Sketchinp Ypsi

It's great fun to watch the Sketching Ypsi blog (and its been a couple of days since I last gave him a plug.)



We're so glad that he won the IRender nXt Rendering Contest - so he can keep using IRender nXt. (We'll get some $$ from him in a year or so when he is ready to upgrade - Unless he manages to win next years contest as well.)

Check out: SketchUp Rendering

Network Licenses

If you have 5 or more SketchUp users at one site who want to use IRender nXt, or our other products, you may be interested in our network licenses. A Network License allows all users at a site to use the product at work, or at home on their laptops.

See: Purchase for more information

Reflection Settings Video

Dennis has just created a new video on Reflection Settings

Even those of you who already use reflections and mirrors will find the sections on metallic highlighting and glossy settings interesting.

• Reflectivity and Highlighting
• Reflection, Shininess, Metallic, Glossy

Play Hi-Res

Play from Blog

SketchUp 7 - Hands On (new book)

I see that Bonnie Roskes has written a new book on Google SketchUp 7. I don't have my copy yet. But you should take a look - See: SketchUp 7 - Hands On






Actually, her Google SketchUp Cookbook may be even more recent.

You can see all the books on Amazon,.com

Render Plus Products

A SketchUp Reseller ask me about the advantages of IRender nXt:

In showing people the benefits of SketchUp, we are very interested in delivering knowledgeable feedback on the various rendering engines that are available for SU.

We have not had time to evaluate the various options that are available even though we would very much like to do so.

Do you have any online videos of how your software works and can you tell me the benefits that your software delivers over other less expensive or free applications?

Here was our response:

Our most popular product is IRender nXt. (We have about 8 products all together, about 1/2 of which are free - see Products)

There are 4 videos for IRender nXt (more on the way) which should give you a sense of its capabilities - See Videos

The advantage of IRender nXt over the other low cost, integrated rendering packages is the quality of its renderings. This will be obvious from the two getting started videos.

The advantage of IRender nXt over all the rendering packages is the amount of integration we have done into SketchUp. The lighting and reflection videos will show a lot of this. (The reflection video should be released today or next Monday). All rendering settings are set from within SketchUp, and stored in SketchUp, so that the rendering can be started (or restarted after making changes) with the push of an icon on the SketchUp toolbar.

IRender nXt is the only rendering package we are aware of which is able to render edge details from your SketchUp model. See the Edge Line video.

We also have a number of wizard and special features - like the placement of mirrors, floor lamps, table lamps, fractal trees, RPC objects, etc - which make it easy to add rendering features - lights, reflection, etc. - to your SketchUp model.

Finally IRender nXt comes with a library of about 500 plants, (in addition to the Fractal Tree Maker) which are useful for landscape applications.

I am confidant that your users would appreciate any efforts you make to introduce IRender nXt and other Render Plus products to them.

Render Plus Plugins

Sketching Ypsi Blog

Check out MuseumMaker's Sketching Ypsi Blog. He gives some reflections on what it took to win the IRender nXt Rendering Contest.

Rendering Contest Winners

The contest is complete and the judges have made there choices.

First Place is awarded to MuseumMaker:


Second Place is awarded to daLindi:


And Third Place to Richcat:


We want to thank everyone who participated.

You can view these images and the other finalists at: Rendering Contest

I saw an article in Jom Foltz's Blog ([Plugin] SketchUp Blog) about how to set Crayola Colors and Jim also provides a Crayola style for use with it.



Everything you need to use this is available on Jim's Blog, however, with Jim's permission, I decided this would be a good function for NprTools, using a dialog to choose the colors and set the style.



Keep you eyes open. I hope to have a Beta test version of NprTools in the next couple of weeks.

Help us with out web site look.

We are running a survey to select from two looks for our new website.

Take a look and cast your Vote

VisualMedia Samples

I was searching the web to find blogs which had mentioned RpTreeMaker, and I found an interesting article on the VisualMedia blog.

The author had grabbed a model from the 3D warehouse, and then figured out good ways to improve the rendering with IRender nXt.

Take a look: Textures and Tweaks Spice Up your SketchUp Rendering

EverMotion Rendering Competition

I see that some of our users are taking a look at the EverMotion rendering competition to see how they can do with SketchUp and nXt.

See this Forum Thread

Rendering Contest Finalists

We have selected the finalists in the IRender nXt Rendering Contest. Thanks to all who participated. Take a look at: Rendering Contest

Now we just need to determine the 3 winners from the 12 finalists.

Also, we are letting the SketchUp Community be one of the judges. Cast your vote HERE.

SketchUp Plugins

We want to thank the folks at SketchUp for updating their plugins page with up-to-date information about Render Plus Products.

New reflection Settings

The latest version of IRender nXt has added some new reflection options - Glossy and Fresnel. Check them out.

Check out your contest entries

If you have submitted an entry for the rendering contest, you should check this page:

Contest entries

To make sure we have it. If we don't have it, send it again to contest@renderplus.com

I will respond to the email, so if you don't get a response after a reasonable period of time, add a comment here so we can contact you.

Contest Ending

The rendering contest is over, (except for a couple of people who requested an extension until tomorrow). We will carefully evaluate the entries and choose about 10 finalists, whom we will announce next week.

Bonnie's Blog - sitting under a tree.

We have sent information about RpTreeMaker out to several SketchUp Blogs, newsletters and magazines and several have chosen to share the information with their readers.

However, Bonnie Roskes went one step further. She took the time to try it our, create a model with some trees and load it up on the 3D Warehouse.


Check out her Blog.

New Stable Version release of IRender nXt

We released a new "stable" version today.

I wish I could guarantee that there are no bugs, but this has been in testing for a couple of weeks, so it may be better than some of our older, hurried, releases.

Stable version March 20, 2009

• Better processing of lights which are close to another surface
• Fix problem with alpha transparent faces which are lights. They were getting a black background
• Fix problem with large model extracts

Fixed to extract and process models about 3-5 times larger then previous version

• Make Batch the default rendering mode
• Allow Batch rendering for IRender Lite

Rendering Contest

This is the last day of the Rendering Contest, and the entries have been pouring in.

If you need just a little more time, you may request a 72 hour extension to complete your rendering. Send an email to contest@renderplus.com telling us that you need just a little more time, and we give you an additional 72 hours to get you entries completed.

With the extension, your entry will have to be received by Midnight April 5th MDT. But you need to request an extension so we know to wait for your entry.

RpTreeMaker Press Release

We have been sending out information about RpTreeMaker to blogs, newsletters and magazines which cover SketchUp. Anyone who reads this and runs a blog, etc. should go ahead and post this release, and also email us at info@renderplus.com to let us know about your publication so we can let you know when other Press Releases are ready.

Render Plus announces RpTreeMaker, a free add-on for Google SketchUp.

RpTreeMaker

RpTreeMaker is a new, free, product to create realistic, fractal trees and place them into the SketchUp mode as always-face-camera components. Parameters such as:

• Tree Type
• Number of Trunks
• Bending
• Crookedness
• Leaf Type,
• etc.

let the user easily create custom trees for use in SketchUp models.

For more information see: RpTreeMaker

Render Plus System

Render Plus Systems is a software development group in Centennial, Colorado devoted to adding functionality to Google SketchUp. We try to fill in any gaps in SketchUp which the Google development team has overlooked.

We started out with two products - RPS 3D PDF - which lets SketchUp users create interactive 3D PDF documents from SketchUp drawings - and RpTools which started out as a set of routines to make it easier to place and manipulate components - especially for new users using components from the 3D Warehouse to fill rooms and other spaces.

Our most popular product is IRender nXt, is an integrated photorealistic renderer for SketchUp. Using lights, reflective materials, plants and RPC 3D Objects, the SketchUp user can create high quality renderings from the SketchUp model.

Check out all the Render Plus products for SketchUp products at: SketchUp Products