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SU Podium 1.7.3 Help Desk |
Languages 日本語 |
Table of Contents |
Where to get SupportThe following Help pages will guide you through Installation and using and applying SU Podium. Please take a moment and read through the Installation chapter if you are having difficulty with the install. If you are having trouble finding your serial number, please take a look at the FAQ section of this web site. There is a detailed description of how to find your serial number. In addition, you can get support from the following areas:
Watch the Video TutorialsPerhaps the fastest way to learn how to apply the features of SU Podium is to watch the updated video tutorials. Click here to examine the video tutorials. Installation and loading SU PodiumTo Install for Windows 1. Download the SU Podium Setup.exe file. Double click on SU Podium Setup.exe. This begins the installation process. (If for some reason, your firewall will not let you download .exe files, please contact us and we will send you a zip file. 2. During the installation you will be asked where to install SU Podium.
SketchUp 6 users - select the default location if this is where the SketchUp program files are located. If not, use the browse button to find the folder that SketchUp Pro is located. You should install Podium in \Program Files\Google\Google SketchUp 6\. Do not install in the \Plugins folder. SketchUp 7 and 7.1 users - select the default location if this is where the SketchUp program files are located. If the default location is for SketchUp 6, simple change the number 6 to 7 instead of using the browse button. You should install Podium in \Program Files\Google\Google SketchUp 7\. Do not install in the \Plugins folder. Windows 64 OS users!!. Please note SketchUp is located in the \Program files (x86) directory. You will most likely need to install Podium in this location: \program files (x86)\google\google sketchup (6 or7)\ Note - do not try to install Podium in the Plugins folder. The install program will do that for you and create a folder for Podium.
3. The Next screen applies only to full version users. This screen will not appear if you are using a evaluation version of Podium. The Single User and Multi-User on one computer option is for customers who have Multi User Windows accounts on one computer. If you have one computer that is used by several people with separate accounts, use the Multi User option. You will be prompted for a Serial number immediately after clicking on the Next button. To start SU Podium in SketchUp Restart SketchUp. You can access Podium from the SketchUp Plugins pull down menu. Pick the Show option from the Podium menu to display the Podium interface. Enter your serial number (full version) If you purchased the full version, when you start Podium for the first time, you will be required to enter your SU Podium serial number that comes with your purchase. If you purchased Podium as a download product, you should have received an e-mail with your serial number. If you have not received a serial number with your purchase, please contact support@cadalog-inc.com and one will be sent to you. Register User area If you have not already created an account on www.suplguins.com Registered User area, It will be a good idea to do so. The Registered User area will give you access to the free Light Fixture libraries, the Plants&Trees plug-in, bonus textures and also provides a place where you can download Podium again. This site also has important utility plug-ins for Podium such as Podium Tools and Podium Wizard. The Registered User area is open for all users, include customers who are using the evaluation version. However, the Light Fixture and Plants&Trees plug-ins can only be used by paid customers. To register, click here. Uninstall It's best to use Podium's uninstall program to uninstall Podium completely. Alternatively, you can uninstall Podium using Windows Control Panel (Windows 7 and Vista users - Program and Features, XP users - Add or Remove Programs). To uninstall, use the Windows Start key and select All Programs. Then select Podium from the list of Windows Programs. From the Podium menu, pick Uninstall. Then browse Windows for the Podium folder. When you find it, click on unins000.exe. Vista users - you will need to opens Windows explorer and to the Podium folder typically located //Google SketchUp 6 (or 7)//plugins//podium. Then pick unins000.exe to completely uninstall Podium. Install problems The most common problem encountered after installing Podium on Windows is not being able to find Podium from the Plugins menu inside SketchUp. If you cannot find Podium from the Plugins menu, it has not been installed correctly. The most common reason for this is that Podium was installed in the wrong folder. The recommended solution is to Uninstall Podium as instructed above. Then reinstall it. Make sure SketchUp is closed when you reinstall Podium. Pay careful attention to what folder Podium gets installed. It must be installed in the Google SketchUp 6 or Google SketchUp 7 folder. Do not install it in the Plugins folder. (Windows 64 OS users note that SketchUp is installed in the Program files (x86) folder.) Installation and loading SU Podium On Mac Versions Podium 1.7.3 is the latest version of Podium. This supports multi-threading so is is fast. However, you must have MAC OS X 10.5(Leopard) or greater for Podium 1.7Mac to run. Furthermore, your computer must be an Intel based Mac Pro. Therefore we are making Podium 1.5 available to customers who still are using Mac OSX 10.4 (Tiger) and/or use PowerPC based Macs. The installation of both versions are similar. They both will install for SketchUp 6 and SketchUp 7 automatically. However, there are important differences in the location of the program files. Installing Podium 1.7.x Close SketchUp. The SU Podium 1.7.x Mac version download file is a zip archive which can be easily expanded using Mac OS X's built-in tools or programs like Stuff-It. Once expanded, it contains a Mac OS X "Installer Package" or a .pkg file. Double-clicking on the package will launch "Installer" and walk you through the Podium installation. After installing, open SketchUp, click on Podium from the Plugins menu and enter your serial number (full user).
Installing Podium 1.7.3b for the Mac- multiple accounts, etc. On June 30, 2010, Cadalog released SU Podium 1.7.3b Mac version. It is available from the Registered User area. This version supports multiple user accounts on the same computer. Further, it installs Podium in the global or MacIntosh HD directory. Please go to the Registered User area do read about it and download. More information about what is different with 1.7.3b is here. Installing Podium 1.5 The SU Podium 1.5 Mac version download file is a zip archive which can be easily expanded using Mac OS X's built-in tools such as Stuff-It. Once expanded, it contains a Mac OS X "Installer Package". Double-clicking on the package will launch "Installer" and walk you through the Podium installation. Why doesn't Podium install on my Mac? File Vault. Did you have trouble installing SU Podium 1.7.X on your Mac. Does the installation seem to stop and let you get no further than picking your Destination Drive? Chances are File Vault has been enabled and this stops the Podium installation. To find out if File Vault is enabled on your Mac OSX system, Choose System Preferences and click Security. Click on the File Vault option. Is it enabled? If it is, SU Podium will not install on your computer. There are a couple of simple ways to get around File Vault. One would be to disable it but if your company will not let you do that, the second option is to use Pacifist from CharlesSoft. Please click here to read about how to install SU Podium with File Vault enabled.
Brief description of SU PodiumSU Podium is a photo-realistic rendering software program that works entirely as a plug-in to Google SketchUp Pro or Google SketchUp, 6 or 7, Windows or Mac..We will be referring to SU Podium as Podium in this help page. Podium works entirely inside SketchUp and uses SketchUp's surfaces, textures, groups, views, background color and shadows to produce a photo-realistic image. If you are already familiar with SketchUp you will notice that Podium does not require you to learn a lot of complicated rendering techniques to create photo-realistic renderings. The SketchUp model that you see on your screen will be what is rendered in the final image.What you see on your screen will be referred to as the render scene.If you want to change the angle of a scene or get a closer shot of your model, use SketchUp's zoom, pan or rotate commands to change the render scene. You can apply the standard SketchUp textures and colors to surfaces and get an effective rendered image. Download additional high resolution texture images from the Registered User page on the www.suplugins.com web site. You can also apply SketchUp's background colors and shadows to obtain to change lighting. The final image that is created by Podium is a bitmap and can be saved as a JPEG or PNG file as well as a higher resolution HDR file. By default, the rendered image file is saved to the \Plugins\Podium folder on Windows and ~\documents\podium\ folder on the Mac. You can change the folder where you want to save the output image file from the Settings menu. You can change the resolution size of the rendered image by picking the Arrow icon in the Podium dialog box and then picking Render Size. In the free, evaluation version, there are only two render sizes available. Test DriveLet's try a quick render to make sure that your hardware is working and SU Podium was installed correctly. Download this model. This model has several Podium properties in it including, reflections, bump maps, alpha transparent plants and omni lights. This model is the model that is used in the video tutorial page. Download this model to your desktop and then open it in SketchUp 6 or 7 (or 7.1). Once it is open, go the Podium UI and click on Arrow Icon. From the Render Size option pick the pixel size of 800 X 600 or if you are using the evaluation version, pick 500 X 500. Then click on the render button from the main SU Podium user interface. The rendering should take about two to four minutes depending on your computer's memory and processor. Getting StartedTo display Podium's user interface, pick Podium from the SketchUp Plug-in menu and pick Show. This will display the Podium user interface.The main options that are displayed are: Render, Stop and Save and an Arrow Icon, Preset settings, the slider bar to apply lighting to a face, and a slider bar to apply reflection to a face. In addition, Podium 1.7 has a check box for blurred and check box for preview.
Click on the Arrow Icon in the Podium dialog box and you will see another pop out menu. Information about Render Size, Render All scenes, settings are discussed in the UI Items chapter. Try a quick render to test your computer How Podium works 1. Select any surface or face in your SketchUp model by clicking on it. 2. While the surface is highlighted, pick a value for reflection by moving the Reflect slide bar in the Podium UI. 3. Paint a texture or color to the surface you previously selected. 4. Render it and examine the Preview image. 5. Click on the Preview image to obtain a larger resolution of the rendered image. Podium will create renderings of your SketchUp scene by simulating the reflection of light on each SketchUp face. By default, Podium applies Sky Light to the scene and supports Global Illumination. By applying reflection to faces, you can create photo-realistic images that reflect the sky, the sun, artificial lights and other faces in the model. You will get more realism by applying textures or colors to faces. Podium 1.7 introduces blurred reflections which is not turned on by default. Read the section on Blurred Reflections before applying it. You can also change daylight environment to night or evening environment by changing SketchUp's background color (found in SketchUp's Style menu). For example, you can create an evening like effect by choosing a dark background color in SketchUp. You can create different day light effects by using SketchUp shadows. When you turn SketchUp shadows on, Podium recognizes the position of SketchUp's sun and the sun becomes a source of light. You can control the brightness of the sun using the Dark slider in SketchUp's Shadow setting dialog box. Using the sun is also an effective way to light up the interior of a room by using Windows. Adjust the position of the sun by using SketchUp's Location data (in Model Info) and by using the time of day and month in the Shadow dialog box. Podium also provides "artificial" lighting in the form Light Emitting Surfaces and Omni lights (or point lights) which will provide further realism to your image especially interiors. The Light slider bar controls how much light is applied to a face or a group. When Light is applied directly to a face, the face becomes an LEM type light. The face will emit light. It is the easiest way to create artificial light. For example, you may want to create the effect of a fluorescent light illuminating a room. Create a face on the ceiling, select the face, then moving the Light slide bar to the right. When rendered, the face will displayed as a source of light. When Light is applied to a face, it is referred to as Light Emitting Material or LEM. An LEM will emit light in one direction. It is very simple way to create artificial light BUT LEMs are the slowest to render. So be careful how many faces you turn into LEMs. The more you have, the slow the rendering will become. Light can also be applied to SketchUp groups to create Omni Lights or point lights. Omni lights simulate a light bulb where light is emitted in all directions. These types of lights render much faster than LEMs. Further,omni lights emit light in all directions. Omni light groups can be tiny specs and these groups can be placed into light fixtures to create realistic interior lighting. Please examine the Registered User area of www.suplugins.com and download and install the comprehensive light fixture libraries. The light fixture libraries is a SketchUp plugins that allows you to drag and drop hundreds of lights into SketchUp. Each light fixture has omni lights in them so will automatically be rendered with light. If you only evaluating Podium, you can not access these libraries but you can download some a free sample light fixture plug-in to try out. To get an understanding of how Podium works, we have provided written beginning tutorials and video tutorials. Click here to view the Video Tutorials. Podium-Interior is a SketchUp model of a simple room design. When you finish with this basic tutorial, please take a look at the omni-light tutorial and also read about spot lights. Note: Podium employs Global Illumination (GI) and Ray tracing to create photo-realistic images. Ray tracing simulates the path of a ray of light as it would be absorbed or reflected by various SketchUp surfaces. GI is an algorithm that takes into account not only the light which comes directly from a light source like Sky Light or the Sun, but also subsequent cases in which light rays from the same source are reflected by other surfaces in the scene (indirect illumination).For more information about Ray tracing and GI, please read about it in Wikipedia.org UI Items - Resolution, Settings and PreviewPodium has a simple user interface as described in the Getting Started section. The main dialog box displays Light and Reflect slide bars and a Preview button. The are a few other options in the user interface that should be explained before proceeding to the tutorials.
Preset xml settings. At the top of the main Podium user interface, is a list of Preset .xml settings. Presets Presets will load optional setting templates and use these "templates" to give different rendering effects. There are many setting variables that are not exposed in Podium's UI. Some variables are Ambient Lighting, Irradiance Gradients, Trace Refractions, etc. Exposing all these variables would clutter the user interface and defeat Podium's goal of making rendering simple and easy. Several optional settings that take advantage of several of the hidden variables in Podium. We made these available through Podium's main UI. Use the default setting if you do not care to experiment with the Presets. The default setting has been tweaked to get a combination of good performance and quality. Here is a brief description of some of the Presets: Default The standard render preset. This should produce good, reliable results for all types of scene. It account for all situations. Render time is fastest. Quality. This preset will product the highest quality rendering in a reasonable amount of time. It is slower than default. Noisy Settings. This is the highest quality and slowest preset. This sues a method of progressive refinement to an image. It is particularly useful for exterior views and for getting rid of moire effects in small resolution images. Render quality is extremely high when allowed to render for a long period of time. It is an unbiased setting meaning the raytracing will not stop until you tell it to. The higher the resolution, the longer the time required. The image can be saved at any stage during the process. Good results can be obtained in with 150 passes but even this will take several hours. old15.This preset renders the image to the same standard, and speed as version 1.5 for those die-hard 1.5 lovers Blurry Optimized setting for blurry reflections. There are more Preset .xml files in the Registered User area as well as in the Forums. Render Size Click on the Arrow head icon in the main Podium user interface. This will reveal Render Size, Settings and Help options. There are several render size options in the full version including new 16:9 aspect ration sizes. Commercial version of Podium supports rendered image sizes (JPG, PNG and HDR) of 230X150, 640X480, 1024X768, 2048X1536, 3076X2304, 4076X3304, Wide screen resolutions of 852X480, 1600X900, 1920X1080, viewport resolution and 2X Viewport resolutions. The evaluation version only provides 230 X 150 (Preview) and 500 X 500. In all other respects, the free, non-expiring, evaluation version is the same as the full version. Settings
The Settings menu is where you can control the speed vs quality and jaggy vs smooth settings. It is also where you can pick between JPG and PNG output formats and what folder you want your image files to be saved to. Settings is discussed in more detail in the Settings sections of this help desk. Preview
When Preview is on, Podium will display a Preview of the rendering as it is occurring. The default Preview image size is 230 X 150. When you pick a larger image size such as 640 X 480, the Preview will only display a small portion of your rendering as it is occurring. You can Preview the entire image size by clicking inside the Preview image area. This action will display a new window which shows a static image of the rendering. Click on the larger window to make it disappear. Sample Tutorial - applying reflections and creating lightsDownload Podium Interior Sketchup file here Podium-Interior model is a simple model of a room.The goal of this exercise is to experiment with Light effect to create a new source of direct light and use reflection to simulate a mirror. Outside Sky Light will also influence the interior lighting. Turning Shadows on and off will show how sunlight can brighten an interior. Texture has already been applied to this model. SketchUp's background color has also been changed to a darker gray. Shadow settings are turned off. You can examine what materials are being used in the model by going to the SketchUp material browser and selecting the In Model tab.
Also,notice that two components are being used. One is a face-me type people component.The other is of a 3D bench.If you Zoom out of the current view you can see that the model is of a room with three walls, a roof and a floor. Outside the structure there is a surface with Ashlar Stone texture to represent the ground.
The facing wall has a white surface that will represent a mirror.
Display Podium's UI by picking Show from the Podium pull down menu.
Let's use the Render size of of 230 X 150 for the Preview.
Add Reflection and Light to surfaces
For this example, let's add reflection to the following surfaces, a. the mirror(this is the rectangular surface on the facing wall that has Ghost White texture), b. the floor
Apply Podium reflections as follows:
Mirror: Select the mirror surface and while it is highlighted, use the Reflect slide bar in Podium's UI to add a reflection value of 100 for the mirror.This is the maximum reflection value. Floor: Select the floor surface and while it is highlighted, use the Reflect slide bar in Podium's UI to add a reflection value of 20 for the floor.
We are also going to add a new light source in the room to the rectangle on the ceiling to simulate a fluorescent light.
Select the rectangular surface on the ceiling and while it is highlighted, use the Light slide bar in Podium's UI to add a Light value of 25 for the fluorescent light. This is a LEM type light. It's very simple to create but LEMs are slower to render than Omni type lights discussed in the next section. Render the Scene
Zoom,pan and rotate in SketchUp so that the room, mirror, portion of the light and a portion of the outside is visible on your computer screen. This will be the render scene.
Then click the Render button in the Podium interface. (Make sure the preview button is checked).
Podium goes through several iterations and you will notice messages on the Podium interface like Shooting Photons, Building Mesh, Ray tracing,Anti-aliasing.
When the messages have stopped and you have clear image, what you see is a preview size of your rendered image. Save this file.It will be saved with a date-stamp to the \SketchUp (6 or 7)\Plugins\Podium folder. (On the Mac, it will be saved in the Home Directory-\Documents\Podium folder.) You can change the location of where the image is saved by using the Settings menu.
Your preview image should look like this:
As you can see it is small but renders fast. Try changing the resolution size to 852 X 480 and render it again. Want more light in the room? Increase the Light value for the fluorescent light by select the surface and moving the Light slider bar to the left. You can also increase light by changing SketchUp's background color to a lighter color or by changing the color and opacity of the window texture.
Notice how the mirror is reflecting the face-me component's front view (as you would expect a face me component to behave). Try using a much larger resolution. Notice how the rendering speed slows down. You have now been exposed to some of the fundamentals of SU Podium's features. The other major feature left to explain are Omni Lights, Bump Maps, Soft Shadows, Blurred Reflection, Spot Lights and Render All scenes.
How to create an Omni Light
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There is a much easier way of creating spot lights in Version 1.7.3 using the Podium Light System. However, the older way is still useful and can give you size controls that does not exist in the Podium Light System.
If you already have a firm understanding of Podium lighting, especially Omni lights, here is something to experiment with. Spotlights take more time to set up, just as omnis take more time to set up than LEMs.
Spotlights can be used to manipulate light falloff. The falloff is determined by the length of the line drawn out from the group. In the above images, you see a “scallop†effect is achieved.
Download the Spotlight_test_scene.skp for some examples of spotlights. Click Here to download.Then assign light attributes to each spotlight group and then render.
To create a spotlight:
- 1. Start by making a group as if you were making an omni light but, do not give the group a light value.
- 2. From the center of the group, draw an edge (line) extending away from the group. In this example the line was 2 meters.
- 3. Combine in a group the entities created in steps 1 and 2.
- 4. Give the group from step 3 a light value.
- 5. Render to see the spotlight effect.
In the two images at the top of the page, you see one image with spotlight groups and another image with renderedspotlights. Download the Spotlight_test_scene.skp for some examples of spotlights. Download here.
Assign light values to each spotlight group and render the model with Podium. This will give you some idea of how spotlights work.
Blurred Reflections
Blurred Reflection option allows you to assign blurred reflections to a face or faces. With Podium's "normal" reflections, faces will directly reflect the surrounding environment, Podium lights, geometry and textures. If you apply blurred reflections to a face, the reflections will be subtle and less "glossy" than normal reflections.
Blurry reflections are applied the same way that "normal" reflections are applied. First check the blurred reflections box on the Podium UI. Then select the face or faces to add reflections to. While the faces are highlighted, use the reflect slide bar to choose the amount of reflection.
To understand more about Blurred reflection please read What's New in Podium 1.7
or watch the What's New in 1.7 Video
Settings
The Settings menu can help you increase or decrease the speed or quality of the render depending on what options you choose. The Settings menu also allows you to decide where you want to save your rendered image files and what file type to save images to. The settings user interface is accessed by clicking on the Arrow icon in Podium main user interface. The preceding menu will allow you to pick Settings which will bring up the Settings user interface.The Settings interface is divided into two sections. The top Render section is for controlling the speed and smoothness of the rendered image. The bottom section is for the output file.
Render Settings
Podium provides two types of render settings that will affect how fast or at what quality the rendering will be done.
Speed/ Quality slider bar controls how many ray tracing passes will be conducted during the rendering. If you are looking for "quick and dirty" results, push the slider bar toward Speed.
Another slider bar controls the jaggy vs smoothness of the rendered image. An often used term for controlling how smooth or jaggy an image should look is called anti-aliasing. Generally rule of thumb for these two controls is you will get more speed and less quality the further you move the slider bars left. But speed and quality will also depend on the resolution size. You will also notice a considerable drop in the speed of rendering the further right you take the slider bars.
Note: A good practice is to first render the image at higher speeds, lower quality and smaller resolutions to examine things like reflection, lighting and the textures you are working with. Once you are happy with these things, render the image at higher resolutions and higher quality and smoothness settings.
Output Settings. You can use the output settings to save the rendered image files in a folder of your choice. You can also choose JPG, PNG or HDR from the Output options. DR file type is new to Podium 1.6. High dynamic range (HDR) renderings allow you to render a greater range of reflection and light detail than JPG or PNG files would produce.
Podium Wizard
SU Podium 1.7.x includes Podium Wizard and Podium Tools utilities (Reset). These two utilities are installed and displayed in the Podium 1.7 menu.
Podium Wizard for Podium 1.7.x
Click the following link to watch the video tutorial on Podium Wizard. Click Here.
The Podium Wizard has two functions. One is to check the SketchUp model for the number of Podium reflective faces, lights (LEM) and omni lights. This function will give you an idea of the amount of computing power Podium needs to create a rendered image. The higher the number of lights (LEM), reflective faces and omni lights the model has, the longer it will take to render.
The second function in the Podium Wizard is to check for textures that will not render. If you have imported texture images in your model that have no extensions or unaccepted file extensions such as .pdf or .eps, the Podium Wizard will display an error message. The image below is an example of the error message and the analysis of the model.
Podium 1.7( and above) also includes an error detection program that runs after the rendering process is completed. If there are any textures that potentially will not render, an error message is displayed within the Podium dialog box. The image below is how the message will appear.
The message is "errors detected. run wizard.". If you see this error after rendering, it will be a good idea to run the Podium Wizard.
Correcting problem materials (imported textures)
After running Podium Wizard and getting an error message regarding materials with "wrong format texture" or "no extension texture", it will be important to make name corrections to the problem materials (imported textures) or deleting them from the SketchUp model. Renaming the materials so they have correct extensions is not necessarily a simple task. Deleting the problem materials is a lot easier although will have an impact on how your rendered image will look.
To correct material problems, the first thing to do is to purge your model of unused materials. This will have a positive effect of deleting unneeded materials and potentially make your model smaller. To purge, open your SketchUp Material Browser. For Windows users, click on the In Model icon and click the Arrow icon. Then select Purge Unused. For Mac users, from the List pull down menu, pick Purge Unused.
The next task is to either delete problem materials or rename them so Podium will render them. In most cases, Podium Wizard will give you a "wrong format textures" when imported texture (s) is not a bit mapped graphic format. Accepted formats are .jpg, .png and .gif. Vector graphic formats such as .pdf and .eps are treated as errors. The Wizard will give you a "no extension texture" message when there are no file extensions to your JPEG, GIF or PNG file.
You can easily delete SketchUp materials by using the SketchUp Material Browser and selecting and then deleting or removing the "problem" material. However, deleting a material may have an impact on the look and feel of your rendered image. The other option is to add an extension to the material, in the case that an extension is missing, or renaming the material, in the case that the imported texture is a .pdf or .eps file. There are various ways renaming your imported textures. The easiest method is finding the original imported image in your Windows or Mac computer, rename it so it has a .jpg, gif or .png extensions and then re-importing the image as a texture. However, if the case is that the imported texture is embedded in the model and you can not access the original imported texture, you will need to save the texture as an image from SketchUp's material browser to a folder on your computer. After saving the file, rename it with a .jpg, .gif or .png extension. When you have either renamed or deleted the "problem" material, run the Podium Wizard again to see if it has recognized the corrections. Then render your model again.
Reset
The Reset menu has two sub menus: Reset Model and Reset Coordinates. Reset Model is the same function as Podium_Tools.rbs. It will reset all faces and groups so that reflections and lights in the entire model are deleted (no SketchUp geometry is deleted). Reset Coordinates is a way to reset Podium's dialog box display coordinates. Sometimes if you are using a two monitor setup and have Podium running on your extended monitor and then go back to a single monitor setup, you will need to Reset Coordinates so that the Podium dialog box displays in it's original position on a single monitor.
Soft Shadows
In Podium 1.7.1 and above you can render beautiful soft sun shadows effectively. Please click here to read about it.
Render All scenes
Render All Scenes is a feature that allows you to render all the SketchUp scenes in a model in sequence. When invoked, Render All, renders each scene. To save time, only the first scene's geometry is processed. Each subsequent scene's camera view is then rendered. One draw back to this method is that object animations can not be created with Render All. You are limited to camera animations. Render All saves each rendered scene's JPG image to a designated folder. When it is complete, you can take all the images that were rendered and use Windows or Mac programs like Movie Maker or Quick Time Pro to create a video animation. The idea is that each scene in SketchUp is like a frame in a movie. When each scene is rendered with Render All, each JPG image can be used as a frame. When "stitched" together with Movie Maker or Quick Time, a walk-thru video animation is created. With 1.7.2's improved Render All function, the process is quite simple.
In SU Podium 1.7.2 Windows, Render All has been improved or rather "fixed" for the Windows version. Render All for Podium Mac version has worked all along so this update to 1.7.2 may not be as beneficial but if you are a Mac user and plan to do large animations with hundreds of scenes at high resolution, 1.7.2 would be the better choice. With this version, Render All works as it was original designed to. That is, when Render All is invoked, all scenes in the model will be rendered. With previous versions, Render All would quit working after a small number of scenes were rendered. Using 1.7.2 and Render All, it is possible to create animations where the camera moves through the model as in a walk-thru or fly-thru animation. There are several steps to creating the final animation but the most important step, Render All, works without having to resort to patching various models and scenes together.
There is one important item to note. To get good results, exposed faces in your SketchUp model should be front side AND have either textures or colors on them. You will get less than perfect animations if you do not follow this rule.
Please take a look at the following two videos. The first one is of a photo-realistic walk-thru rendering using SU Podium's Render All to generate the images and Windows Live Movie Maker to create the video. The same thing can be done in QuickTime Pro for the Mac.
The second video is an explanation of how to use Render All in SU Podium 1.7.2. This video tutorial is applicable to both Windows and Mac users. However the last one-third of the video is dedicated on how to create video frames in Windows Live Movie Maker. To see a details explanation on how to create video frames and videos from still images in QuickTime Pro for the Mac, click here.
Click on the image above to see a complete photo-realistic animation video using Render All
Click on the image above to see a tutorial on how to use RenderAll and create videos from still images
Click on this link to read about how to use QuickTime Pro to convert still images to a video.
Clay Rendering
You can get clay rendering effect such as the image above by using the Color by Layer feature in SketchUp.
Then Render using Podium. You will obtain a clay rendering effect on material with opacity of 100. You will notice that the more faces you have in your SketchUp model, the slower the speed for Podium to render it.The greater the render size, the slower the speed. Curved surfaces in SketchUp are comprised of many flat or planar faces and will take longer to render. Using LEM as lights will dramatically slow down the rendering process so it's a good idea to use LEMs careful. Podium 1.6/ 1.7 takes advantage of multi-core processors so you will get greater speeds the more micro-processor cores your computer supports. For example a dual core PC or Mac should get twice the rendering speeds of Podium 1.5. Quad and Eight core computers will get even much faster speeds. The speeds are increased in the raytracing and anti-aliasing portion of Podium's rendering process. The process geometry, mesh building phases of the rendering are not effected by multi-core process power. You can render images from SketchUp two point perspectives. If SketchUp Sky is on, no matter what color you have set the SketchUp Sky, the rendered image will display a blue tint for the SketchUp Sky. Turn Sky off if you do not like this effect and instead use your background color for the sky color. Many users When you create an account in the Registered User area of www.suplugins.com, you can download and install a drag and drop, light fixture library of over 250 fixtures that have omni lights built in. Dropping light fixtures into your SketchUp model can simplify setting up lighting for your rendering. The light fixture library includes hundreds of manufacturer specified light fixtures. The light fixture library is categorized into 5 categories - ceiling, floor, street, table, and wall. There are both Windows and Mac versions of the light fixture library so be careful which download option you choose. The download file is a zip file. Unzip the file and double click on either the .exe (Windows) or .pkg (Mac) file. Since omni lights are already placed in the light fixtures, rendering the model with light fixtures, is simple. You must have the full version of Podium for the Light Fixture Library to install. If you are using the free, eval. version, download the Light and Plants Sample program.
Render speed
Two Point Perspective
Sky Background colors.
Light Fixtures Library
2D alpha transparent Plants and Trees
The Plants and Trees component library is comprised of hundreds of 2D alpha transparency images for use with Podium 1.6 and 1.7. The plugin is a drag and drop library of hundreds of tress, plants and shrubs. The plugin includes a library of Ozbreed plant clipmaps created by Ozbreed plants by Enviro Graphic. (www.envirographic.com). The components are "Podium render-ready" meaning they are face-me components that can be dragged and dropped into your SketchUp model. Podium will recognize the transparent backgrounds and render them beautifully. Download the Plants and Trees library from the Registered User area of www.suplugins.com. You will need to have a full version of Podium for the Plants and Trees program to install.
High Resolution Texture libraries
Although Podium works well with SketchUp standard textures, rendered images will look even more realistic if you import high resolution textures into your model. Podium customers can download a free texture libraries from the Registered User area of dozens of high resolution texture images featuring wood, glass, water, floors, cloth, tiles, concrete, ground cover, etc. There are two forms of the texture libraries. One is an installation file that installs textures into your Sketchup Material folder. The other are ZIP files of hundreds of .jpg images. Create your own texture folder and unzip the contents of the zip file to this folder. To use the texture images, import them in SketchUp as textures.
Omni Grid
Omni Grid is a ruby based program that will create a grid pattern of omni lights in your model. The goal is to create a uniform source of lights without using LEMs or without over-populating your model with omni lights. The way you apply Omni Grid is simple. Select a face or several co-planar faces (such as a ceiling, wall or floor), select the grid distance and click OK. Omni Grid is available from the Registered User area on www.suplugins.com. Installation instructions are posted on this page as well.
Click here to see the Omni Grid video tutorial
Link to Registered User Area
Link to Tips and FAQ
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