Altair has recently released my connection between Thea Engine and Trimble SketchUp:
It is a big challenge for a classic “offline” render engine to compete with real-time “online” engines, but I believe we are getting very close now. The interactive denoising combined with continuous hardware improvements will soon lead to convergence of Thea with real-time performance. We still have some important tasks to do to close the gap close or almost close. The good thing is that the superior quality is on our side, while online engines may struggle to deliver the precision of the desired output, especially in more complex scenes.
I have a lot ideas for the future. Thanks to Altair and plugin users, I am constantly challenged to meet their expectations. It is not always easy, but I always put myself in user’s skin and try thinking their way. I also use from time to time Thea to visualize my own and my wife’s concepts. With the help of Thea it makes conveying the ideas to our clients and audience much easier.
I highly recommend checking the newest version. Interactive denoising combined with improved interactive updates made a lot of difference, not to mention other features like Relight or Adaptive Tracing which sets GPU output quality even higher then before.