3D applications, such as SketchUp, require abundant system resources. Aside from having a fast CPU and large amounts of RAM, your video card and video card drivers must be 100% OpenGL compliant.

It’s the only engine for Sketchup that I know of, that is capable of Hybrid GPU+CPU rendering. This is not either GPU or CPU is CPU+GPU. If you have a Renderer that is capable of GPU rendering, it doesn’t mean it is also using CPU. If you GPU is weaker than your CPU then your GPU rendering will be slower than your CPU rendering.

What is OpenGL?

OpenGL is the industry-standard graphics library used in numerous software applications and games, to draw 3D geometry. Most Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X operating systems come with a software-based OpenGL driver. However, these drivers rely heavily on the CPU to perform the rendering calculations of OpenGL (a task that is not done efficiently by most CPUs).

Many video card manufacturers have also built cards that support the OpenGL standard. These cards perform the rendering calculations using a specialized chip called the Graphics Processing Unit or GPU (instead of relying on the CPU). These chips significantly enhance OpenGL performance upward of 3000 percent. This performance enhancement is known as Hardware Acceleration.

Hardware Acceleration

SketchUp will take advantage of hardware acceleration if your computer has a 100% OpenGL compatible video card.

Unfortunately, only some 3D drivers in the consumer video card market are 100% OpenGL compatible and can use this feature (though many cards claim to be 100% OpenGL compatible). Most 3D drivers are designed for games and are often not tested using other 3D programs. Consequently, compatibility issues can occur requiring a fix from the video card manufacturer. Disable this option if you are having problems with the 3D rendering of your models or if your video card is not 100% OpenGL compatible and does not support hardware acceleration.

We cannot control the quality of the OpenGL driver on your computer system. Video card device drivers are proprietary and are maintained solely by the manufacturer of the video card in your system. Therefore, we cannot guarantee that SketchUp will work with hardware acceleration on your system.

Compatibility Issues

OpenGL incompatibility is a significant system configuration issue leading to problems with SketchUp. Difficulties with Sketchup tools, performance, and rendering (such as mysterious graphics appearing on your screen) are usually the result of a video card not fully supporting OpenGL (despite claims by the manufacturer), an out-of-date video card driver, or incompatibility with 32-bit color depth.

This page introduces V-Ray Rendering topics and generally how to access them. Please click on the appropriate topic(s) below for the full documentation and proper usage information.

Section Contents

Page Contents

Overview

The V-Ray Render Settings provide control over the parameters that adjust the rendering process. They can be accessed from the Asset Editor in the Render Settings tab.

UI Path: V-Ray Asset Editor > Render Settings

Initializing Rendering

A V-Ray render can be initialized in several ways:

V-Ray Toolbar > Render

V-Ray Frame Buffer > Render Last

V-Ray Asset Editor > Render

Extensions > V-Ray > V-Ray Rendering > Render

Settings

The V-Ray Asset Editor organizes all of V-Ray's render settings within a Render Settings tab. The editor can be expanded to expose several rollouts with advanced settings by clicking the right facing arrow. For more details on these parameters, see the additional pages within this section.

The available rollouts change depending on whether Interactive is enabled or disabled in the Renderer rollout. For more information on Interactive Rendering, see the Interactive Rendering in V-Ray page.

The Animation rollout becomes available only if an animation has been set up in SketchUp. For more information, see the Animation rollout page.

You can restore, save and load V-Ray settings (in a .vropt file format) from the bottom three buttons in the Settings panel area.

The three options are Revert to Default Render Settings, Load Render Settings from File.. and Save Render Settings to File..

Interactive Rendering Off

Interactive rendering is disabled by default. The following rollouts and options are only available in this mode:

• Renderer – Ability to enable Progressive rendering and adjust Quality options.
• Camera – Ability to enable Stereo for Stereoscopic renders.
• Render Output – Exposes Save Image sub-rollout.
• Raytrace – Exposes the advanced Quality sub-rollout.
• Global Illumination – Maximum control of GI options and the ability to use the Light Cache and Irradiance Map engines in addition to Brute Force.

Interactive Rendering Disabled

Interactive Rendering On

When Interactive rendering is enabled, the following changes occur:

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• Raytrace – Ability to adjust the Interactivity option.
• Global Illumination – Limited control of GI options. Only the Brute Force engine is supported in this mode.
• Any options or rollouts specific to interactive mode being disabled will be hidden or turned off.

Interactive Rendering Enabled