Preflight Checklist Before You Render

Twilight Render Tutorials - Version 2

Preflight Checklist - Before You Render

Before hitting that render button, there are some basic checks to make to verify your model is ready to render.

BACK FACES
Set SketchUp view to Monochrome (View>Facestyle>Monochrome, or use “Styles” Toolbar), be sure all faces are white, not blue. Reverse any blue faces by selecting the face only, right-click> Reverse Face. Paint textures onto front faces only, and avoid painting groups or components. Painting the back faces can result in odd reflections during rendering.
SCALE AND ORIGIN
Be sure all geometry is correctly scaled and is positioned as close as possible to the original SketchUp starting red/green/blue axis (a.k.a. “zero-zero” or simply “Origin”). A physics based render engine such as Twilight Render must have accurate geometry in order to give accurate results in lighting and materials. Water can not look like an ocean if it is placed in a sea the size of a teacup. Strange things happens between SketchUp and Twilight when geometry is abnormally distant from the origin, or if objects are not “real world” size.
COLOR SATURATION
Change any pure white surface to be 92% white. Any pure black surfaces to be no more than 90% grey. Any other pure or fully saturated colors no more than 92% saturation. Fully saturated colors do not exist in the real world and will result in longer render times and rendering artifacts, odd colors, or noise do to too many light bounces and extra calculations.
GLASS
Set any average window glass to be Template>Architectural Glass>Common. Set Color to white and opacity to zero or appropriate opacity near zero. Setting color and opacity can be controlled either from SketchUp's material editor, or within the Twilight Material Editor Dialog.
SUN and SKY
Check your sun angles so that the sun in SketchUp is where you want it to be, do not change, but rather leave default Twilight Environment to automatically match SketchUp's environment of sun and sky.
TESTING QUICKLY
Professional work flow for test render images is to first choose lowest render settings and lowest resolution for image size. This greatly increases speed of work flow and testing. Increase quality and render size as needed as the project progresses.
RANDOM TWEAKING
Avoid temptation to tweak environment and other settings without understanding when beginning to use Twilight Render. Typically these tweaks will result in negative impact on results and rendering experience.
EXTRA GEOMETRY
Hide non-essential geometry. Non-essential geometry increases processing time and rendering times. Any geometry in the SketchUp scene that does not contribute to the final rendered image should be hidden or placed on a non-visible layer for every scene in SketchUp before you begin rendering.
PURGE MODEL
In SketchUp go to “Window>Model Info>Statistics>Purge Unused” There are great plugins created for cleaning up your SketchUp models of unused and problematic unseen geometry. Models downloaded from the SketchUp Warehouse can oftentimes be a source of problems when it comes to photorealistic rendering. Eliminating and purging these models can often solve issues in problematic scenes. Multiple deep nesting of groups or components can cause problems. If your model does not render, explode "super groups" of models to be simple components. If there are groups of components more than 4 levels deep, it's likely too much. Try this before asking for help.
LIGHTING
Place lights in locations and with similar power as they would be found in real life. Avoid using fill lighting. Use light powers that are realistic and set radius of light objects to real world size. The default size of light objects is 5cm (50mm) or 2 inches, like a typical light “bulb”. But often this should be reduced to 5mm or .1 inch which will result in improved render times and realistic results. Set Light Object to be appropriate type (point or spot) and efficacy, power, and color as it would be in real life. Remember that incandescent lights are typically quite orange-yellow compared to the default white. Use the appropriate Light Preview Scene (Edit Light>Preview>choose scene) to help quickly visualize the behavior of the changes you are making to your light object.
EXPOSURE / WARMTH
Render Dialog>Post-Process>ToneMap>Exposure. Adjust exposure of your rendered image just as if it were being taken with a camera. Interior shots should be using increased exposure compared with exterior shots. Increasing power of interior lights instead of adjusting exposure of camera will result in increased render times and noise or render artifacts. Adjust warmth of the overall image with Render Dialog>Post-Process>Temperature Adjust, change “New” value from default 6500 to 6700 to increase warmth. Change temperature values by increments of 100.

Don't forget to download our help guides! Everything you need to know to get started with Twilight Render can be found in one of our online videos or downloadable PDF guides.