March 18, 2024

Best SketchUp Renderers


SketchUp Rendering Extensions and Plugins

There are many SketchUp rendering extensions to choose from. Here are some of the best SketchUp rendering plugins available to help you narrow your search, but you be the judge! Some plugins have free trials available from their websites for you to try so you can find the perfect program that meets your needs.


IRender nXt

IRender nXt is the only SketchUp renderer you’ll ever need! If you can draw it in SketchUp, you can easily render it using IRender nXt.  This proven and powerful extension enables you to quickly creates photorealistic renderings. It includes excellent features such as lighting channels, panoramas, animations, rendering on the cloud service to save time and much, much more. 30 Day Free Trial

ArielVision

ArielVision is an easy to use SketchUp plugin that creates photorealistic renderings of your models, from inside SketchUp. It’s made for designers who want to create beautifully rendered images without the hassle of complex settings.  Powerful and simple to use.  30 Day Free Trial

Raylectron

This fully featured SketchUp renderer easily creates photorealistic images.  It’s fast, powerful and affordable.

ShaderLight

Shaderlight is an interactive, photorealistic rendering extension for SketchUp.   Whether for work or fun, Shaderlight enables you to create high quality images on your desktop or in the cloud.  Shaderlight has a choice of rendering modes, and intuitive tools to optimize your workflow that will bring your designs to life.

Thea

Thea Render is a powerful rendering extension for SketchUp.  It features state-of-the-art biased unbiased, and interactive render modes that enable you to render inside Thea window or SketchUp view (“interactive render overlay”).  Other features include interactive region rendering, advanced material editor, proxy creation from FBX, fog and cloud presets, stereoscopic rendering and more.

RENDERLights

RenderLights is powerful virtual reality software providing a simple user interface that enables you to import models from SketchUp and construct an impressive visualization.  Features include real time global illumination, real time radiosity, stereoscopic 3D, lightmaps, emissive materials, real time DOF (Depth of Field), and more.

Brighter3D

The Brighter3D SketchUp rendering extension combines noiseless rendering technology, with an easy to learn and use interface for all levels of user.  Features include ambient occlusion, depth of field, animation, HDRi lighting, and more.

Bloom Unit

Bloom Unit Service closed on the 9th October 2020. 

Bloom Unit, an Interactive Cloud Based renderer for SketchUp, enables you to create photo-real scenes using the power of cloud computing.  Bloom Unit generates physically accurate images quickly and easily as there are no complex settings or parameters to configure.

Indigo

Indigo Renderer is an unbiased, photorealistic GPU and CPU renderer that simulates the physics of light to create many realistic effects that otherwise would have to be manually created.  It takes far less time to setup than traditional biased or ‘global illumination’ renderers and their interactive, photographic approach lets you concentrate on lighting and composing your imagery.

LightUp

LightUp uses object-based rendering that generates accurate and beautiful results instantly inside the SketchUp window.  LightUp allows you to tweak and iterate your models and immediately see results. It can also can create fly-through movies and export to a format that can be played by clients in their web browsers.

Maxwell

Maxwell is a high quality “real time” rendering plugin that operates entirely within SketchUp.  It’s simple to setup and provides seamless integration with SketchUp Make and Pro..

Render[in]

Render[in] is a fully integrated, real-time radiosity engine for SketchUp Make and Pro users.  It’s powered by Artlantis 6.5’s rendering engine to give SketchUp users high-definition, photorealistic renderings in an easy-to-use application.  Render[in]’s global illumination engine improves images for a better perception of colors, textures, and materials, and with both the ISO and Shutter parameters, it’s easy to fine-tune a scene’s lighting.

SU Podium

SU Podium SketchUp extension uses a photon mapping algorithm that provides accurate raytracing and global illumination to produce photorealistic images. The user interface is simply and does not require advanced knowledge of rendering techniques making the generation of a photorealistic rendering with realistic lighting, material properties, reflection, and refraction an easy and rewarding task.

AmbientOcclusion

AmbientOcclusion is a fast, easy to use rendering extension for SketchUp.  You can create visually compelling previews of 3D models, highlighting space and relations with other objects.

Twilight

Twilight Render is a photorealistic rendering plugin for SketchUp built on the Kerkythea Echo 2008 render engine. All rendering is done inside SketchUp using multiple biased and unbiased render methods.  The extension provides several intuitive “Easy” render settings, and your workflow is uninterrupted as a render works in the background allowing you to develop your scene further.

Vray

V-Ray works within SketchUp allowing users to be able to efficiently incorporate the task of rendering within their current workflows to visualize their models with quality and realism.