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What's New to SU Podium V2 Beta Transparent Background
The transparent background option has been in SU Podium V2 Beta since beta .46 but this feature is finally working in the current Beta without color problems. Using transparent from the Options dialog box, your rendered .png file will automatically have alpha transparent background. This will allow you to cut and paste your own background to the rendered image using a image editor program such as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. Read about how to use Transparent here. Sun light exposure and intensity sliders
New to V2 Beta are the sun light exposure and intensity sliders. This will allow you to reduce sun light to over or under exposed rendered images. Often you will find that with the combination or a particular preset and with Podium's physical sky on, the time of day you want to render will be too intense or exposed or under exposed. These sliders help you reduce or increase the sun's intensity and exposure with any given preset. Access sun sliders from the Options dialog box under the Environment tab. New type of LEM light - "low intensity/ high intensity" V2 Beta includes a Material properties setting for LEM lights called "High Intensity". The default for this setting is unchecked. When this setting is unchecked and you use LEM type lights, Podium renders the light as "low"intensity. Power settings are not as sensitive as with high intensity. Typical power values might be 20 or 30. Furthermore, with option unchecked it is difficult to get over exposed LEM lighting. Additional, "low" intensity is much faster to render. When high intensity is checked on, the LEM light is much brighter and much more sensitive to power values. Typically power values of 1 or 2 are sufficient for interior renderings. High intensity check box is located in the Material Properties user interface. It is applied to a specific texture.
Omni soft shadows on/off V2 Beta now had a switch to turn soft shadows on or off for omni lights (point lights) Soft omni shadows is a global setting available in the Options menu in the Environment tab. The option is applied globally to all omni/point lights in the model. The default setting is off or unchecked. When soft omni shadows is checked on, all omni/point lights will cast soft shadows. Soft shadows make the omni lights look natural. The draw back is soft omni shadows take a long time to render. If you want quicker renders that have omni/ point lights in them, turn this setting off.
Podium::render script. Start up SU Podium V2 from your Ruby Script
With SU Podium V2 Beta, you can now invoke Podium from a ruby script or from the ruby console in SketchUp. To turn run Podium render at it's current settings, type in Podium::render from the Ruby console or add it to your ruby script. |
