Sketchup & realtime rendering (freelancing)
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Hey everyone, I've lurked this forum for a while and finally got round to registering!
I work for a company primarily doing loft conversions. I use Autocad to do 2d plans for quotation and construction purposes.
I have also used many 3d programs personally though, including sketchup.I've seen many companys using programs like 3ds max/autocad for 3d, and making walkthroughs/stills using renderers like vray etc.
I've had some experience doing that just at home for practice, but wouldn't like to do it professionally due to waiting for renders! (I am NOT sorting out a render farm
)With the rise of things like Lumion and Twinmotion etc. I am starting to think I could produce walkthroughs and stills very quickly though..
True the result wont be photorealistic like vray or something, but surely with a nice computer (my new rig with a 3gb 580 card is coming next week!) I could achieve perfectly nice results?It all seems to easy though.. sketchup and for example twinmotion..
Anyone have experience doing something like that freelance? What do you think the results/speed etc. would be like? If I did I'd be aiming for smaller jobs than what I see online (people doing huge complexes etc.). More real estate or things like that.
Also how much would I earn? It's hard to see prices online as these companies usually only give private quotes. I'm going to add it all up and if I can do something I enjoy for some extra pocket, I'll get straight on it!
Sorry for sounding so clueless in my first post. I'll try to contribute something to this great forum in the future
Michael
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Great topic & the wave of the future.....until something better comes along.
I've looked at Lumion, which seems to have promise but they are developing it poorly & just had a disastrous new release yesterday.
Lumion has great site tools but I have found that it needs lots of work.There's folks out there using gaming engines effectively but they are all full time visualizers (archimmersion, etc)
Twinmotion looks great for an architecture office that uses Revit like us since it has a Revit plug in.We need interactive realtime rendering tools.
We spend a lot of time in front of clients with sketchup models projected on the screen & designing with them in realtime.Our present workflow is a pain & costly (since I own the firm).
We design in SU - develop the design in Revit - export to SU then color & add entourage - tour & change design & materials the SU model - Render static scenes with whatever SU plugin program works best - but no - realtime rendering that some clients would like.Price for any small arch firm is a factor.
Lumion $2250 for the version that does anything
Twinmotion $3000. plus they suck your blood like Autodesk for a yearly subscription of $900/per year for any updates. I don't mind paying the 1 time price but that yearly subscription cost is a killer.I would be interested in any programs that may be half measures (LumenRT is a 1/10th measure)
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I've found Lumion to work great. The only problem with it (and lumenrt) is lack of artificial lighting. Twinmotion has this but the trial of that hasn't worked well for taking sketchup models so I can't really judge it.
A co-worker of mine even has Revit. but the .skp file import in revit wouldn't take my skp files :S -
Have you looked at LightUp?
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This is slightly off-topic, but If you can, try and add some more RAM to your new computer.
3GB seems a bit low (I was running 4 on my old PC before stepping up to 12 on the rig I got two years ago) and I would suggest 6GB as a minimum.
More RAM should help with the sort of visualisations you want to create.
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Oh sorry I wasnt clear
the 580 is a 3gb model, I have 16gb system ram -
Where's the 'phew' smiley?
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best I could come up with.
I'm trying cryengine atm. Having trouble using it even with playup plugin! the plugin itself works hit and miss for me and the texture process is tedious. I'm desperate to work this one out
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@mrmikeesq said:
best I could come up with.
I'm trying cryengine atm. Having trouble using it even with playup plugin! the plugin itself works hit and miss for me and the texture process is tedious. I'm desperate to work this one out
If you want realtime navigation + IES interior/exterior lighting + integrated into SketchUp (not a seperate App) so no need to learn a whole new workflow, do have a look at LightUp (http://light-up.co.uk), you may be surprised!
Adam
These are captured from inside SketchUp:
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Yes LightUp, ShaderLight,Twilight, etc are half measures I guess....& good ones.
They are all certainly worth every dollar & then some.
It's great that these programs can export a rendered model that you can walk round in (& the quality is quite good)
Lumion and especially Twinmotion are truly interactive in realtime. But they are more costly.... $200 vs $2000 for Lumion &$3000 (+$900 per year) for Twinmotion. But these programs have a lot of features (that I assume increases the cost) that most Arch. firms don't use frequently. In Lumion I don't need tools to build complicated landscapes that cannot be made precisely, etc. Although the integrated vegetation objects are great.
It does seem like the companies who developed gaming engines are all waking up to Architectural Visualization at the same time.
Cryengine has a "architectural visualization coming soon" banner on their web site!
Lumion comes from gaming (but that seems to be what is tripping them up since they are not properly addressing architectural design interactions.)
Anyone who has seen some of your kids interactive game graphics are knows they are more effective than most expensive static images & some animations.
Anyway this is a very exciting time to see what design & presentation tools emerge. -
@dbaird said:
Lumion and especially Twinmotion are truly interactive in realtime.
Eh, LightUp (unlike the Shaderlight etc) give realtime 30Hz navigation. Thats "truly interactive" and unlike Lumion and Twinmotion, LightUp supports interior lights, colored glass light filtering and IES lighting - rather than just Sunlight and.. er, not a lot wrt lighting.
Adam
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I try and have tried most of the rendering engines compatible with Sketchup out there and I permanently look for new ways that could improve the architectural/interior design visualization workflow.
For several years Vray has been the best (for its great image quality) but, the latest version of Light up is turning out to be a more convenient and a more powerful tool in my opinion.
The capacity to fly a rendered model (using the GPU unit) right from inside the Sketchup window is changing the design workflow in a very very positive way.And just like Sketchup is, Lighup is really easy to use.
You won't get all the subtleties that Vray has (too complicated anyway I think) but the ease of use and the real-time / in viewport “Tour tool” capacity is absolutely the way to go: I find myself producing now much more finished videos, stills and flythrough than I ever did with my 1000$ Vray license…
You should give it a try! For less than 200 $US, you will see that Lightup is an essential and revolutionary extension to Skecthup.
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Hi, folks:
Thank you for this very enLIGHTening discussion. Gives a good perspective on available tools. -
All,
Thanks for your input.
I guess i should give LightUp another look while I continue to test & evaluate the value of Lumion & Twinmotion.
The investment in these programs obviously means a shift to very powerful & expensive (3gb) GPU's.
We've been concentrating on buying the fast CPU's for our programs (Revit, Indigo, etc.) (dual 6 cores) with avg. GPU's. A 1gb GPU on a dual 6 core CPU workstation doesn't work good enough with either Lumion & Twinmotion. It works..but not good enough.
The other difference I have seen is that there seems to be no need to have network rendering on multiple CPU's (like for Vray or Indigo, etc) since all of the work is being done by the GPU on one computer. Maybe there will be network rendering of GPU's in the future...
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