Presentation on PC of full bake render

[Inside]

I have a full bake render that takes an hour - so it´s not an option to sit down with my customer and start a full bake render.
Is there a way, I can export the full render - reload it on my laptop when at a meeting - and walk around the full bake render ?
I have found something called "Luca" but cannot seem to find who to do it - and what it actually can be used for.

Thanks

[LeeAnderson]

When a rendering is complete, it is possible to export a Player file. The Player file has the suffix .luca

To Play the "Luca" file it is necessary to download the LightUp Player. To do this click on "Support" on the LightUp home page. On the Support page click on "Download Luca Players". Then click on "LightUp Player for Windows" to download a free player that will play your "Luca" file. The navigation within the Player is the same as it is within LightUp, and the image quality is also exactly the same. Your clients can also download the Player file for free and "play" Luca files that you send to them.

A couple additional notes regarding renderings for clients:

1) Once the model is rendered, it is possible to create a high quality animation extremely quickly. This is in contrast to most renderers that require a full rendering for each frame.

2) A rendering can be printed out at very high resolution without requiring re-rendering. This is extremely effective for presentations that require large, high-quality printed images. Again, this is in contrast to most renderers that require re-rendering for higher resolutions, and can require greatly increased rendering times for high resolution renderings. Naturally, the image quality of applied materials still depends on the original resolutions of those materials.

[Inside]

Thanks @LeeAnderson. The Luca file is great. But is there a Way to store the Full bakke render of a model, so I Can load it later directly in SU without waiting for a new render to finish ?
I think I read something about a “dea” file - or something like that - but can not find anything, and I do not recall where I read it.

[LeeAnderson]

LightUp provides two file formats for storing the light-baked geometry - FBX and DAE. You can choose which of those that you want to use by selecting Tools-LightUp-Settings-Default Model Format from the SketchUp menu and choosing either "Autodesk FBX" or Collada DAE". Save the rendered model to the selected file format by clicking on "Model" in the "Export Lighting" section of the "LightUp" dialog box that appears after rendering is complete.

For both FBX and DAE there are a number of related files that are exported, not just one file, so it is best to save to an empty folder. All files must be in the same folder for the primary FBX or DAE file to be read correctly.

Although SketchUp Pro does read the DAE format, I have not found it to be able to correctly read the DAE file exported by LightUp. There may be some way of "laundering" it through another application, such as Rhino, but I haven't tried it.

Even if the light-baked model could be imported back into SketchUp, the result might not be what you want. There wouldn't be any reflections, since reflections are view-dependent and aren't saved with either of the formats. Also, any change to the model would destroy the integrity of the rendering.

Something to know - As LightUp renders, it saves intermediate rendering results in a file called a "Cache". When re-rendering, even with a re-opened file, the cache results can shorten rendering time, often by a considerable amount. Likewise, if you render and make a small change to the model, then re-render, the re-rendering will go more quickly than the original render. (Note that the "Ignore cache" checkbox must be unchecked for the rendering time to be shortened). You might experiment with this to see how it works.

btw - An hour is a very long time for a LightUp render. Try increasing the size of the "Resolution" in the "LightUp Preferences" dialog box. Also, if you have a large piece of terrain, such as grass, right-click on the material and select LightUp-Edit Material and check "Always fully lit" or "0.5x Resolution". If you check Always fully lit, the rendering engine will ignore to material and just show it as the color of the original material, which might look ok. If you check 0.5 Resolution the rendering engine will reduce the rendering quality for that material (which may not matter), but speed rendering of that material by about 2X.

[Inside]

@LeeAnderson great tips - thanks