SketchUp & Kerkythea

by Joe Larano

Of late, I have been spending my spare time studying and investigating the features and pluses of the rendering software called “Kerkythea”. I heard this software about four years ago but have not made an attempt to look deeper into its features. Two weeks ago, my buddy, a professional delineator and accomplished animator who is based in the US has advised me to try Kerkythea.

The Kerkythea Rendering system is a free software that work well with Google SketchUp. The software is a program that works with 3D files to render and create photo realistic textures and lighting. Though in order to work with Kerkythea and SketchUp you will need to download the SketchUp plugin from Kerkythea. This allows you to export your SketchUp drawing to a .xls format which is read by Kerkythea. 

Once you get the hang of the program it is pretty amazing. The rendering quality is top notch and the materials library are also very good. Though, you need to note that materials do not transfer well from SketchUp, for the most part you will have to replace the materials with those offered by Kerkythea. But the materials are substantially better than those of SketchUp and are very realistic. Take a look of my latest work modeled in SketchUp and rendered in Kerkythea.

In the above image, the SketchUp model was rendered by a plug in called V-Ray. With V-Ray for SketchUp, users now have one of the most powerful rendering tools available to visualize their models with the upmost quality and realism. V-Ray works within the SketchUp environment allowing users to be able to efficiently incorporate the task of rendering within their current workflows.

Above image was modeled in SketchUp , including the the use of SU’s components and materials. Sun and shadow’s information were taken and processed within SketchUp’s rendering engine. Notice that there’s no depth to the object as there is no gradation or tonal values even if there’s light or shadows casted on the objects.