SketchUp modeling - How to render a water feature

 

Fountains, ponds, pools, and other water features are easy to add to any SketchUp model.  Rendering these features can pose some very interesting challenges.

In this brief video I'll discuss an easy to learn and use technique that can be applied to a SketchUp surface to illustrate water with realism.  Additionally, I use a light balancing feature to post process my original rendering, providing me with a nice daylight image of the model and an evening image.  The benefit is that I am able to achieve a rendering with realistic water and I get two renderings after processing only one.

This model was created with Trimble SketchUp and I used IRender nXt to generate the renderings.

SketchUp Rendering - Indirect Lighting

Indirect Lighting Example - Cove Lighting

When indirect lighting such as cove lighting is included in a project, there are a variety of ways to add this artificial lighting to a SketchUp model.  When cove lighting is the only light source, as in the example above, the room is illuminated completely by light bouncing off of the ceiling and then to and from other surfaces in the model.  The result is a rendering with soft lighting and very realistic shadows.