SU Podium V2 Trial Released - Public Beta 0.50 Win/Mac

A new version of SU Podium V2 has been released - Beta .50 Trial for Win/ Mac. This V2 Beta version is open to all. There are no requirements to download. Start evaluating, using and producing beautiful, high quality images from your SketchUp models with this new SU Podium version.

This Beta trial version will expire on September 15, 2010. We expect to release the full version of V2.0 on or before August 31, 2010. Purchase Podium 1.7.3 now for $179 and upgrade at no charge to V2 (save $29).

The trial version has one major limitation - rendered image resolution size will not exceed the SketchUp viewport size.

Unlike previous SU Podium V2 betas, there is no requirements to download this trial beta. You do not need a Podium 1.X license to use this trial beta.

Click Here to read about what's new in V2 Beta. Download is here.

Visit the V2 gallery for the latest renders.

SU Plugins e-news

There's a lot of active development going on at suplugins.com:

• SU Podium 1.7.3 Beta Release - Spot lights and more.
• SU Podium V2 Beta .37 Released - presets, soft shadows for point lights, spotlight support.
• Podium Light System including Spot lights beta for V2 Beta.
• Mac users: Problems installing 1.7.X? How to get around File Vault.
• V2 upgrade pricing - buy Podium 1.7.x and get a free upgrade to V2.
  Although the list price has not been set, you will not lose by purchasing Podium 1.7.x now and upgrading to V2 when it is ready for final release. V2 will be priced higher than version 1.7.x. Customers who have purchased SU Podium 1.7.x on or after December 1, 2009 will eligible for a free upgrade to SU Podium V2 when it is released. All other customers will be charged a small upgrade fee which will be less than $30 during an introduction period.
• What we are working on - Podium V2 Beta .38 and SU Animate 3.2.
  V2 Beta .38 will include a new geometry process that will reside outside of SketchUp and allow V2 Beta to handle much larger files. The Mac port will come shortly after Beta .38 is released.
  
  New SU Animate 3.2 with automatic time line scenes, spiral paths and more camera options.

SU Podium V2 beta 2

Paraphrasing the information from multiple sources:

This is an interim release with another beta coming after in about 2 weeks. This beta is Windows only.

The V2 engine is multi-threaded. You also need a reasonable amount of RAM to hold 3d scene data. The more RAM you have, the more complex models you can render.

This build represents a stable code base where as far as we are aware, all features are working, although some may need some modification before final release. There will be additional features as well. V2 uses a new, higher-quality render engine. As a result, scenes set up in V1.x will not look the same in V2.


What's New

• In beta2 there is an options dialog box which allows you to choose presets, resolution size for the rendered image, image file format (JPG/PNG/HDR) and Physical Sky vs SketchUp Sky. Point light soft shadows have also been added. Sun turbidity and exposure are controlled in the presets.
• There are several pre made presets that have been crafted for certain rendering environments
• With Beta_34you have the choice of resolutions size or matching the resolution size to the your SketchUp's viewport. You also have the option to choose PNG/JPG/HDR as image formats. We will be adding a option to allow you to save your images to a folder of your choice. Currently the images are saved to where the SketchUp model being rendered is located.
• The Environment option allows you to choose between SketchUp background which could be plain background style or SketchUp Sky color or Podium's Physical Sky. When your SketchUp shadows are on, Podium Sun is on regardless of what background option has been chosen. Clay mode is currently not implemented. Sky turbidity (haziness caused by particles suspended in the atmosphere) and exposure are configured in the presets you choose. The preset files are plain text files which are editable. We will release a preset configuration guide.

Download and more @ su-podium.com

Podium 1.7.2 Beta

On the heels of Podium Beta 2 comes Podium 1.7.2:

In SU Podium 1.7.2, Render All has been improved or rather "fixed". With this version, Render All works as it was original designed to. That is, when Render All is invoked, all scenes in the model will be rendered. With previous versions, Render All would quit working after a small number of scenes were rendered. Using 1.7.2 and Render All, it is possible to create animations where the camera moves through the model as in a walk-thru or fly-thru animation. There are several steps to creating the final animation but the most important step, Render All, works without having to resort to patching various models and scenes together.

When invoked, Render All renders each scene. To save time, only the first scene's geometry is processed. Each subsequent scene's camera view is then rendered. One draw back to this method is that object animations can not be created with Render All. You are limited to camera animations. Render All saves each rendered scene's JPG image to a designated folder. When it is complete, you can take all the images that were rendered and use Windows or Mac programs like Movie Maker or Quick Time Pro to create a video animation. The idea is that each scene in SketchUp is like a frame in a movie. When each scene is rendered with Render All, each JPG image can be used as a frame. When "stitched" together with Movie Maker or Quick Time, a walk-thru video animation is created. With 1.7.2's improved Render All function, the process is quite simple.

https://www.suplugins.com

Podium 1.7 Beta Released

A beta version of Podium version 1.7 is out. It features blurred reflections and an expanded Podium Wizard.

Get it here.

podium chair render

I saw this chair by karlfucious on cadyou.com and thought it'd make a nice render.

podium render

simple podium render

I was just interested in how the floor would be rendered using a bump map. The texture is a sample from Arroway.

Blurred Reflections for Podium?

Talk over on the SU Podium forum suggests that Blurred Reflections - a feature previously planned for version 2 of Podium - may be included in a pre-2.0 release.

Podium developer TBD writes "I will increase the priority on blurred reflections. I need to do some testing to see how it looks." while forum mod sepo replies "OK first tests...we are working on it...." and posted this image:



SU Podium is a photo-realistic rendering software program that works entirely as a plug-in to SketchUp Pro or Google SketchUp 6 or 7 (Windows or Mac).

Podium Notebook

Podium Version: 1.6
Model: podium_studio.skp
Preset: quality.xml
Speed: 75%
Jaggy: 75%
Image Size: 640 x 480
Time: 1h 14m 11s

Default Material: 255, 255, 255
Sphere: Material: 204, 0, 0 ; Reflectivity: 10
Overhead Light: Color: Default ; Value: 20
Omni Light: Color: Default ; Value: 10

Notes: 12" diameter sphere using default of 24 segments - looks faceted around the outside.

System:

AMD Athlon XP 1800+
1.52 GHz, 512 MB RAM
Windows XP Pro SP3

Edit: Here is a link to my rendered photos.

Podium Greeble Render

I like how this one turned out. It's an attempt to copy a simple rendered image from the Greeblelicious gallery.

Podium Blue Render

This render was made using Podium while playing with the face divider plugin and Protrude plugins.

Construction Detail Render

I have been playing with Podium since it first came out, and finally purchased a license. Here's the first decent render I was able to get.