trial available?

Yes. Artisan offers a 15 day free trial.

How much does it cost?

A single, permanent license at the time of writing costs $29.00

SketchUp Plugin #2: Profile Builder

Profile builder is one of several SketchUp plugins that brings parametric modelling into the world of SketchUp.

Parametric modelling enables you to build and design using a series of rules and constraints, allowing you to automate repetitive occurrences of specific components within your scene.

Create assemblies using Profile Builder and add these to multiple locations within your model at a click of a button.

Let’s look at a simple fence, for example.

This fence is made up of several components – vertical posts, panels, horizontal beams, etc.

SketchUp Plugins, Profile builder smart path select

Once you create or load a parametric assembly using Profile Builder, you have the ability to add these very easily all over your model.

We use this specifically when modelling fences, pathways, rainwater pipes and much, much more. What we love about this is that you can save out your assemblies for later use – or simply download one of the many assemblies from their library. The possibilities are endless!

The cornice detailing and panelling within this room was created using Profile Builder.

This amazing SketchUp plugin has saved us countless hours over the years, and they also have an incredibly informative official training course available to view on YouTube for free – what’s not to love!

If you would rather learn how to use this SketchUp plugin (or others listed here) from a person, take a look at our bespoke Top-Up courses. In a 1-1 setting, these allow us to really focus on how to use plugins that are directly relevant to you.

Is there a free trial available?

Yes. A trial for Profile Builder 3 lasts for 30 days

How much does it cost?

A single commercial license at the time of writing costs $79.00

SketchUp Plugin #3: Laubwerk

Laubwerk offers an expansive library of SketchUp & V-Ray-ready 3D vegetation models where the worlds of botany and 3D modelling overlap.

How to create realistic vegetation using SketchUp - Laubwerk Library Browser

Using their intuitive Plant Library Browser, simply select the desired species, and then chose where to place it within the scene.

Each plant comes with 3x shape variations, with each of these then having 3x age variations – totalling 9x different models of the same species of trees.

Download your free plant kit from Laubwerk here

You also have the freedom to adjust the leaf density of each plant, and our favourite feature – to change the season!

Laubwerk’s plant kits are the most versatile tool in our vegetation arsenal, and we look forward to seeing what they achieve over the next few years as they expand their offering!

SketchUp Plugins, vegetation can boost the quality of your CGIs immeasurably

We have relied on the quality of Laubwerk’s plant kits for years, and it was our absolute pleasure to host them as guest speakers on our webinar in June of 2021 where we looked at how to create realistic vegetation. We wrote a blog about the collaboration here – take a look if you are looking to improve the quality of your vegetation work!

Is there a free trial available?

Yes. Laubwerk offer a free plant kit with no time limit.

How much does it cost?

Laubwerk’s vegetation models come in ‘plant kits’ which are installed and loaded into your Laubwerk Library within SketchUp. For info on their pricing, head over to their store!

SketchUp Plugin #4: Skatter

Whenever we add vegetation to our models, there is one SketchUp plugin that we turn to… Skatter.

Skatter - Randomly rotate your objects

Besides offering a library of high-quality vegetation and landscaping assets, Skatter allows you to create parametric assemblies that control and refine the distribution of your vegetation models in any number of ways.

How to create realistic vegetation using SketchUp - Skatter - Clipping areas are used to show where vegetation will appear

It is our pleasure to welcome Thomas Hauchecorne, the founder of Skatter, with us on our upcoming webinar where we talk about how we create exterior landscapes here at Archilime. Join us for an advanced demonstration of this incredible plugin on Thursday 7th October at 14:30 (UK Time) – sign up here.

Is there a free trial available?

Yes. A trial for Skatter lasts for 15 days

How much does it cost?

A single commercial license costs at the time of writing $99.00 + VAT(Tax)

SketchUp Plugin #5: V-Ray

V-Ray completes this list as arguably the most influential plugin that we use on a daily basis.

Over the years, V-Ray has been a constant for those of us at Archilime and also those of you in the wider visualisation community.

Available as a plugin for SketchUp, 3DS Max, Rhino, and many more – V-Ray is the gold-standard rendering plugin on the market.

Every still CGI ever produced by Archilime over the years was made using V-Ray for SketchUp.

An example of high quality textures

Our Access into V-Ray for SketchUp courses are perfect for those artists that are experienced within SketchUp, but want to begin creating CGIs.

You can also buy your V-Ray licenses from us.

Is there a free trial available?

Yes. A trial of V-Ray Premium lasts for 30 days

How much does it cost?

A V-Ray Premium license at the time of writing (March 2023) costs £538.80 annually or £89.90 per month (Please note for UK residents that this does not include VAT)

A V-Ray Solo license at the time of writing (March 2023) costs £358.80 annually or £59.90 per month (Please note for UK residents that this does not include VAT)

You can find more info here.

Next steps

Now that you have our recommendations – go out there and get your hands on those free trials!

Do you have any questions? What plugins do you feel should be on this list? Want to show us how you use any of these plugins?

Check out our contact page for more info on how to get in touch – we would love to hear from you!

Unfortunately, we do not have the time to list out every amazing plugin that we use here at Archilime, but join our mailing list for more in-depth technical content, where we will be featuring more plugins in the future!

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?

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Create Realistic Vegetation using SketchUp

What good is the intricate Architectural modelling or realistic textures when the quality of the vegetation completely lets down the CGI… we’ve all been there. Read on to find out how to create realistic vegetation using SketchUp and V-Ray workflows.

Throughout our years in the ArchViz industry, this is a common question asked by CGI artists all over the world.

How do I create realistic vegetation using SketchUp?

We must consider what we can do differently to improve both the quality of the 3D vegetation models and also how they are distributed within our scene.

The best way to do this would be to go through the process step-by-step, and show you first-hand how we ‘vegetate’ our scenes!

Initially we must plan out our landscaping. We could do this by using landscaping PDFs or simple annotations (very simple in my case!)

How to create realistic vegetation using SketchUp - draw out a plan ahead of time

A preference is to then begin resolving larger pieces of vegetation first, moving down to smaller planting with each step.

We held a webinar recently with the guys at Laubwerk which ran through the process from start to finish… more on this collaboration later…

Trees

First and foremost, let’s talk about sources. For us, there are two sources which account for most of our realistic vegetation models, the first is provided by our friends at Laubwerk.

Laubwerk provide 3D vegetation

Laubwerk

Based in Berlin, Germany; Laubwerk offers an expansive library of render-ready 3D vegetation models where the worlds of botany and 3D modelling overlap.

Using the Plant Library Browser, simply select the desired species, and then chose where to place it within the scene!

How to create realistic vegetation using SketchUp - Laubwerk Library Browser

When in our SKP file, we notice the characteristic green blob – this tells us that this is a render proxy.

Proxies are better to add to our scenes because they contain less geometry than the full model, which keeps our files optimised and generally more operable.

How to create realistic vegetation using SketchUp - Laubwerk vegetation imports as a Proxy

At Archilime, we have used Laubwerk plants to create realistic vegetation using SketchUp for several years, and for some key reasons:

How to create realistic vegetation using SketchUp - we can create variations of tree species using the Plant Attribute Editor

Each plant has multiple variations. This helps us to reduce the ‘copy-paste’ effect that is visible in some CGIs.
We often asked by our clients to add specific young or older variants of a specific plant/tree into our scene. The Laubwerk plant attribute editor allows us to do this.
Need to change your scene from summer to autumn? Using the season attribute within the Laubwerk interface, this is straightforward and painless!

Download your free Plant Kit from the team at Laubwerk here!

Download your free plant kit from Laubwerk here

Chaos Cosmos

Another source which we use on a daily basis is Chaos Cosmos which is a powerful new feature of V-Ray 5 for SketchUp.

How to create realistic vegetation using SketchUp - Chaos Cosmos also offers a vegetation library

Simply use the filters and select the vegetation tag to view a large selection of V-Ray-ready plant models provided by creators such as Vizpark, Maxtree and DesignConnected.

As we are adding larger plants first, we can select the Tree filter to show us the list of available trees that we can add into our scene.

Chaos Cosmos vegetation library using the filter: Tree

Select a species that you like, and hit the Download button. This will save the file onto your PC, and once this has done so, you can then import this directly into your scene.

Like with the Laubwerk plants, Cosmos plants are also imported as proxies to keep the scenes lighter.

An image showing how proxies look within a SketchUp model alongside their CGI counterpart

Bushes & Hedges

Now that we have placed our larger plants into the scene, we can do a similar thing for our hedging & bushes.

I’m looking to add some nice box hedges into the planters here, so I’ll use one from the Chaos Cosmos…

Hedges from Chaos Cosmos are very high quality

After downloading and then importing this into the scene, I can then go about filling the desired planters with this 3D model of vegetation.

Hedges from Chaos Cosmos are very high quality

This process works great when working with larger plants, however when I want to place smaller variants of a bush en-masse, placing each one manually is not time efficient…

Introducing Skatter…

Skatter is used to automatically distribute objects within the scene

The first step is to add the Host grouped surfaces which will have the plants scattered onto them.

After adding all of our hosts, we can see how they have been added to the list, and some strange red lines appear in the chosen areas…

Skatter - add the hosts where our plants will sit

We can adjust the density of these red lines by modifying the appropriate parameter within the distribution section of the Skatter interface

Skatter - adjust the density here

These red lines are going to be swapped out for the bushes, by adding the bushes as my Scattered objects. In doing so, we then see the red lines change to red boxes, which now represent our bushes!

Skatter - Scattered objects are swapped-in here

As we can see, these are still in a grid pattern as the boxes are aligned to the axis…

To remedy this, we head down into the Random Transformation section and turn on the Rotate option.

Skatter - Randomly rotate your objects

After hitting the big, red Regenerate button at the top, this will then confirm the Skatter setup for us.

Skatter - Confirm the skatter group by hitting the regenerate button

A great thing about Skatter, is that we have the option to edit pre-existing setups, and we can do so by right clicking on the new Skatter group, and go to Edit Skatter Group.

It is possible to adjust where the vegetation has been scattered – we do this by adding a Clipping area as shown.

Skatter - Clipping areas are used to show where vegetation will appear

We then paint onto our model where we would like the scattered plants to appear by adding a paint area, and unticking use surface boundaries as include area.

As we paint our model, with Live Preview turned on we can see how our plants appear where we have painted… a very satisfying process!

This is useful when working to specific views – we can very easily control where we need to see vegetation in accordance with the chosen camera angles within our scene.

For grass lawns, we use two different approaches…

Girl in a grassy field made using V-Ray Fur

V-Ray Fur

At the drafting stage, we recommend using V-Ray Fur.

This is a feature which comes with V-Ray 5 for SKP, and allows you to grow strands of fur from grouped surfaces.

We have lots of control over the density, length, thickness, taper and bend of this grass, so it is perfect for the early stages of a project.

A great feature of V-Ray Fur is that each strand takes on the material of the image painted onto the grouped surface – a technique which allow us to simulate mown grass effects.

Grass is easy with V-Ray Fur - simply adjust the attributes and run an interactive render to test! — Grass is easy with V-Ray Fur – simply adjust the attributes and run an interactive render to test!

Skatter grass

For the final image stage, we recommend using Skatter grass for a realistic result.

Let’s now open up the Skatter Library, and pick one of the cut grass options.

Skatter grass is very high quality

We are asked whether we want to import the full geometry or the proxies – we will opt for the latter to keep our SKP file lighter and more optimised!

Once we hit the Load button, the same Skatter window that we saw previously pops up.

As you would expect, this is the point where we would select the lawn areas as our grouped surface which we want to be the base for our grass. Once done, we then hit the Regenerate button!

Skatter grass can be added to any grouped host within SketchUp

We can adjust the Distribution settings in exactly the same way as before to make the patches of grass appear clumped closer together or more sparsely distributed.

Again, we want to ‘paint on’ where our grass will appear by using the Clipping Areas section of the Skatter window, as this enables us to remove excess plants that are not visible!

Finishing Touches

I highly recommend going away and looking through the Laubwerk, Chaos Cosmos and Skatter libraries to find other objects which we can skatter within our scene…

I’ve added some more planting from Laubwerk alongside some boulders and daisies from the Skatter library.

Hey presto – here is our finished scene!

The final image from the Vegetaiton webinar with Archilime Academy and Laubwerk

What’s next?

We offer one-to-one training over Zoom which teaches the concepts discussed here. These bespoke sessions are tailored to suit your needs and target specific areas of your workflow that you want to improve. Lots of our delegates like to book these short sessions to receive support from us on their live projects, giving you the confidence to increase the quality of your offering to your clients knowing that you have us alongside you to help you every step of the way.

For those of you that want to step up your rendering skills, take a look at our Access into V-Ray for SketchUp courses. This 3-day course, run at the end of each month, covers the basics of material generation, how to light your scenes using our unique lighting approach and covers render management skills to get you comfortable creating CGIs of consistently high quality.

As I said; we love hosting free webinars and having that open discussion with our community. Sign up to find out how to book your seat on the next one!

How to create a photomontage…

Have you ever wondered how to create a photomontage, completely from scratch?

Going from this…

Create a photomontage | Original photograph to house our montage

… to this

Create a photomontage | Our final photomontage with a CGI superimposed over a photograph

Well – we’ve got you covered. Here’s how it is done.

Firstly, what is a photomontage?

A photomontage is a mix of two different media. A computer generated image (CGI) is overlaid onto a photograph to show a new design superimposed into its existing surroundings.

Stitch a CGI onto a photograph to market property or win planning permission

Whilst traditional CGI allows us to model the surrounding environment; photomontages offer us the opportunity to view the real-life surroundings as captured through the lens of a camera, which is often required when trying to win planning permission.

What is the recipe for a successful photomontage?

In it’s purest sense, we can break down how to create a photomontage into four fundamental steps…

Create a photomontage is made by combining a photograph, sketchup model, CGI using v-ray, stitching them together in Photoshop

Step 1: The photograph.

The photograph that we are to use for the photomontage can be considered as our ‘base’. All subsequent work depends on the initial photograph that we would like to stitch our CGI onto.

High quality photographs make for high quality photomontages

As a result, we need to ensure that it ticks all of the boxes before we progress…

The industry standard for photographing Architectural forms dictates that all of the verticals must look vertical within the image – ensure that the camera is not tilted up or down!
Consider the lighting conditions, as this is something that we will aim to copy within our CGI. Clear blue skies or a flat, overcast day – the choice is completely up to you.
The resolution of the photograph is important. We want the highest quality possible – we like our photographs to be 5000 pixels along their longest edge.

In terms of the composition, we need to remember that we will be overlaying a CGI on top of our photograph, which means that we need to ensure that we leave space within the frame to do so!

To maximise the quality of our final product, ensure that we can save out our photographs in RAW format.

Step 2: The SketchUp model.

Create a photomontage | It is important to model as accurately as possible to ensure that the model overlays perfectly over the photograph

Now for the fun part… let’s get modeling using SketchUp!

We must now model the proposed design – we run over the basics of how to do this on our Access into SKP course, and we cover more advanced modelling techniques on our bespoke Top-Up courses or 3-Month Development Programs.

Once we have ourselves a detailed model, we need to roughly match the SketchUp camera angle to that of the photograph.

This is the perfect time to think ahead to our CGI and try to match the resolution to our photograph (remember to ensure that safe frame is ticked!)

Create a photomontage | We must adjust the resolution within V-Ray to match the photograph

A key part of this process is ensuring that we match the Field of View (FOV) – this is akin to ensuring that we make sure that we use the same lens within SketchUp that we did for the photograph in real life.

Within the metadata of our photo, it often tells us the focal length of the lens that captured the shot…

Using the metadata, we can determine the focal length of the lens used to take the photograph

Within SKP, we then head up to View and then choose Field of View…

Within SketchUp, we can adjust the field of view, by going to camera and then highlighting Field of View

Here we type in our FOV value in mm, followed by enter – note how the camera within SKP changes.

Focal length sketchup model

The next step is to reposition the camera to match the photo. We do this by adding our photo as a watermark within the Styles panel of the tray as shown.

Using Styles within SketchUp it is possible to add a watermark image overlaid over our SketchUp model

This image overlay acts as a guide as we adjust the camera so that our model sits perfectly within the photo! Hit ‘Add Scene’ to save this angle!

Using Styles within SketchUp it is possible to add a watermark image overlaid over our SketchUp model

Step 3: The CGI

We now have a SketchUp model which is aligned to our photograph – let’s prepare our CGI using V-Ray…

The first step is to develop our materials within V-Ray so that they look realistic. If you are new to this, check out our blog on creating realistic textures.

How virtual textures are broken down within V-Ray for SketchUp

Matching the lighting in the CGI to the photograph is important, so we need to ask ourselves the question…

Are we going to use the V-Ray Sun or opt for a Dome light?

Our recommendation would be to use the V-Ray sun if your photo was taken on a sunny day.

Whilst interactive rendering, we can move the position of the sun manually as shown below to match the shadows seen in the photograph.

Adjust the sun position using V-Ray 5's Asset Editor for SketchUp

This technique allows for a great degree of control, enabling you to truly match the lighting conditions as you see fit!

If your photograph was taken on a day with no direct sunlight – we recommend using a dome light.

Typical examples of this would be for cloudy days, photos taken at dawn, dusk or even at night.

Check out our blog on dome lights which explains how we go about adding these into our scene.

A preview of a 3D scene, lit using a Dome Light. The HDRI image used is from PG-Skies.

Pay attention to try and find an HDRI that matches the lighting conditions in your photograph!

Final render

Before pushing the button on the final render, ensure that we tweak our exposure to roughly match that of the photograph (we can refine this later).

We must match the exposures between the CGI and the photograph

For more info on how to improve the quality of your lighting within your CGIs, check out our blog on the topic here.

Step 4: Marrying the CGI with the photograph

Now that we have the raw materials, let’s bring these into our image editing software – we highly recommend Adobe Photoshop.

Overlay the CGI on top of the photograph.

Add a vector mask, and begin removing sections of the CGI which we do not need

Masking within Adobe Photoshop is a crucial step when creating photomontages

It is possible to use other render elements to help with this masking process – we coach artists on this topic on our tailored Top-Up courses.

At this stage, we also look to match the tones of the materials within our CGI to those seen in the photograph.

Et voila!

We hope that you have enjoyed reading about our process to create the perfect photomontage, from start to finish!

Keep an eye out for next month’s blog on how to scatter realistic vegetation in our scenes!

Brought to you by the Archilime Academy

How do I create realistic textures?

Have you ever wondered how you can go from this…

Create Realistic Textures | A screenshot from SketchUp of a simple texture

…to this?

Create Realistic Textures | An advanced V-Ray material

Well, grab a brew and open up V-Ray – we want to show you how to create realistic textures using some common examples to help improve your texturing game within the V-Ray for SketchUp Pro workflow!

Basic Principles

Textures (see also; materials) are painted onto faces within your 3D modelling software, and these can be flat colours or image-based.

The process within SketchUp to import images to use as textures

In our first example, we are going to begin developing a wood floor texture – and so we need to find an appropriate image to use here.

We recommend Poliigon or Extreme Textures if you are looking for high-resolution images to use as materials, whilst SketchUp Texture Club is another source with an extensive library.

In this example, we are importing Extreme Texture’s Antique Oak into SketchUp as a Texture, which will allow us to paint this onto a face.

Now is a great time to check the scale – within the Materials panel of the tray; use the global size settings to ensure that our boards are scaled appropriately. To help me do this, I like to draw a guideline that equals the desired width of the board, so that I have something to reference.

Create Realistic Textures | Within SketchUp, we resize the texture globally using the material panel within the tray. — Using a guide line for reference, we resize the texture globally using the material panel within the tray.

Here we can see how important it is for our material to be seamless. There is a vast collection of seamless materials available from the sources mentioned above!

We now have a high-quality, seamless texture applied to our model which is the correct scale.

Why does this not look realistic yet?

Create Realistic Textures | A SketchUp texture

Building Blocks

Light.

What V-Ray allows us to do is to bounce light around our model and control how our materials interact with it.

Create Realistic Textures | How virtual textures are broken down within V-Ray for SketchUp — Virtual textures can be broken down into three maps.

As covered on our Access into V-Ray for SketchUp courses; most solid materials can be divided up into three maps; diffuse, reflections and roughness.

The diffuse texture is what we see within our SKP model. This can be considered our ‘base’ texture and defines predominantly what the material looks like without lighting or roughness effects applied.

A diffuse map is often considered our base texture. — A diffuse map defines what our texture looks like. Texture map courtesy of **Extreme Textures**

If light bounces off an object and is not absorbed, then one sees a reflection. V-Ray has the ability to control the intensity and glossiness of reflections of materials within the scene by using reflection or specular (see also; spec) maps. For example, areas on a texture where one would see a glossy finish would show up as white on a spec map, whilst matt areas appear darker.

A specular map dictates where on the material we will see glossy or matte reflections. Texture map courtesy of **Extreme Textures**

Not all materials are as flat as a mirror; for this, we use a bump or normals map. Areas on a bump map that are darker are shown as depressions on the surface of the material when rendered, whilst the opposite occurs for lighter areas. Be careful with the intensity of bump or normal values – anything above 1 is normally not required.

A map that is used to simulate 3D depth to the texture. — A bump map is used to give the texture some 3D depth. Texture map courtesy of **Extreme Textures**

Adding Complexity

Hold on… how does glass work?

Refraction colour dictates how much light 'refracts' through a material. — Refraction colour dictates how much light ‘refracts’ through a material.

As we can see, the lighter we make the refraction colour, the more ‘glass-like’ our material becomes.

We can deduce that the setting to use that controls the transparent properties of glass is called refraction. Like with the reflection glossiness, we also have the opportunity to create frosted glass by adjusting the refraction glossiness value!

Refraction glossiness enables us to define shapes on the other side of the material.

What about fabrics?

Depending on the qualities of the fabric in question, we would advise taking a look through the preset textures within V-Ray…

V-Ray offers plenty of preset fabric textures

Once a similar fabric has been chosen, you can edit the colour and tones of the diffuse, by right-clicking on the bitmap slot within the Diffuse, and wrapping it in a Colour Correction. Here you will be able to modify the hue, saturation, brightness and contrast, to your liking.

Adjusting the colour of materials within V-Ray for SketchUp — Textures can be re-coloured by wrapping the diffuse in a Colour Correction adjustment.

Fabric textures now benefit from a new feature in V-Ray 5 for SketchUp where you can add a translucent layer for extra realism.

V-Ray 5 for SketchUp now offers the opportunity to add a coat to materials for added realism.

What if my texture seems to emit light?

One can add emissive layers to all materials within V-Ray as shown…

Emissive layers can be added to most materials. — Emissive layers can be added to most materials

You can also copy your Diffuse into your Emissive bitmap slot…

Diffuse maps can be added into the emissive texture slots

We cover how to create more realistic textures on our one-to-one, bespoke Development programs and Top-Up courses.

An example of high quality textures

Now that you know how to create realistic textures; Wrapping is a term we give to the application of a material to multiple faces within our model – much like the wrapping of a present with wrapping paper. We cover this in great detail on our Access into V-Ray for SketchUp courses.

We hope that you have enjoyed our texturing tips!

Brought to you by the Archilime Academy

280-17-St-margaretts-Exeter-NewBlockLiving-Scene03-REV01-1-1200x675.jpg

Do you want to improve the lighting in your CGI?

Learning how to improve the lighting in your CGI is not rocket science, but there are techniques that we use. By understanding a few key lighting concepts I want to illuminate you and show you how to better your CGI, but before we do; let’s talk about why the sky is blue…

Let there be light.

Under intense and unimaginable pressure, hydrogen atoms are forced together in a huge release of electromagnetic energy, of which visible light makes up a small portion of this energy.

This is the beginning of the journey of a single photon from the centre of the burning ball of gas that we call our sun until it reaches our eyes.

Improve the Lighting in your CGI - The sun — Light is formed as a by-product of nuclear fusion

After its tumultuous birth, our photon then takes, on average, 6 minutes to leave the surface of the sun and fly across the vast, 150 million kilometers of hard vacuum until it reaches our atmosphere.

Improve the Lighting in your CGI - Golden hour at sea — Light then scatters through the atmosphere, turning the sky blue during the day and redder at dawn and dusk.

As our photon passes through the big air bubble that surrounds the earth, it bounces off and passes through nitrogen atoms which make up nearly 80% of our atmosphere.

Our photon is a package that contains all of the colours of the rainbow – it just so happens that light on the bluer end of this spectrum scatters through nitrogen most effectively… which is why the sky is blue.

Improve the Lighting in your CGI - an exterior CGI of a garden office made by Ventham Construction

On a physiological level, we have evolved not only to love light but to need it.

Light is the key component that enables us to see, gives us security, and stabilises our circadian rhythms which helps us to sleep deeper and more restoratively.

It improves our moods, decreases depression, and even increases cognitive performance such as reaction time and activation.

On a fundamental level, we have an innate and primal relationship with light that can be traced all the way back to the roots of our shared evolutionary tree.

“I sense Light as the giver of all presences, and material as spent Light. What is made by Light casts a shadow, and the shadow belongs to Light.” Louis Kahn, American Institute of Architects Gold-medal winning Architect

Improve the Lighting in your CGI - Louis Kahn's National Assembly in Dhaka, Bangladesh — Louis Kahn’s National Assembly in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Lighting in CGI.

Modern render engines and most real-time game engines calculate lighting in a way that aims to emulate reality.

By definition, rays are traced (note: ray-tracing), from light sources as they then travel through 3D space and bounce off or scatter through surfaces.

Ray tracing software determines the number of times that a ray can bounce off or through a surface – the bigger the number of bounces, the harder the PC has to work, but generally the more realistic the result.

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

As experienced and industry-leading producers of CGIs, we wholeheartedly recommend V-Ray as our ray-tracing program of choice.

We use this in conjunction with SketchUp and have done so for nearly a decade now.

Improve the Lighting in your CGI - An exterior CGI of Paragraph 79, Kea House, Devon

Feel free to take a look at what our CGI production team is getting up to using this software combo!

These lights have to come from somewhere though, right?

Whether it is the sun, a light bulb, or a candle; it is the job of the 3D artist to add these light sources to the 3D space and program them to emit light realistically.

Improve the Lighting in your CGI - A preview of a 3D scene, lit using a Dome Light. The HDRI image used is from PG-Skies. — A rendered preview from **PG-Skies.com** of a scene lit by a dusk HDRI.

Check out our article on how to use Dome Lights to create night-time CGIs.

As humans, we respond differently to different environs and lighting plays a big part of that. Anything that we see has a direct link to the subconscious, and this is what CGI artists tap into when working with lighting in a visualisation.

How do I put this into practice?

If you have read this far, you already understand the power of lighting within a CGI.

We need a structured workflow to better enable us to generate realistic and emotive lighting setups within our work…

If you are relatively new to CGI production, I recommend our Access into V-Ray for SketchUp course!

Day two of this three-day course is dedicated purely to lighting.

We explore what light sources that we have available to us, and how we go about adding these into a scene.

We then explore the concept of ‘Three-Point Lighting’, which gives us a fail-safe method of programming the lights within our scenes to work together in a photorealistic way.

Improve the lighting within your CGI - Scout Farm with lights toggled on and off

If you already have a good foundation, and simply want to improve the lighting in your CGI, look into our Top-Up courses – the premise is simple:

You pick what you would like to learn
A bespoke, coaching session will be designed by us and then pitched to you before you commit to anything
Once you are completely happy with the custom learning material on offer, this is when we schedule a coaching session – we book these out in half-day blocks, to ensure that you have ample time for study and information retention.
The session is held online and is screen recorded – which means you can watch it back when practicing on your own.
Upon completion of the course, we extend a helping hand by offering an after-care period of 30-days, whereby as you take this knowledge into professional practice; you can come to us with any questions that you may have.

All of our courses, now taught online, aim to give you the tools to consistently advance your visualisation skills and improve the lighting in your CGI.

Brought to you by the Archilime Academy.