foreign [Music] hey there welcome to the first part of our onboarding video series for SketchUp in this series we will cover the basics of camera settings lighting your scene shading animation and a dedicated render setting video for fast and photo realistic renders if you would like to follow along with this tutorial take a moment to download the practice scene Linked In the video description below this video is all about getting to know the v-ray interface for SketchUp I'll walk you through finding the main tools you'll need to create awesome images but before we dive into that let me show you how to download v-ray for SketchUp by going to this web address you can find all of our products you'll be able to choose the latest version of v-ray based on your host platform for this tutorial I'm using SketchUp 2022 so I'll be downloading that version from here you can download v-ray for Windows if you use a different operating system you can click this button here once you start the v-ray installation you'll see a license agreement after you agree you can can choose your SketchUp version I'm using 2022 so I'll choose that click install and give it some time once v-ray is installed click done and let's jump into SketchUp in SketchUp you should see the v-ray toolbars on your screen if you don't you'll have to go to the toolbar menu and manually enable them these are all the different toolbars you can move each one around to wherever you like I prefer them in this order each one of the toolbars corresponds to a group of tools which you can find inside of the asset editor the asset editor is the universal v-ray tool from here you can make changes to anything v-ray related for example if you want to adjust how your image will be rendered you can do that here you could switch the render engine from CPU to GPU change the aspect ratio of your image or even use real world camera properties to get a super realistic look once you've tweaked your camera you'll likely want to add some materials to your objects you can do this here by right-clicking the material Tab and creating new materials to change the properties of these new materials click on the right side of this panel you can adjust the material's color reflection or refraction v-ray is known for its ability to make super realistic materials if you're unsure how to create a certain material don't worry v-ray comes with a built-in library of materials 3D models and light sources you can open the chaos Cosmos library right here and browse its vast content based on different categories if you want to apply material to an object you just need to download the material and import it the downloaded material will show up in the asset editor where you can assign it to any object you want the final thing we need to talk about is light sources you can find all the light sources by right-clicking the lighting tab you can create different types of Lights like spherical rectangular and dome lights when you make a light source you'll see a preview of it in this window you can increase the intensity or directionality to your liking each light source has a special purpose which we'll go over in another video by default v-ray comes with a v-ray sun already set up just so you know the v-ray sun is connected to the SketchUp Sun so if you want to customize its orientation or size you can do that here next to the lighting tab is the geometry tab this toolbar is packed with various v-ray object tools here you can find things like the infinite plane v-ray proxies fur Clipper and decals you can use the v-ray fur to create grass on any surface you want with the help of the v-ray proxies you can create hundreds of trees and rocks without slowing down your SketchUp the v-ray decal can project any image you want onto a surface all of these options allow it to easily generate amazing results with just a few clicks if you're curious about how to use these tools you can check out our how to series for SketchUp the render element tab lets you add different elements that can help you in the early and late stages of your render development if you want to add multiple render elements at once hold Ctrl and select the elements you want this is the texture tab from here you can create different v-ray textures or import your own each texture has its own special property for example if you want to add some wear and tear to your materials you can use the v-ray dirt texture or if you want to randomize the tiling of your floor material you can do that with the help of the uvw randomizer when your scene is all set up and looking good you can hit the render button here based on your render settings your image will get rendered you can use different modes of rendering which are identical in the final outcome the interactive production render and the production render the great thing about the interactive render is that it lets you move the camera change materials lights and objects without needing to stop the rendering process while your image is being rendered you can use the v-ray frame buffer to add different post-processing effects here you can find a list with all of the color correction options which can drastically change the look and feel of your image this gives you the power to touch up your image without leaving SketchUp you can also find all these toolbars and options in the extensions window under the v-ray menu here you can find the file path editor a really helpful tool that lets you see if you're missing any textures or assets and helps you relocate them I hope you found this video useful if you want to dive deeper into specific features keep an eye out for our next onboarding videos thank you for being part of the v-ray experience thank you