Recommended Rendering Software for SketchUp

[adamd1]

Is there a decent and inexpensively priced, rendering program that will create fairly nice photo-real renderings, for SketchUp?

 

Of course, Vray would be great - but approaching $1000 its too much for me right now. I'm looking for something that is at most a few hundred dollars, or free to download ( and can actually render full sizes if free - being limited to say a 800px wide image is useless ... ) and has good lighting and material editing capabilities

 

 

I was looking at;

 

Maxwell - seems sketchup version might be limited compared to full suite??

Supodium

Kerkythea

Others?

 

Of course, I could just manipulate the entire image in Photoshop ( but seems like this would be a hindrance if I was producing renderings for a client? )

 

Any recommendations / thoughts, experiences with these or other products, would be helpful.

 

Thanks!

Edited May 27, 2013 by adamd1

[M V]

I hear a lot about Shaderlight. It has a promo running now with 20% off the $399 price tag.

[harryhirsch]

Check the big brothers of Kerkythea, I think Twilight is still available for 99 bucks and Thea would cost you around 450, Artlantis Render comes for 550 USD...but since you need "good lighting and material editing capabilities" and you have a client you can afford this little investment.

[Chris MacDonald]

Kerkythea is where I started off rendering, many moons ago. It isn't perfect, but it is free.

 

Failing that I'd personally either go for Maxwell or Thea render, my preference being Thea simply because it provides unbiased as well as biased rendering options, unlike Maxwell which is entirely unbiased.

[beestee]

I have done some tests after purchasing Thea for myself with 3ds Max and I find it very intuitive/fast/clean/simple. I only came across one little bug that did have a workaround that was specific to Max, and I love the fact that if I ever decide to change modeling packages that I can bring Thea with me for only the cost of the plugin for the modeling app, which is about $60 on average.

Edited May 30, 2013 by beestee

[bindunarayan]

Yes, Thea has all the desirable qualities to be considered as one of the best rendering software for sketches.

[adamd1]

Thanks for the recommendations everyone.