Hello NicBelcher83 -
Good questions.
a) Yes, you can probably do all your 3D modelling in Sketchup, especially if you make fairly standard architectural forms. Sketchup is indeed very good at this. If, however, you often need smooth organic surfaces, double curving surfaces, and high precision when constructing and combining them, Rhino is a better choice. You make most forms in Sketchup as well. But you will not have the same precision and control of smooth surfaces, if you need them.
Sketchup is primarily targeted for small to medium-sized models, quick volume studies and visualisations. Since Sketchup is a mesh modeler and not nurbs or sub-D, in practice you must use the final detail level already from the start. You cannot work on visual proxys and automatically have their geometry remeshed to a finer version later on, like you can in other modelling paradigms. This means that mesh modelers like Sketchup are especially reliant on their ability to handle large amounts of geometry - a very fast geometry kernel.
The Trimble development team, however, appears to remain happily unencumbered by this fact. The Trimble development team most likely does not in earnest battle test their Sketchup software on heavy-duty models with tens and tens of millions of polygons, hundreds of layers, thousands of materials, and so on. You group 50 K edges - no problem. You group 500 K edges - go get a coffee, or two, or more. Sketchup's slowness when it comes to heavy geometry and heavy-duty work is a serious caveat emptor.
Handled well, however, Sketchup can do a lot for you, including creating advanced forms and handling complex geometry - if you learn to tread carefully.
b) Use the Sketchup plugin as far at it can take you. Only then use Maxwell studio. The reason is that the studio version breaks the live link with your model. After that point, you have to manually and individually propagate any change in the 3D model to your Maxwell scene. This quickly becomes unbearable. But if you are sure your model is finished, Maxwell Studio will give you greater control and is preferabe as such. One notable deficiency in Sketchup is that its native UV mapping is so limited as to be virtually nonexistant. But in Maxwell Studio, you can at least do some basic editing of your UVs, which you cannot in do in the Maxwell plugin the last time I tried it.
I hope that answers your questions.
Maxwell for Sketchup is able to produce visually extremely good results. The problem is not with the core functionality of the software, which I find satisfying at least in terms of rendered results. The problem is that Nextlimit appears to be having serious development problems. The Maxwell updates are few and far between, old problems persist, the UI does not work on 4K screens, they have lately released versions with features that are so unfinished that they should never have shipped (such as graphics card rendering, which simply disregard many common material settings).
Worst of all, Nexlimit appears to be uninterested in their users. Nextlimit's Maxwell forum is one of the worst ones out there. In contrast to most successful forums, the official Maxwell forum does not accept presale questions (buy a license or we will not allow you to engage with forum members), it does not clearly distinguish Nextlimit staff from users, it was down for a month earlier this year (unbelievable), it was recently remade but did not employ the clearly superior Discourse platform, and so on and so forth.
I really like the Maxwell philosophy of scientifically simulating the physical world. Maxwell on cpu still yields visually excellent results. The people in charge at Nextlimit, however, apparently have a somewhat limited understanding of how good customer relations work, how good forums work, how good software development works and how company transparency works.
Those things really matter. They matter because the choice of render engine implies that you will invest months or years in learning and working with it. Something at the Nextlimit management needs to change. I'm sad to say this, because I want Maxwell to remain one of the top rendering solutions. Extrapolating today into the future, I would go elsewhere.
