Friday, October 22, 2010

Kerkythea Project

I'm getting a jump on November's Projects of the Month, and one of the projects is about how to use the free rendering application Kerkythea (yes, strange name, but nice application).

I learned how to quickly get started from the book SketchUp 7.1 for Architectural Visualization by Robin de Jongh (see my review).

I started with this SketchUp model:



And turned on shadows, which makes the room really dark.



In Kerkythea, I defined some lights, added some reflectivity to the windows, and made the floor shiny and blue. All by using some pretty simple options. And all for free!



There are dozens of renderers out there these days, and I plan to write about many of them in the future. I started with Kerkythea because it's free, though some others are very inexpensive (and yet others are free to educators).

Have a favorite renderer? Let me know which one and why.


Anyone can design anything in 3D! http://www.3dvinci.net/

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5 comments:

  1. UnknownOctober 23, 2010 at 7:24 AM

    Hi Bonnie. I like Kerkythea.
    Pov-ray is also a free renderer
    http://hof.povray.org/. It works well with SketchUp thanks to the plugin SU2POV:
    "New version 3.5.of the su2pov exporter is now online: simplified user interface, materials and surface aspects presets, more light colours and image resolutions, cubic background images, HDRI lighting, parameters management through scenes."
    Take a look here:http://rhin.crai.archi.fr/rubylibrarydepot/index.php

    ReplyDelete
  2. MarcusOctober 24, 2010 at 3:55 AM

    I prefer Twilight. It uses the Kerkythea engine so it has the power of Kerkythea, but it runs inside Sketchup so there is no exporting the model necessary - this is a huge time saver if you are making lots of changes. The UI is designed to be simple, making it easy for beginners to get started. Its very well priced and has excellent tech support and free resources in the forum if necessary. www.twilightrender.com

    ReplyDelete
  3. Bonnie RoskesOctober 25, 2010 at 12:08 PM

    Thanks - I'm planning to do a write-up on both POV-ray and Twighlight in the near future. Both will also be mentioned (with others) in an interior design textbook I'm working on.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousOctober 26, 2010 at 2:23 PM

    Another render, often used is the V-Ray for SketchUp. Like Twilight, it also works inside SketchUp.

    It would be a good topic also you talking about the V-Ray in his book.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Bonnie RoskesOctober 26, 2010 at 2:31 PM

    Everyone loves V-Ray, and I've seen stunning pictures from their gallery. I haven't used it - I believe they do not have a free version, correct?

    ReplyDelete