The SketchUp Show #64: Using Shaderlight for Interior Renderings

We had the cameras rolling at KBIS 2011 where Mike was giving live demos at the MASCO Cabinetry booth. In this episode, Mike shows a group of designers how to use the Shaderlight rendering plugin for SketchUp to render a model of the Merillat kitchen that was on display at the show.

Category:

Howto & Style

[4sketchupgo2school]

@Willthedrummer92 thanks for the correction! good looking out.

[Willthedrummer92]

@MyMessiChico Go with the quad core. You don't divide the processor speed by the number of cores to get each cores speed. A quad core processor at 2Ghz has 4 cores, each at 2Ghz, not 500Mhz!!

Secondly while Sketchup only uses one core, it is not very CPU intensive. I would be more concerned with rendering. Almost all pieces of rendering software are multi-threaded and will use all the cores they can take, including Shader-light. So the quad core would definitely be faster.

[MyMessiChico]

@4sketchupgo2school

So on my options, I should pick the 13" i7 2.7 GHZ dual core?

What about the Intel HD Graphics 3000 with 384MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory?

Is it okay to use this shared memory for rendering?

[MyMessiChico]

@4sketchupgo2school so based on my choice, i should pick the MBP 13" i7 2.7GHZ dual core?

What about the VGA Card? It's only Intel HD Graphics 3000, would it be good for the performance?

[MyMessiChico]

I'm sorry I dont know whether this is the right place to ask or not.

can shaderlight runs smoothly on macbook pro 13" i7 2,7 GHZ dual core, Intel HD Graphics 3000? or better pick 15" i7 2.0 GHZ Quad core intel HD 3000 + AMD Radeon HD 6490M?

I'm an interior design and need to work with sketchup+shaderlight, and also autoCAD. I really confuse which spec should i pick to run this program.

Thank you

[11swallowedinthesea]

@KaiRoland8 i see. thanks Kai, and for the tutorial site!

P.S. yeah, my site is all white so it's hard to find the Message link :] 

[KaiRoland8]

@11swallowedinthesea I was trying to find a way to message you directly, but couldn't. :(

Anyway, you can get to Blender by going to blender DOT o-r-g and can download the latest release. It's open source, and so has that problem that all open source programs have in that they're always a little buggy. It has a STEEP learning curve. I highly recommend blendercookie DOT c-o-m, a tutorial site that can help you learn the program if you're interested.

Good luck!

[11swallowedinthesea]

@KaiRoland8 is Blender free and what does it do specifically? i'm learning SU which i intend to import 2d floorplans from AutoCAD, and it does have a plug-in named Podium [not free], but has realistic renderings.

[KaiRoland8]

Sketchup is the beginners program for 3D modeling and it was because of the lack of lighting options that I undertook the task of learning Blender.

As Google keeps at it though and other people notice how it lacks, I think it will continue to evolve. I'm looking forward to the changes.

[cbader92]

Seen far better results, but this program seems to be very easy to use...