Quick Tip - Solid background color

Unlike SU Podium, PodiumxRT doesn't provide an option to use the SketchUp style as a sky and background for your render — so there isn't a built-in way to use a flat white or solid colored background while still using the SketchUp sun for directional lighting.

We can work around this however, by placing custom .HDR image files into the PodiumxRT backgrounds folder, and then selecting them from the HDRI drop-down.

Any .HDR image placed in the correct folder will be available in the HDRI drop-down menu as shown above. In this way, we can render with a solid background color:

Bedroom assembly rendered in an empty SU scene with the White HDR background available below.

2. How to install custom background images

To make additonal backgrounds available in the HDRI drop-down, simply paste/save the .HDR image files into the PodiumxRT backgrounds folder, pictured below:

This is the exact file-path for the backgrounds folder:

1. Background images MUST be saved in the .HDR format.
2. Background images must have a 2:1 aspect ratio — ie. 10000x5000px
3. Please note, AppData is hidden by default on many Windows machines. If you do not know how to make it visible, please read here.
4. Mac Users note

   The User/Library / Application Support folder where the Sketchupxx/plugins folder is located is always hidden.

   Follow this method to show the package contents of the PodiumxRT.app to locate the background folder
   • Open Finder and open your User directory
   • Press Cmd + Shift + Period (.) to show hidden files.
   • In your user account folder, go to Library (will look greyed out)/ Application Support/ SketchUp 202x/ Plugins/ PodiumxRT/
   • Open the PodiumxRT folder and you will see several files. One should be named PodiumxRT.app or simply maybe named PodiumxRT
   • Right click on this folder and select Show Package Contents
   • Go to Contents --->Resources--->Backgrounds

   Backgrounds folder is where you want to save additional .hdr files

The next time you open PodiumxRT, any added backgrounds will appear under the HDRI drop-down along with the five pre-installed HDRI backgrounds.

  Solid white background with and without ground plane:

You can see, this gives us a very fast and easy way to produce a quick render of a subject against a white background. This setup is no more complicated than aiming the camera and choosing white-background.hdr in Background Settings.

No ground plane, 200 samples; click to enlarge.

With plane to capture ground shadows.

The typical user that has asked about achieving the above style was interested in a solution for high-volume projects, where a lot of images needed to be produced quickly.

The second example uses a very simple ground plane to catch shadows and give the image a touch of context.

Tip - Smaller ground planes "disappear" against the background more easily than larger ones.

Tests with larger planes stretching far beyond the subject tended to have visible edges in the final render, particularly near the horizon.

Studio-based alternative:

Please note that we reccomend a different approach for editorial style imagery with a more "art-directed" look.

Taking the time to model a studio set as explained here yields a very different kinds of image. This does take longer to set up but affords more control over the final look.

Bedroom image rendered against a simple studio set instead of relying fully on an HDR background.

3. What is the purpose of black-background.hdr?

A pure black HDRI background gives us a way to turn off the sky entirely and illuminate a scene with artificial lights only; there are niche cases where this can be very useful. If you need to isolate a subject for example, one possible workflow is to select the black HDR image and use overhead LEM lighting.

For example: In the following images, we needed a dark background to accomodate white text overlays for a presentation.

4. Can I use a solid-colored HDR other than white, black, or gray?

Not really. This is where the "HDRI only" approach starts to break down. HDR based lighting replaces the sun and sky so if you use a solid blue HDRI background, all the ambient light being emitted into your scene will be blue.

The resulting image will have a very pronounced color cast which overpowers the subject (as seen right).

Instead, we can achieve a more pleasing result by physically adding a colored background into the SketchUp scene. In this example we used a simple 90° curve with about 80 segments, painted solid blue.

With this method, our render contains a vivid, colorful background that complements the paint color of the bed but does not wash it out.

This render was lit with a gray HDRI background, which contains a sun to cast hard directional shadows. Any of the sun/sky simulations would have worked just as well with this scene.

If you wanted softer shadows you could use the 50% Gray HDRI background available at the top of this page, and then use LEM lights in your SketchUp scene to cast soft shadows.

A more advanced technique is to try creating your own HDRI studio images directly in Photoshop, which is what we have done for the image below.

Simply by enlarging and changing the shape of the light source, you can see we have softened the shadows considerably. Explaining this workflow in detail is beyond the scope of this page, there is an excellent explanation of the workflow here: Creating custom studio HDRIs in Photoshop.