Twilight Render User Forum

why is my rendering so dark?

Did you disable the sun?
Open Twilight Environment Editor and enable the sun.

no I did not.

It's hard to tell based on the screenshot.

What kind of sky environment are you using? Looking at the reflection in the wall, it looks like physical sky. What time of day is your SketchUp scene set to? It looks like you have a backdrop (the trees and whatnot); is that blocking the sun? If you turn on Shadows in your SketchUp scene, what does it look like?

Time of day looks fine. That's the only thing we can determine from the screenshot you posted. Still can't tell if your backdrop is shadowing your entire scene or what your render environment settings are. If you share the scene we can much more easily determine what the issue is.

Please share a link to the scene so we can diagnose the problem.

My guess is that you have placed objects in the scene that are blocking the sun.
You didn't share a screenshot of the Twilight Environment Dialog, only the SketchUp sun settings.

Did you follow the video?

the culprit for my dark rendering was this background. took it out and no more dark rendering. I will have to research different backgrounds.

Use a treeline spherical sky instead of physical object in the scene.
Please watch the video linked above.