The difference between a SketchUp model and a photorealistic rendering can be the difference between a 'maybe' and a 'yes' from your client.
Realistic visuals help clients better understand your vision early in the process, make communication much smoother, and help avoid costly mistakes later on.
But visualizing architectural and interior designs has always been a complex and resource-intensive process, that needed extensive modeling, lighting, and texturing work. This, combined with the need for expensive hardware and long rendering times was a barrier to entry for many SketchUp users.
Not anymore.
With the recent advancements in visualization technology, anyone can render their SketchUp models quickly and easily, without sacrificing quality.
In this guide, we'll give you step-by-step instructions on how to render in SketchUp and achieve realistic results without spending weeks learning new software or having to shell out thousands on GPUs.
Let's make one thing clear - SketchUp doesn't offer any native rendering tools.
To visualize your models, you'll need a plugin or external rendering software. These will either let you adjust lighting, materials, and textures manually or handle it automatically for you, based on the tool you pick.
Below, you'll learn how to render your SketchUp models using two methods - with AI rendering tools and traditional renderers.
We've covered some of the best SketchUp rendering software in another article, so if you haven't picked your tool yet, we recommend checking that list first.
Now, let's start with the quickest and easiest method - AI rendering.
Tools using artificial intelligence-based rendering engines are the most efficient way of turning your SketchUp designs into photorealistic visuals.
Not only do they produce quality renders within seconds but also don't require powerful hardware and installations as the process runs in your browser.
This SketchUp renderer is praised by architects and interior designers for its impressive quality-to-speed ratio, high accuracy, ease of use, and friendly support.
Here's how to use it.
1. Sign up for a free account.
2. Upload an image of your SketchUp scene.
3. Pick from two rendering engines:
a) Accurate (for preserving your SketchUp model's geometry, colors, and textures)
b) Style transfer (for applying the aesthetic of your selected reference image onto your design)
4. Describe your scene with words to help the AI rendering engine "understand" your vision.
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5. Click the "Generate" button to render your SketchUp concept. The image will be ready in under 10 seconds. Geometry, colors and textures of your design will be preserved.
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6. Download the file in 4K quality to share with your clients.
MyArchitectAI works on all devices (desktops, tablets, and mobile phones) and operating systems (Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS). No installs are needed.
To see more example renders created with MyArchitectAI, visit the gallery page.
If you haven't heard yet, SketchUp has its own AI renderer, called SketchUp Diffusion.
While it doesn't preserve the geometry and textures as precisely as MyArchitectAI, it can still be useful for accelerating your ideation process and creating realistic visuals of architectural and interior designs.
Here's how you can use it to quickly render your SketchUp models for free.
1. Install SketchUp Diffusion from the Extension Warehouse.
2. Open your SketchUp model and enable the tool from the "Extensions" menu.
3. Enter your text prompt describing the scene. Here are SketchUp's tips on creating effective prompts.
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4. Select a style preset to guide the AI in generating your desired aesthetic.
5. Adjust the "Respect Model Geometry" and "Prompt Influence" sliders:
6. Click the "Generate" button. Your SketchUp model will be turned into a realistic render in under 20 seconds.
SketchUp Diffusion is included in Go, Pro, and Studio subscriptions, and while still in the beta stage, it's free to use.
There are plenty of traditional (non-AI) SketchUp rendering tools and plugins that let you achieve stunning visuals.
Compared to AI renderers though, they require a much steeper learning curve, powerful GPUs, and a lot of manual work on lighting and texturing your design to achieve a similar level of photorealism.
However, if you invest enough time to master them, you can get the highest levels of realism and accuracy needed for big clients and competitions.
In this guide, we'll use V-Ray as an example, as it's one of the most popular and advanced SketchUp rendering tools on the market, used by 92 of the top 100 architecture firms.
Here's how to use V-Ray to render your SketchUp models.
1. First, subscribe for a free trial or a paid subscription and install the software.
2. Next, open and organize your model. Prepare the scene you want to render by assigning tags and creating components and groups correctly. This will help avoid confusion as the project becomes more complex with time.
3. Adjust the camera settings:
4. Next, click the teapot icon with a play button to start the interactive render.
5. Use the "Proportion Guides" layer in the right-hand menu to refine your composition. We recommend using the rule of thirds option which is a common approach in photography. Then, update the scene camera when you're done with framing.
6. Let's now set the lighting. While V-Ray for SketchUp uses a daylight system by default, you can adjust the settings to match your vision. Enable the “Custom Orientation” toggle in the "SunLight" menu and experiment with the settings until you reach your desired result.
7. Next up, materials. Open the Chaos Cosmos Browser:
...and download some materials you'd like to use. You can either do it one by one or download a variety of different materials in bulk, in a single click, by going to Collections → V-Ray Material Library → Download All.
8. To use a material, right-click on its name and apply it to a selected object, layer, or even a multi-selection of components and groups in the viewport.
9. Make sure to set the "Exposure Value (EV)" to "Auto" so that your render's exposure doesn't change while applying materials.
10. Next, let's add some entourage. Open the Chaos Cosmos Browser and import your desired objects (vegetation, furniture, humans) to the scene.
11. For objects you'd like to spread across a given surface (e.g. plants on a grass), you can use the Scatter tool to save you some manual work.
Use the "Density" slider to introduce higher diversity for a more natural look.
12. And lastly, rendering your SketchUp scene. Begin by selecting the rendering engine V-Ray will use to visualize your design. Choose between CPU, CUDA, or RTX based on your computer's capabilities (you can benchmark your hardware using V-Ray's free tool). Set the image quality based on your needs keeping in mind that the higher the quality, the longer the rendering will take.
13. Then, click the teapot icon (without a play button) to start a production render.
14. After the process is complete, your render might contain some noise. To smooth it out, enable the "Denoiser" feature. Don't worry; denoising doesn't require re-rendering the scene.
15. Finally, add some final touches to your SketchUp render such as exposure, color correction, and reflections for more realism.
Hopefully, this guide gave you more clarity on how to render in SketchUp using two different tool types (AI-based and traditional).
As you've probably noticed, AI renderers are a better fit for the ideation stage of the project thanks to their speed, while traditional renderers help you get the necessary level of detail needed for the final design, especially in large, complex projects.
So pick a tool depending on your project needs, and start visualizing your SketchUp designs today!
SketchUp doesn't have any in-built rendering features. To visualize your models, you'll need a third-party extension or standalone software, such as those presented above.
To visualize your designs for free, you can use one of the tools offering a free plan or trial, such as MyArchitectAI, or SketchUp Diffusion. Otherwise, Blender is 100% free and open-source but has a significant learning curve.
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