Ground Plane Preview
The Ground Plane Preview creates a rendering of your model by placing the SketchUp model in front of a quick rendering of your Ground Plane and Sky.
This is very fast, because the geometry in your model does not have to be extracted, or processed, and works very well for many exterior models.
After adjusting the Sky and Ground Plane as desired, you can return to SketchUp and create a full rendering if desired.
SketchUp Model
Ground Plane Preview
See: IRender Sky Tab
After clicking Preview, this dialog will be loaded:
Settings
- Half Size Preview - will create the preview at 1/2 your current rendering size.
- Full Size Preview - will create the preview at your current rendering size.
- Show in Batch Renderer - the preview will render just like any other rendering.
- You can make adjustments, to the sky, ground, etc. and see how they will look.
- Launch Image in Paint Program - The rendered preview will be launched in a Paint program for easy viewing or saving to disk.
- Show SketchUp Model - the image of your SketchUp model (from SketchUp, not rendered, will appear in front of the Ground and Sky.
- Show Sky and Ground Plane only - only the background will be shown.
- Create Preview - create the Preview with these settings
Rendered Image with Ground Plane
(The image below took less than 60 seconds to create, because for many exterior models, you do not need to extract and render the model itself to show it in context.)
Here is another sample, where I used a sand texture for the ground plane.
