Do you need to generate high-quality images from your 3D designs to excite your clients and make better design decisions? SketchUp has teamed up with Chaos to bring you world-class rendering capabilities as part of a single subscription: SketchUp Studio.

V-Ray’s robust rendering engines mean you can take your 3D models from idea to art by adding global illumination and artificial lights, real-life materials and textures, atmospheric effects, and more. With the added benefit of V-Ray Vision, you can render in real-time too! Tweak designs on the fly — without ever leaving SketchUp. Talk about a time saver!

With a SketchUp Studio subscription, you will not only get access to V-Ray Next for SketchUp, but you can also use Chaos Cloud — rapid cloud rendering that frees up your machine for other work! That means you don’t always need high-end hardware to make V-Ray run with SketchUp: it’s all powered in the cloud.

Why V-Ray 5 for SketchUp?

V-Ray 5 now offers both real-time and photoreal rendering options and creates a complete visualization package for architecture, engineering, and construction professionals. The power of rendering lies in its ability to tell a convincing visual story. It removes ambiguity around your design, material, and aesthetic intent, and bridges the communication gap between project stakeholders. There’s no confusion around how your concept sits in context, what materials it’s made of and how it will look bathed in sunlight, or obscured by fog. With V-Ray, you can select appropriate rendering styles for each stage of your project; conceptual, interactive, and real-time renders to get internal buy-in, fast renders for comparing design options, or photorealistic renders when it’s time to ramp up the excitement for the final build. V-Ray can flex to help you get the job done.

Real-time rendering

Don’t have time to wait around for a high-definition, photoreal render? V-Ray Vision has got you covered. Explore your SketchUp models in a game-like environment with instant rendering capabilities and alternative viewports via a live link with SketchUp. Toggle, orbit, adjust lighting, and color-correct your models within seconds in the V-Ray Vision window while you work in SketchUp. With real-time rendering, you can quickly present ideas to clients, make edits on the fly, and remotely collaborate with your team — drastically shortening project timelines. Once you’re done, capture screenshots and export animations and spherical panoramic images for virtual reality with the click of a button.

Render-ready content library

Save time and modeling energy by taking advantage of V-Ray’s robust, web-based content library called Chaos Cosmos — full of high-quality, smart 3D content that you can download directly into your design (think: people, vegetation, furniture, accessories, and lighting!). These render-ready components can be viewed as low-resolution polygons in the SketchUp viewport to help increase model performance, rasterized objects in V-Ray Vision, and high-resolution ray-traced objects in V-Ray 5 when you’re ready for the final output. This curated library is accessible directly in the V-Ray toolbar and allows you to search, download, and edit the 3D content.

Please note that you must use your Trimble ID sign-in credentials to download any content.

How to access it

Your SketchUp Studio subscription gives you unlimited use of V-Ray Next for SketchUp on your CPU or GPU. You also get access to Chaos Cloud which allows you to render your 3D models straight in the cloud, freeing up your computer to do other work. We get you started with 20 Chaos Cloud credits for the first 90 days of your subscription and you can always buy more. How many renderings you get for each Cloud Credit depends on how complex your model is. For example, an interior space with lots of reflective objects and surfaces will take up more credits than a flower.

Who should use it?

We think everyone should give it a try because it’s easy to learn for beginners and super powerful for experts. However, we see the most value for anyone whose work will greatly excel with high quality renders.

Why? V-Ray helps communicate your design story, get buy-in from clients and stakeholders, and make better design decisions upfront. We’re sharing four different use cases to help inspire you and your team to do your best work.

# 1 .Designing Exteriors

Designing a building, large development or landscape? Communicate your true intent and get buy-in by adding architectural entourage, materials, textures, lighting, atmospheric and volumetric effects. Rendering in V-Ray will add realism and finesse to SketchUp models large and small.

# 2 .Designing Interiors

So, you’re working with a client that wants to understand exactly the look and feel of a space before the build? We’ve got you covered. With V-Ray rendering, you can add natural and artificial light sources to show how daylight and interior lighting will affect the space. Not only that, but you can also add customization with objects (think fixtures, furniture, and fittings), materials, and textures. Your design will look like a final photo of the space…it’s that real!

# 3 .Designing Retail Spaces

Building out a retail space can be costly, with factors such as visual displays, lighting, flow, spatial configuration leaving little room for error. With rendering, you can visualize, refine, and finalize your concepts before you go to the final build phase. High-quality renders help you catch any issues upfront.

# 4 .Developing Animations and VR experiences

The ability to render animations and fly-throughs can help communicate your design narrative at any phase. Take the opportunity to “wow” potential clients with rendered animations during bids and competitions. Alternatively, generate excitement and interest for commercial properties during the final design phase. Immerse stakeholders in the design using rendered panoramas and 360-degree photorealistic exports for virtual reality viewing.

SketchUp Studio is a Windows-only offering and includes only a Windows installer for V-Ray.
V-Ray is not currently available to Higher Education Studio Subscription holders.