The Maxwell Render for Google SketchUp by Next Limit Technologies is a new easy to use render engine that works with Google SketchUp 8. The application is completely integrated into SketchUp allowing for a seamless experience for users. Maxwell Render for SketchUp is a simplified version of their full application Maxwell Render Suite.

When using Maxwell Render in an outside environment the product works great. The materials in your model work with this plugin and those same materials can even be edited within Maxwell. Though a drawback is that each material needs to be selected separately and changed manually.

The rendering time is decent and allows for fairly quick rendering based on settings. A render countdown clock signifying how long is left on the rendering is missing. If a large render is being tackled it seems as if the rendering time is infinite and there really is no knowing how much longer it will take. Though at any point in the rendering the image can be saved without disrupting the rendering. When saving the image there is a drawback as the file formats do not appear and “.jpg” needs to be added manually.

A major issue that is either missing or not obvious on how to do is how to create interior lighting points with the SketchUp Plugin. This option is available with Maxwell Render Suite, but doesn’t seem to be available on the SketchUp version.

Overall, the Maxwell Render for Google SketchUp by Next Limit Technologies is an extremely easy to use rendering engine but with many limitations. At the time of this review this plugin costs $95 for the licensed version and is available at MaxwellRender.com. I give this plugin 3 out 5 stars.

Updated: 6/30/2010

The Shaderlight renderer created by Art VPS is a new beta rendering engine for SketchUp and many other 3D design programs. The renderer is actually its own separate program that integrates with SketchUp. Once installed it is automatically picked up by SketchUp.

This product works really well considering it is completely FREE. You can render high and HD resolution renderings and is simple and easy to use. The program comes built in with all the base SketchUp materials with added functions to create the glossy, plastic, transparent and other affects to the material and automatically detects and chooses the style to help to create the most realistic rendering. Shaderlight also allows you to place dynamic backgrounds and lighting attributes to the entire model. The render comes with a great support community via their website, their forums and tutorials. Another feature of the plugin is the ability for it to automatically update the rendering as you change items, this is a double edge sword as it does not allow you to work while rendering but does give you the flexibility to change things real time. UPDATED* The auto update feature can be turned off in the settings menu to stop this feature.

Since this product is still in the beta version there are some drawbacks that need to be noted. When rendering complicated objects the rendering time takes quite some time and memory as expected. But, there is no progress bar to display the full progress of the rendering from start to finish, only sub progresses of all the actions being taken as the renderer works. Not knowing the time left to render can be frustrating. Another major downfall is that it is not easy to create lighting points or objects and change lighting colors. This missing feature alone is a deal breaker for this particular rendering engine. Another major drawback that we found is that some flat jpg images, such as an image on a tv set, will not come up in the rendering, we assume that there is a way to make them come up. But could not find a solution to this.

Overall, the Shaderlight renderer created by Art VPS is an up and coming rendering engine that will rival the leading rendering programs out there. But is not quite there yet. At the time of this review this rendering engine is free and is available at www.artvps.com. I give this renderer 3 out 5 stars.

The IDX Renditioner plugin created by IMSI/Design is an excellent renderer for Google SketchUp. This renderer is very simple to use but also provides you with the advanced options without complicating your model too much. This is one of a few renderers that allows you to use their product completely for free, at limited resolution (640×480 pixels), but so far is the largest in total area of the free versions. IDX Renditioner is one of the only renderers that does not get rid of components. It renders your entire model with ease. IDX comes with set lighting fixtures and uses all materials in SketchUp adding extra ease of use!

IDX allows you to use the materials in SketchUp and then by right clicking (on a PC) on these materials you can go to the IDX Materials option to adjust reflection and depth to make the material a little bit more 3D. There is a drawback with this, well not really a drawback, it only is if you don’t know about it. If you change the settings for a material, lets say for a mirror, then all materials in the model will also change. So make sure to copy materials that you would like to have different effects.

Lighting can also be adjusted in a similar fashion as the materials. By right clicking you can choose the IDX Lighting option and adjust brightness and color of light. Though this only has worked with lighting sources supplied by IDX in the component area. Also you can override SketchUp’s preset sun location and lighting with IDX. And create sunny, cloudy, and even twilight light displays very easily and within SketchUp.

See below for a great tutorial from “The SketchUp Show”!

Overall, The IDX Renditioner plugin created by IMSI/Design is a great renderer and is one of the top suggested renderers out there. The rendering time is reasonable, rendering within about 5-20 min and the preview mode renders fairly quickly, within minutes. At the time of this review this plugin is free (at limited resolution) or can be purchased at $199 for the full version. It is available at idx-design.com. I give this plugin 5 out 5 stars, simply the best value out there!

Note that when using the plugins that the sun shadow should be considered. Sometimes the shadow changes the images and they do not fit together perfectly. And it can be tough at times to indicate the point at which the center will be placed. The plugin works well though it only creates images with the render quality that SketchUp offers. But, the plugin does created scenes for each of the images (if you choose true on this option) so you can go back and render the scenes with your favorite renderer and create amazing photorealistic cubic panoramas. But it is quite difficult to match the rendered scenes up, you need to make sure that the resolution is the same and that your renderer doesn’t distort the scene up even more. You may need to play with the images in photoshop to get this looking right.

Overall, the Cubic Pano Out plugin created by John Wehby is a great solution to create amazing 3D panoramas. At the time of this review this plugin is free and is available at Smustard.com. I give this plugin 4 out 5 stars.

Extra Resource:
Cad-Addict.com

The SU Podium plugin is an amazing rendering solution. SU Podium is actually a true plugin and does not require another program to be running in order to render. And this is the only renderer, other than Kerkythea that allows you to render for free! But their free service does come with one caveat, you can only render up to 500×500 pixel image. But for those that are not looking for professional renderings and just want a free solutions that works well, this is it. But to get the higher resolution images the software needs to be purchased, but this is more than reasonable for this quality plugin.

The rendering program works very well and is very simple to use. The materials from SketchUp come out perfectly and creating lighting is easy as just selecting a surface and boosting up the lights. But you should note that objects need to be grouped (even if it is a single face) in order to become a light source, otherwise it just displays light but doesn’t emit it. Other than it is fairly simple to use and SU Podium has great video tutorials on their site. They also have a light fixture, plant and texture library available to their users. There were really no drawbacks to this renderer other than it being almost too simple, but so far in our experience the simplicity is the best part!

An issue that we ran into was that when rendering components the Podium tended to leave out aspects of the object. But to be fair, we had this issue with many other renderers out there. A way to fix this is to explode the objects, then their components should now be visible in the rendering.

Overall, the SU Podium plugin is a great renderer and is worth the buy/download. At the time of this review this plugin is $179 for the commercial version or $79 for the student teacher version and is available at SUPlugins.com. I give this plugin 5 out 5 stars.

The Camera Recorder plugin created by Chris Fullmer is a great tool to quickly create walk-throughs for your model just by using the walking tool. It works really well to make simple animations but it only animates what you see on on your SketchUp screen. So sorry to those that would like to create high quality renders with this tool. And for those that have slower computers this will take forever, if not freeze your computer, to create a walk-through with all the shadow effects and textures.

This tool is easy to use and allows you to export the scenes as images in many of the already accepted image formats such as JPEGs or PNGs among others. You can also choose the amount of frames per second to export to. But once you export it you will need an additional software to put the images together into a movie. Flash, Quicktime Pro, or any other similar programs will allow you to do this. See below for a great tutorial.

In future versions of this plugin, there should be a browse button to help you search for where you would like the images to end up. As of now you can only type in the destinations manually, but for those with Windows when you just use your file explorer and find the location you want to put it, you can copy and paste the destination url from the file explorer into the plugin window.

Overall, the Camera Recorder plugin created by Chris Fullmer is definately worth the download. It is a very handy tool to have for simple demonstrations, but its not going to win you a grammy. At the time of this review this plugin is free and is available at SketchUcation.com. I give this plugin 4 out 5 stars.

Extra Resource:
www.cad-addict.com/2009/12/sketchup-plugin-camera-recorder.html

The NprTools plugin created by Render Plus Systems is a plugin that allows you to make non-photo realistic renders. From my experience with the plugin, what is meant by non-photo realistic is renderings that do not focus on bringing about a detailed realistic look. Rather it is meant to add additional features not normally provided by SketchUp such as the crayon tools and sketchy shadows. This plugin might as well be considered as a style developer.

The plugin works well to create soft shadows and creating images from your model, but is a little complicated. This plugin may work better with less options when it comes to the shadow effects, but regardless a pretty nice plugin to make those shadows. The crayon effect works well and gives your model a very nice drawing/coloring tool. Though the different crayon color options don’t really help with the plugin, this option actually paints into your model and is not just a style. Once you return to your original non sketchy style the coloration from the crayon tool stays (that is if you paint it onto a specific surface). The plugin also comes with a sketchy shadow effect, this does take a little time to get used to but the effect is nice to add a more realistic drawing affect. Below is a video with more details on how to use these tools. And Render Plus has a good tutorial on their site, click here.

Overall, the NprTools plugin created by Render Plus Systems is a good tool to add that little extra to your model for presentations. At the time of this review this plugin is $45 and is available at RenderPlus.com under NprTools. I give this plugin 3 out 5 stars.

The nXt Renderer by IRender is a rendering plugin that integrates really well with SketchUp. The learning curve on this plugin is very small and you can start rendering almost immediately after installing the plugin. The render quality is pretty good, but just out of reach of photo realistic rendering, unless I am missing something. The plugin does also take some of your computers processing power away and takes a little while to render, about 10-15+ minutes per rendering.

This render offers some great features such as easy to control rendering tools. The tools allow you to choose specifically what you want in terms you can understand. In addition, the renderer comes with light fixtures and tools to easily add an amazing effect to your model. Even if the renderer seems too complicated for you, IRender has great support and tutorials on their site to help you through the rendering process and create exactly what you were looking for.

Overall, the nXt Renderer by IRender is a great solution for your SketchUp rendering needs. At the time of this review the nXt Render costs $399 for a single license. They do have other options that have more or less features for reduced or increased prices. The plugins are available at RenderPlus.com. I give this plugin 4 out of 5 stars!

The Kerkythea Renderer is a free software that work well with Google SketchUp. The software is a program that works with 3D files to render and create photo realistic textures and lighting. Though in order to work with Kekythea and SketchUp you will need to download the SketchUp plugin from Kerkythea. This allows you to export your SketchUp drawing to a .xls format which is read by Kerkythea. The program does have its drawbacks. For one Kerkythea has a learning curve and takes a little while just to figure out how to use the program. The rendering also takes quite some time to render a final image. And as a new user with Kerkythea it has hard to navigate through your model. But one of the benefits of Kerkythea is that it also imports your views from SketchUp, and it is suggested to use those views instead of manually navigating through the model.

Once you get the hang of the program it is pretty amazing. The rendering quality is top notch and the materials library are also very good. Though, you need to note that materials do not transfer well from SketchUp, for the most part you will have to replace the materials with those offered by Kerkythea. But the materials are substantially better than those of SketchUp and are very realistic.

Overall, Kerkythea 3D rendering software works well with Google SketchUp. The software and plugin works great though there is a learning curve and takes up a considerable amount of your computers processing power. At the time of this review the Kerkythea Renderer for Google SketchUp is free (but they do offer packages that you need to pay for). I rank the renderer 4 out of 5 stars because once you get the hang of it, you can really create some amazing images.