This page provides information on V-Ray as a plugin to SketchUp, as well as on rendering with it.
V-Ray in SketchUp
V-Ray is a rendering plugin for SketchUp. In addition to supporting most standard SketchUp features, V-Ray supports many third-party plugins. V-Ray includes three engines: V-Ray CPU, V-Ray CUDA (GPU), and V-Ray RTX (GPU).
After V-Ray is assigned as the renderer, all the V-Ray options will be available within the SketchUp user interface, including Global Illumination and the creation of V-Ray Lights, maps, and Materials. While V-Ray renders standard SketchUp features, the V-Ray options are designed to work with the V-Ray render engine, and thus improve both image quality and render times.
V-Ray renderings displays in the V-Ray Virtual Frame Buffer (VFB), which has a multitude of V-Ray specific tools for saving and comparing renderings, adding lens effects, and viewing render elements.
For tools to adjust rendering quality and speed with V-Ray and V-Ray GPU, see the V-Ray Render Settings page.
Rendering with V-Ray
Both V-Ray and V-Ray GPU engines support Production and Interactive Rendering modes. The Production Rendering mode utilizes all V-Ray's features and is intended to be used to create a clean production ready render.
The Interactive Rendering mode is a fast active renderer that can update the rendering as you make changes to the scene. The Interactive Renderer allows for rendering in the Viewport, where the render output overlays on top of SketchUp's viewport. With Viewport rendering, the scene is rendered interactively and if changes are made, the rendered result is updated.
The Interactive renderer always runs in Progressive mode, a progressive image sampling mode that refines the details over time. The Production rendering mode allows you to switch on/off the Progressive Rendering mode. Switching off the Progressive image sampler automatically activates the Bucket image sampler, which takes a variable number of samples per pixel depending on the difference in the intensity of the pixel.
In addition to these, you can use Batch Rendering, Swarm Rendering, or rendering in Chaos Cloud, a complement to or substitution of your usual render workflow.
Initializing Rendering
A V-Ray render can be initialized in several ways:
||V-Ray Toolbar|| > Render
||V-Ray Asset Editor|| > Render
||V-Ray Frame Buffer|| > Render Last
Extensions > V-Ray > V-Ray Rendering > Render