Vray Training Course | Complete Guide to Vray for SketchUp

Lesson 1 – Introduction (12:08). In this introductory lesson, we dive into the world of V-Ray for SketchUp, exploring its unparalleled ability to produce photorealistic renders. Despite the rise of real-time renderers like D5 Render, Twinmotion, and Lumion, V-Ray remains the go-to tool for achieving the highest level of realism in CG projects. You’ll learn about the key toolbars, including V-Ray lights, objects, and utilities, and get insights into why V-Ray stands apart with its powerful rendering system. This lesson sets the stage for mastering V-Ray’s tools, making it essential for designers seeking professional-grade results.

Lesson 2 – Asset Editor, Cosmos & Frame Buffer (17:15). In this lesson, we explore V-Ray’s Asset Editor, Chaos Cosmos, and Frame Buffer; essential tools for any artist seeking to master V-Ray for SketchUp. You’ll get a guided tour of the render settings panel, focusing on CPU and GPU options, quality sliders, exposure control, and noise reduction. The lesson also introduces Chaos Cosmos, V-Ray’s built-in asset library filled with models and materials, as well as the powerful Frame Buffer, which allows post-render adjustments like exposure and colour balance. Understanding these features will set you up for creating ultra-realistic renders with ease and precision.

Lesson 3 – Setting the Scene, Lighting & Cameras (27:44). Dive into setting up scenes, camera views, and the powerful V-Ray Light Gen tool. You’ll learn how to create exterior and interior camera views within SketchUp, ensuring you capture the best angles with tools like two-point perspective and focal length adjustments. The lesson then explores the impressive V-Ray Light Gen feature, which automatically generates lighting scenarios, helping you quickly experiment with different lighting conditions. Finally, the importance of dome lights and using HDRI maps to enhance realism is highlighted, empowering you to craft professional, well-lit visuals with ease.

Lesson 4 – Materials (25:26). Here, we move onto applying textures using V-Ray’s inbuilt Cosmos Browser and external resources like Poliigon. You’ll learn how to replace materials, adjust mapping, and use Tri-planar projection to fix issues. The lesson covers creating custom materials, working with diffuse, reflection, glossiness, and normal maps for photorealism. Techniques for applying realistic floor tiles, metals, and more are demonstrated. This lesson provides a streamlined approach to texturing, ensuring your scenes are visually rich and accurate.

Lesson 5 – Populating the Exterior (23:32). Learn to populate exteriors using V-Ray’s Scatter tool. The lesson demonstrates creating natural, organic layouts with trees, shrubs, and bushes by scattering them across surfaces. You’ll learn how to adjust density, randomness, and scaling for variety, ensuring realistic surroundings. Additionally, the lesson explains how to use the Fur tool to create 3D grass and combine it with scatter for added detail. Manual object placement is also discussed to refine shots. Overall, this lesson focuses on efficiently building realistic, natural environments in your renders.

Lesson 6 – Populating the Interiors (55:38). In Lesson 6, you focus on populating the interior with detailed models using the Chaos Cosmos browser in V-Ray. The lesson highlights replacing low-quality SketchUp furniture with high-quality assets to match precedent photos. You also learn to manually model simple furniture, stage the interior thoughtfully, and adjust camera angles for better composition. The lesson ends with a demonstration of using Transmutr to import complex models from other software, ensuring minimal impact on SketchUp’s performance.

Lesson 7 – Exterior shot refinement (42:52). We move back to the exterior and focus on refining the exterior shot, with attention to composition, lighting, and details like vegetation. Key changes include experimenting with camera angles and focal lengths to improve shot composition, replacing low-quality trees with high-detail models, and refining grass and vegetation scatter to make the scene more natural. The lesson concludes by demonstrating the use of environment fog and shadow adjustments to create a more realistic and polished final image.

Lesson 8 – Interior shot refinement (1:02:14). In Lesson 8, you’ll learn to refine interior shots by adjusting lighting, reflections, and materials for a more polished look. You’ll start by making the floor more reflective and adding rectangular lights near the windows to brighten the scene. We emphasise that accurate modelling is key to achieving life-like renders, introduce depth of field, using bevels to smooth edges for enhanced realism and fine tune the staging of the scene with additional assets from various locations. IES lights are also demonstrated for realistic artificial lighting.

Lesson 9 – Rendering (17:00). In this lesson, you’ll explore how to optimise render settings and learn to balance render time and quality. You’ll also adjust exposure, render output size, and experiment with various render passes to enhance post-production flexibility. Additionally, you’ll discover options like Chaos Cloud rendering, which speeds up rendering while offloading work from your machine. By the end, you’ll have a clear understanding of how to streamline your render workflow, ensuring smooth performance without compromising the final result.

Lesson 10 – Post-production (58:33). Master post-production and compositing techniques, in this lesson, using Photoshop with render passes from V-Ray. You’ll focus on organising layers, using blend modes like Screen and Multiply, and applying masks for precise control. Key passes like reflection, ambient occlusion, and specular are used to enhance realism. You’ll also use the Camera Raw filter to fine-tune lighting, contrast, and colour. This workflow will show you how to refine your renders in post-production, adding subtle details and improving the overall quality without the need for re-rendering, setting the foundation for photorealistic results.

Lesson 11 – Animation (16:52). In Lesson 11, you’ll learn how to create animations in V-Ray for SketchUp, focusing on camera paths to create smooth, immersive movements through your architectural scenes. You’ll start with simple geometry to focus on interactive rendering, and explore how V-Ray handles animations, including the importance of frame rates and rendering multiple frames. While real-time rendering programs like Enscape may offer faster results, V-Ray provides superior quality for final outputs. You’ll also learn how to add motion blur, manage transitions, and save image sequences to compose your animations in post-production software like Premiere Pro or After Effects.

Lesson 12 – Pro Tips & Tools  (33:52). We wrap up by learning about the remaining powerful tools we were unable to cover in the core lessons, enhancing your V-Ray for SketchUp workflow. You’ll explore how to create section cuts and control their appearance, including custom materials for cut planes. You’ll also dive into advanced material settings, applying features like coats for a glossy finish or sheen for realistic fabrics. Finally, you’ll be introduced to decals for adding imperfections and the enmesh tool to quickly apply complex patterns to your models. This lesson ties everything together, helping you refine your projects with these advanced V-Ray features.