Category: General

Now here’s a thing – virtual glass created in V-Ray behaves exactly like real-life glass. This means there are some crucial aspects of your work to get right before you go ahead and add glass. It’s all about setting up the scene properly in the first place. Here’s the first stage in how to make glass in V-Ray.

•         First, your lighting. As you know, glass reflects. In fact, it’s extremely reflective and refractive, reflecting and refracting the light in your scene. To show off these realistic properties, you’ll need to ensure the lighting in your scene is set up right.
•         Second, your camera. Think hard about the camera’s angle and position, since the camera’s position profoundly affects glass refraction and reflection. Experiment first, and once it’s right you know for sure you’ll get the effects you want.  

·         Third, object placement. Where will your glass object look best in the scene? You’ll find putting it on a windowsill gives you a completely different effect than you get by standing it on a table in the room’s centre – just as it does in real life.

First, you need to confirm your machine has the right system requirements for SketchUp studio for Mac. We’ll take you through the steps to verify your Mac’s compatibility and essential specifications around the operating system version and the capabilities of the hardware. We’ll also give you the insight you need on crucial updates and preparations before installing SketchUp Studio, including software updates and the disk space available.

SketchUp Studio provides a host of advanced 3D modelling tools and features to empower lifelike, exciting designs high in precision and rich in creativity. The software lets you make complicated models with ease, generate accurate measurements just as easily and quickly, and add remarkably realistic renderings. It’s all down to a comprehensive set of modelling tools together with a truly intuitive interface, making using the software a real pleasure as well as enhancing your professional life.

The software’s clever push-pull technology means you can manipulate complex 3D geometry simply and quickly while using Studio’s intelligent inferencing system to achieve accuracy and efficiency throughout the design process, from start to finish. There’s also a huge library of dynamic components, textures, and materials to tap into, giving designers even more capabilities and adding extra versatility.

As a designer, it’s your aim to bring your creative ideas to life in a way that’ll inspire your clients and impress stakeholders. SketchUp Studio does exactly that, delivering a comprehensive set of 3D modelling tools to bring your ideas to sparkling, realistic life. The engines driving all this are the software’s intuitive push-pull technology and its advanced inferencing system, plus an exciting range of features created to simplify the 3D modelling process therefore save time, effort and money.

The tools include a suite of flexible modelling tools, a huge component library, and brilliant solid modelling capabilities. These fabulous features let you design complex models, generate accurate measurements, output perfect cut lists, and add extremely realistic renderings to your designs.

First, let’s look at how 3d architecture software for beginners will help people like you. This kind of specialised architecture software is an excellent platform for bringing creative ideas to life. It lets you make realistic, accurate 2D drawings and 3D models, along with convincing walkthroughs. All this makes it much easier to visualise and test your ideas before the construction stage begins, and just as easy to spot and remedy mistakes. You can sometimes even create 100% accurate materials lists and cut lists to save money and hassle. 

It’s also a team thing. Architecture software makes close collaboration simple even when you’re working remotely from one another. You collaborate with other team members, your fellow  architects, your clients, engineers, builders, project managers and more. Because it facilitates teamwork naturally, everything runs smoothly. 

While the traditional way of drawing out ideas is great, and has worked perfectly well for centuries, software comes with many advantages over the old-school way of designing buildings and their surroundings. Hand-design and drafting takes so much longer. It’s hard to achieve the same excellent levels of detail and precision by hand, when it isn’t supported by software that doesn’t just create designs but also reveals issues and problems with your work so you can fix them fast and easily.  

All this means beginners can work much more efficiently,  accurately and confidently, enjoying a lot more control over the entire design process. You’ll be more flexible, more creative, and more adaptable. 

At Elmtec we provide a choice of brilliant basic architecture software for beginners along with pro tools, each with its own advantages. Take SketchUp, for example, a famously user-friendly 3D modeling tool that takes no time to grasp, is fun to use, is perfect for beginners and has a large, friendly community of users to support you and learn from. 

Take a look at Google Earth. Maybe find the place you’re at right now. As you’ll see, the 3D buildings in Google Earth give you 100% accurate digital representations of the real world in every detail. SketchUp does much the same thing, creating hyper-real designs using computer-aided design or CAD software. 

Google Earth lets you view and explore 3D buildings and other structures from a bird’s-eye view, from far above. SketchUp lets you create and modify 3D models in great detail, giving you finer detail than Google Earth. As you can imagine they’re a great match. Together they give you everything you need for attractive, inspiring designs.  

There are many cool benefits to using Google Earth to find 3D building models. There’s easy access to a vast library of 3D models from around the world. You can view buildings from countless different angles and perspectives. And you get the opportunity to explore them, and the fine details involved, via a flexible virtual environment. 

There’s more. Bring 3d buildings from Google Earth to SketchUp and you’ll find SketchUp enhances 3D models from Google Earth by adding more detail and realism. You can add exciting textures and materials, and modify or customise models to suit a specific design project or satisfy your creative curiosity. When you combine models you can draw complicated multi-building designs quickly, beautifully, and convincingly. 

All this means you effectively spend less time doing more, and the results are stunning. This in turn makes it easier to get your ideas across, convince stakeholders, and get sign-off on your designs. 

Next, how to import Google Earth into SketchUp.  

A render is a digital version of a 2D or 3D model created by computer software. The resulting image can be hyper-realistic or not, depending on what you’ll be using it for. Real-Time Rendering is used for interactive graphics and gaming and creates images fast. Pre-Rendering is best when speed isn’t so important, usually best for photorealistic animation and visual effects. The images can be viewed by anyone without special hardware or software. 

How does 3D rendering software work? Modelling means making a computer model of an object. Layout involves placing objects in a scene.  And 3D rendering makes complex computer calculations based on light, surfaces and more to generate a stunning image in a process called rasterizing. 

3D graphics software was born in 1978 with a product called 3D Art Graphics, a set of 3D effects coded by Kazumasa Miyazawa for Apple. Today’s computers are so much more powerful, with  the processing power for exceptionally complex rendering. Here’s what you need to know about 3D rendering.   

First, before you begin saving images in V-Ray, let’s explore the basics behind the software. V-Ray is a powerful rendering engine providing beautiful photorealistic results. Behind the scenes, the code harnesses various illumination algorithms like path tracing, photon mapping, irradiance mapping and directly computed global illumination to create real-feeling pictures and animations. 

Before you can save an image you’ll have to set up the scene, included the right level and type of lighting, choose your materials, and picked the perfect camera settings for the project. You can choose natural light or man-made light to create an infinite variety of lighting effects.

The tool displays the different scenarios you try as thumbnails, making it easy to apply them to your scene and decide which is the most suitable. Once all that’s in place and the render looks perfect, you simply save the image. To create an animation you join the separate frames created by the software together later to make an animated clip.

First, how do you get the software to 3d print?  There are three different tools to take into account to get started with 3D printing. For a start, you’ll need 3D modelling software to design a printable 3D model of the object you want to make. There are plenty of choices and the top choices are Autodesk Fusion 360, SketchUp, Tinkercad, and Blender.

You’ll also need some good slicing software, which digitally slices up your object into incredibly thin layers for the 3D printer. It outputs clear instructions for the printer to follow, printing out the object layer by layer. The most popular are Cura, PrusaSlicer, Simplify3D, and Slic3r.

Printer control software is the third part of the equation, the thing that controls your 3D print machine and its settings. You use it to upload sliced print-ready files, change the print settings, and keep an eye on the job’s progress. You might want to take a look at Repetier-Host, OctoPrint, or Pronterface, all popular options. 

Blender is a free 3d modelling tool. Designed for more experienced users and packed with features, this one is a particular favourite with designers in the animation and special effects sectors. It comes with excellent advanced 3D printing capabilities, making it ideal for designing and printing complicated 3D models.

While SketchUp Studio is more expensive than SketchUp Pro, it is still a more cost-effective option for users who need access to the additional features and tools that come with the Studio version. For example, purchasing a SketchUp Pro licence and several extensions can be more expensive than purchasing a SketchUp Studio licence, which includes all of these features and tools.