IDX Renditioner

• Easy to learn. The user interface was designed to be SketchUp easy. Does not use advanced rendering jargon. Render settings are driven by presets optimised for Exterior, Interior, or Studio conditions; Building, Room, or by object size.
• Easy to use. One-button render provides useful results in many cases. Material finishes are selected by drop down. Texture is added by selecting “bumpiness” of an object…
• Flexible. Any SketchUp component can be made into a light source. Simply right click on a component and select the type of light and bulb.

Get results faster.

• Runs inside SketchUp. You don’t have to export the model and open it in another application. Changes can be made to the model quickly between renders.
• Quick preview renders allow for rapid revision. Using simple preview modes allows for tweaking and perfecting the model, finishes, lighting, and more prior to final presentation renders.
• Multithreading renders are fast. Whether multi-core or multi-CPU machines, two cores can render about 40% faster, while 4 and 8 core machines may cut render times by 70-80%! (Results vary by model and settings.)

Easy to revise.

• Simply make changes to your SketchUp model and re-render. Being a plug-in means changes to the model can be done quickly without impacting render settings. No need to export the SketchUp model, open it in another application, re-apply materials and light settings...
• Collaborate in mixed PC and Mac offices. All material and light setup is saved in the model, and both the PC and Mac versions work in the same way so that collaboration is easy.

Presentation quality. Photorealism can create powerful emotional connections. Supports 16 megapixel images for large print sizes, while quality is outstanding in electronic form as well.

High quality results.

• Quality images, large sizes. Supports 16 megapixel images for large print sizes, among the largest rendered images outside the most advanced rendering engines on any platform.

Great lighting effects.

• Realistic lighting. Use the SketchUp sun, or moon, position for day or night.
• Expressive lighting. Easily override realistic lighting to create effects that emphasize elements of the design or create emotional environmental conditions.
• Balanced lighting. Select lighting condition for clear, twilight, cloudy, overcast, full moon, half moon, or no moon. Set sun position, and dim the sun for balanced creative effects.

Materials can be adjusted for precise affects.

• Uses SketchUp materials. All SketchUp materials already applied in the model are used, including bonus pack materials and custom materials made from imported .jpg files.
  Apply material finishes from dropdown. A simple dropdown menu allows finishes such as Matte, Metal – dull, Metal – polished, Mirror, Plastic, Polished, Varnished, Glow, or Water to be selected.
• Determine the texture with ease. Select from smooth to very bumpy, and whether you want to reverse the bumps. Renditioner creates a bump map directly from the material so that brick mortar can be inset or extruded, or stone provides a feeling of real depth.

Control the environment.

• Match sky to conditions. By selecting a lighting condition (clear, twilight, etc) all background colours are changed to create the right effects. This can also be manually overwritten for precise control.
• Use a background photo for added realism. A background photo with sky, hills, and trees; or showing the ceiling of a trade show, or the background of a theatre can all place the model into a very real context.

Powerful. Express your design vision without compromise. Numerous features are streamlined or automated, yet still available as needed.

Many advanced features are built in.

• Most effects realised without granular command exposure. Number of light bounces, number and size of samples for bounces are optimised based on three or four render settings for the size of the render, size of the scene, lighting characteristics, and more.
• Quality rendering standards incorporated. Images calculated using ray trace rendering with some conventional progressive radiosity for global illumination with final gathering. Different settings cause changes to level of specular gathering, gathering smoothness, bounce accuracy and much more.
• Expansive light controls. Direction, Sun, or Sky lighting can be dimmed or changed by environment. Artificial lights can be point (omni) lights or spot lights. Spot light cone angle is easily adjusted. All lights directional access set with standard SketchUp controls. All lights have sliding dimmers, quantitative control over lumens, colour selector for light temperature or to simulate light gels. Includes 33 light fixture components, and more than 60 bulb types such as incandescent, halogen, fluorescent, sodium, metal halide, and more. All light falloff uses the inverse square law.
• Simulate advanced features, like ambient occlusion. Point lights of infinitely small size can be set to cast a black light to darken corners and edges faster than getting the same effects with higher quality settings that use full global illumination.
• Curves appear smooth with analytic anti-aliasing. Settings ignore or apply anti-aliasing to greater degrees from preview to presentation levels.

Ease of use

• A one-button render often provides quite good results. Simply move the model in SketchUp to get the desired view and select one of the three render modes (Preview, Standard, or Presentation).
• Changing the render size is as easy as dragging the render window to the desired size, or entering pixel values (with proportions constrained or not).
• Changing lighting effects can be as easy as flipping a switch or sliding a dimmer. Truly advanced effects are not difficult compared to other rendering systems either.
• Material finishes are applied simply by selecting the material, right clicking, and selecting desired finish (matte, mirror, polished, etc) from a drop down.

Render modes

• IDX Renditioner has three basic render modes: Preview, Standard, and Presentation.
• Render settings for each button can be set to change the Image Quality and Lighting Accuracy. Default settings allow for very quick renders in preview mode, a quite reasonable and useful level of quality in Standard Render mode, and very high levels of quality in Presentation Mode.
• Settings for the Scene Size (Site, Building, Room, Large Object, Small Object, or custom) and Lighting Characteristics (Exterior, Interior, or Studio) affect numerous quality controls behind the scenes in order to remove complexity and present the best possible configuration for the appropriate scene.

Lighting controls

• Natural Lighting, coming from the SketchUp sun position, can be turned on, off, or dimmed.
• Natural Lighting and Artificial Lighting can be placed in balance using the Natural Lighting dimmer.
• The Natural Lighting position from the SketchUp sun position can be overridden so that an exact direction and elevation can be used.
• Natural Lighting uses pre-set colour tone mapping based on the Lighting Characteristics selected.
          - Lighting Characteristics include Clear Sky, Hazy, Cloudy, Overcast, Twilight – Clear, Twilight – Hazy, Twilight – Cloudy, Twilight – Overcast, Night – Full Moon, Night – Half Moon, and Night – Overcast.
  
• Artificial Lighting is applied to SketchUp components.
        -  Any SketchUp component can be turned into a light fixture.
        -  IDX Renditioner includes 33 SketchUp component light fixtures. 

• Artificial Lighting can be turned on, off, or dimmed by individual light.
• Spotlight cone angles can be set from narrow to wide on a sliding scale.
• Light types that can be selected include:
  -   Point Lights (omni lights) that emit light in all directions.
  -   Spotlights that present a cone of light in a direction set using the SketchUp component axis command.
  -   More than 60 various bulb types in point or spot configurations and of different wattage settings that include:
  • Incandescent
  • Haolgen
  • Flourescent
  • FL - Cool White
  • FL – Full Spectrum
  • FL – Warm
  • Sodium
  • Mercury Vapour
  • Metal Halide

•  - Each light type has a preset power and colour based upon the wattage selected.

• Any light’s intensity can be manually set to a desired value (in lumens).
• The colour of the light emitted can be changed. This is useful in calibrating the light temperature from a bulb type based on the environment, or to simulate coloured gels.

Material controls

• IDX Renditioner uses SketchUp materials. They can be standard materials, bonus pack materials, or materials created from imported images.
• Changes to SketchUp material positions, or material scale are read directly from SketchUp so that what you see comes to life.
• IDX Renditioner also creates a bump-map to add depth to a texture by automatically selecting the dark and light highlights. This activity is hidden from the user.
• The amplitude of bumpiness for a texture is set from perfectly smooth to quite rough using a sliding scale.
• Texture bumps may be reversed so that, for example, the grout on a brick wall can be convex or concave.
• Translucent SketchUp materials are automatically given a degree of transparency based on the level of opacity set in SketchUp. (Note that IDX Renditioner does not yet recognise alpha channel transparency in imported materials or images applied as textures.)
• Every material can have a finish applied to it. Finishes include Glass, Glow, Matte, Metal (dull), Metal (polished), Mirror, Plastic, Polished, and Varnished. The default value for all materials is Matte.
• Changes to a material bumpiness or finish are shown in a material preview window (PC only at this time; PC version due toward the end of March).

Environments

• Based on the Sun/Moon lighting conditions selected, the background colors are automatically selected to match the lighting.
• Background colors can be overridden for the SketchUp colours.
  Custom colours may be defined. For example in a studio environment perhaps an all-black or all-while background is desirable.
• A photographic image can be used as well. Photographs are rendered at infinity behind the model, and are scaled to the render window size horizontally and vertically.

Productive and powerful

• IDX Renditioner supports multi-threading for multi-core and multi-CPU machines. A dual core CPU machine will see on average a 40% faster render than if a single thread was used. An 8-core machine can see an 80% reduction in time, completing renders 5 times faster than with a single thread. Results vary by system, model complexity, and finishes applied to materials.
• Achieve your design visualization faster with great ease of use and intuitive, jargon-free interface.
• Under-the-hood power comes from ray trace rendering with some conventional progressive radiosity for global illumination and final gathering. Different settings cause changes to level of specular gathering, gathering smoothness, bounce accuracy and much more.

Version 1.0 Platform Windows XP, Windows Vista 32-bit, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard,

• Windows XP/Vista or Mac OS/X 10.4/10.5
• SketchUp (free version) or SketchUp Pro version 6.4x or later.
• 1GB RAM and CPU power extensively (2GB RAM recommended)