- Are you ready to get started with V-Ray for SketchUp? You've seen what V-Ray can do, so you're probably eager to jump right in and create stunning,
photorealistic renderings. But wait, before you do
anything here's a warning: There's an important step
in the rendering process that most self taught V-Ray users miss. It's a huge mistake that will send you down a difficult road, and you'll burn too many hours struggling to create renderings you're not even happy with. I'm Alex Oliver, lead
instructor at SketchUp School, the place where professionals go when they're serious
about learning SketchUp. And if you want to find out
what this hidden step is, and learn the five things in this step that will set you up for
success in V-Ray, keep watching. (airy electronic tone) V-Ray for SketchUp is an amazing extension for adding realistic
lighting and materials to your SketchUp models. It comes with a host
of other powerful tools that make it great for creating both photorealistic
and artistic renderings that bring your design ideas to life. In our classes, we've taught more than a thousand professionals how
to use V-Ray for SketchUp. More often than not, students tell us that they've tried to teach themselves V-Ray for SketchUp before our class, that they decided to take our class because they weren't happy with the renderings they were
getting out of V-Ray, and that they burned too much time trying to figure out what
they were doing wrong. In their enthusiasm to
get started with V-Ray, it turns out that the
biggest mistake they made is that they completely
skipped one important step. In fact, it might even be the most important step in the rendering process, and when we cover it in our course, students quickly realize why
they had originally struggled. So, what is this missing step? I'll give you a hint: You do it before you even
touch a single button in V-Ray. That's right, it's not
part of V-Ray at all, which is why I think everybody misses it. So, what do you need to do before you get started with V-Ray? You need to make sure your
model is render-ready. In the first part of our V-Ray course we walk our students though
our render-ready checklist. It's a five part checklist covering the decisions you need to
get right in SketchUp first to set yourself up for
success in V-Ray later. And now, to get you started
off on the right foot, I'm gonna share that
checklist with you, ready? Okay, let's jump right in. Number one, orient your model. V-Ray is responsible for
shining light into your model, and out of the box, it will render realistic sunlight into
your SketchUp scene. But if you open V-Ray and you find that the sunlight isn't shining
in the direction you want, you've made a costly mistake. There are two things you should've already done in SketchUp first, and failing to do them
before you get to V-Ray causes problems later. The first thing you need to do in SketchUp is to figure out where the sun is, because V-Ray looks to SketchUp to tell it where the sun is. By default, the green axis is pointing north, plus
or minus a few degrees, which means that the sun would lie somewhere along the red axis, plus or minus a few degrees, depending on the date and time. So, early in the process of
building your SketchUp model, you can be sure to orient
it based off the axis. The second thing you need to do is tell SketchUp where the sun is along the east-west, or red, axis. To do this, turn on your shadows and use the date and time sliders to get an idea of how the light will shine across your scene. If you need to be more accurate, you can geo-locate your model to an exact place in the world, and you can use the Solar North extension to show you true north before
orienting your SketchUp model. Okay, moving onto number
two, optimize your file. When you create a final
rendering in V-Ray, you click a button to render and then wait anywhere from a couple of
minutes to several hours to see the final result. But chances are everything
won't be perfect the first time you
click the render button. It's more likely that you'll
be rendering frequently, testing each change to the materials, lighting, and render
settings as you make them, and you can't afford to wait
hours each time you render. Now, there are settings in V-Ray to help you minimize the
time each render takes, but the root of the problem starts with an unoptimized SketchUp model. That's because not only does
each render take longer, but the changes you need to make in between each render take longer too. When you're going through
the render change, render change cycle dozens
of times, it adds up. So here are a few tips
for organizing your model for faster render times and faster changes in between renders. First, if you've seen our Getting Started with SketchUp video, you already know to make
everything a group or component. Now, if you haven't watched it, I put a link to the video in the cards. Next, you'll want to organize those groups and components under layers, based on what you want to hide or show. For example, you may want
to hide off-camera stuff that won't show up in the final image as an easy way to speed
up your rendering times. Also, you can hide on-camera details early in the rendering process just to speed up your test renders, and then only turn them on at the end, when you're ready to
dial in the final one. Lastly, you can use layers to hide and show different design options to help you preview how each will look in the context of your
realistic rendering. Moving on, number three,
organize your materials. Often, as you model in SketchUp, you'll be adding colors and
materials along the way. Then you might be excited
to jump into V-Ray, where you can add reflections and other realistic
properties to those materials. But here's the problem, this process of editing your materials in V-Ray can be really time consuming if you don't plan ahead
in SketchUp, here's why: When you're done adding
those materials in SketchUp, you end up with a long list of materials to work with in V-Ray. Some materials on the list aren't actually being used in the model, and others have names
that aren't very helpful, so you end up wasting a lot of time trying to find the right
ones to edit in V-Ray. But if you're willing to invest some time into creating a few good
habits now in SketchUp, your future self will be glad you did. (futuristic bleeping) Here are a few things to keep in mind when working with materials: First and foremost, name
every color or material that you add to your model. It's much easier later in V-Ray to scroll through a list of specific names rather than generic ones. Also, naming your
materials disciplines you to use the right materials
on the right surfaces. For example, if you have
a wall and a metal handle, and you paint them with
the same generic gray, you'll have trouble later editing them as separate materials in V-Ray. Instead, you should
create two different grays and name them something like
gray wall paint and chrome, enabling you to differentiate them more easily later in V-Ray. That said, there are also times where you'll want to use a
single material in SketchUp. Let's take the chrome example. Maybe you have a few metal
surfaces in your model and they're made of different
materials in the real world, but if they all look similar enough, you could use the same chrome
material on all of them. That's a huge win when you get to V-Ray, since you'll only have to edit one chrome material to
make everything shiny. Once you're done adding and naming your colors and materials in SketchUp, be sure to purge any unused materials. SketchUp remembers every
one that you've tried, even if you've replaced
it with another option. Purging will shrink your list down to only the materials being used, and it will give you less to
scroll through later in V-Ray. While we're on materials, here
are two bonus tips for you: First, if you import your own
image to use as a material, pay attention to the resolution. Low resolution images might
make your rendering look blurry, and high resolution images could slow down your render times. Ideally, use an image with a resolution that's close to what its resolution will be in the final rendering. And second, when you don't have the right material in SketchUp,
use a color as your proxy. Later, in V-Ray, you can swap that color for a render-ready material
out of V-Ray's library. Alright, next up, number
four, add realistic details. V-Ray renders faces, not edges. That means you have to give V-Ray faces in order to get certain kinds of details to show up in your rendering. For example, take these cabinets, if you rely on SketchUp's edges to show the details, V-Ray
will render them flat. You need to get in there with
tools like move or push-pull to give the detail some depth. Even when things are supposed to butt up against each
other in the real world, it can be common to see a small gap, and it's these small details that can have a big impact on your rendering. And don't forget, SketchUp creates hard corners and edges,
but in the real world things tend to be beveled or rounded. So, use the follow me tool, or the round corner extension, to add these subtle but realistic details. Alright, the last item on
our render-ready checklist: Number five, mind your polygons. Perhaps the most important
thing you can do in SketchUp, the one that will have the biggest impact on the quality and speed
of your rendering in V-Ray, is to optimize your level of detail. By level of detail, I mean how many faces, or polygons, you have in your model. To learn how to optimize
your level of detail, let's quickly review some
fundamental concepts. As you may already know,
everything in SketchUp is made of endpoints, edges, and faces, and these faces are known as polygons. So this box is made up of six polygons, whereas this sphere is made up of a mesh of 288 polygons. They're all stitched together to give it the appearance
of a curved surface. But here's the thing, this sphere could also be made of 144 polygons, or it could be made up of 3072 polygons, but which version is ideal? When it comes to rendering
this sphere in V-Ray, there's a trade-off to make. Less polygons means faster rendering, however, it can also mean lower quality. For example, the lower poly sphere looks faceted in this rendering. On the other end of the spectrum, more polygons gives you higher quality, but at the expense of longer render times. What's worse is that your SketchUp model also slows down when you have too many polygons in it, which can be a problem when
you're trying to edit it. The goal, then, is to
find the middle ground, a polygon count that gives
you the quality you need without needlessly slowing
down your rendering. So choosing the best level of detail for this sphere is easy, right? We should pick the one in the middle. It looks good enough and has a
relatively low polygon count. Well, not necessarily. It depends on the distance between the camera and the sphere. So, for this shot, the middle
sphere is a good choice, but what if we zoom out? It's hard to tell the difference between the quality of the three, so now the lower poly sphere's
probably the best choice. And what if we zoom in really close? Now we're seeing clear
differences in the quality, and the highest poly
sphere's the right choice. But you don't render spheres for a living, so let's apply this to
what you need to do. First, as we saw with the sphere, make sure to manage your
polygon count based on how visible the objects will
be in your final render. For example, round corners of
objects closer to the camera, and maybe skip the ones
that are further away. And for any object that you
need to use more than once, you need to make it a component before copying it around your model. Each copy you make will still
increase your polygon count, but V-Ray can render component instances, or copies of the component, much faster than groups,
or non-group, geometry. For components you get from
sites like the 3D Warehouse, be sure to comparison shop. When you're searching
for a particular thing, for all the best looking options, start by trying one with fewer polygons relative to the others. Now, when you've followed all the rules for managing your level of detail, but you find you still
need higher poly objects to get the quality you want, just know that V-Ray has a feature
called proxies, that can help. V-Ray proxies allow you to turn high poly SketchUp components
into lower poly proxies. That keeps your SketchUp model light, and leads to faster render times. But V-Ray will still render
the higher poly version into the final image, so you can have your cake and eat it too. (children cheering jovially) Proxies are a slightly
more advanced feature, and not something you'd jump into when you're just getting
started with V-Ray, but it is helpful to know about them now just in case you have trouble keeping your polycount low. So that's it, congratulations
on making it through all five elements of our
render-ready checklist! Did you learn something
new in today's video? If you did, do me a quick favor
and give this video a like. Also, I'd love to know which element from our render-ready checklist you'll be using first. Do you have a model
that you need to orient? Or are the materials in your model in need of some organization? Let me know by leaving a
comment below, right now. Also, if you'd like to download a PDF of our render-ready checklist, I've added a link to it in the cards. I hope that watching this video will make the path that you take to learning V-Ray for
SketchUp much easier. From here, it's definitely possible to learn everything on your own, but if you don't have the time to figure out what you need to know, and you can't afford to
pick up any bad habits, then I recommend you check
out our video course library. It's filled with $8700
worth of SketchUp training, exclusively for professionals, including our V-Ray for SketchUp course. Head over to our SketchUp School website and try it for free. One more thing, if you want to make sure YouTube notifies you the
next time we publish a video, then make sure to subscribe
to our channel right now. Just click on the subscribe
button below this video. Until next time, happy sketching! (dramatic orchestral music)
(Alex stumbling over words)
