Help with choice of setup (SU and render plugin)

Supercure

Hello All

We are a small interior design company. Until recently, we were using a software made by a small British developper (Microspot Interiors). It combined both the design and the rendering engine.

We are now playing with SU Make 2015. The lead designer (my wife) picked up the basics of SU in no time at all, but we miss the rendering engine.

1/ We would like to be able to provide basic renderings to our clients.

We are looking for a plug-in /rendering engine that would be user friendly but still powerful enough to tweak textures, light bounce, etc. In your opinion, is Maxwell the way to go?
Do we need to buy SU Pro right away?

2/ When we need high quality renderings, we send our SU models to 3D rendering artists. The idea for us is to be able to send them our models in a format they can directly use to do the rendering. Again: is SU + Maxwell the right setup to do this?

Any suggestions are welcome. We can't splash out to much on a rendering plugin with too sharp a learning curve, so we are looking for affordable + easy to use.

Thanks for your input.

Jean-Louis

Frederik

@supercure said:

...is Maxwell the way to go?

Don't have much knowledge of Maxwell Render, but I know a lot of SU users are preferring Thea Render...

Currently the price for Thea Render and the Thea4SU plugin is only 320,00 EUR...
To get a comparable package from Maxwell Render, you need to take the Maxwell Render Suite, which currently is 595,00 EUR - almost twice as expensive...

Take a look at some of these excellent interior examples - all made by Massimo in SU and then rendered using Thea Render...
conservatory
House-H, Hiroyuki-Shinozaki-architects
The apartment with paintings
Lad musician - Nagoya
Ceramic house
Museum in Possagno

Here's one by nektares...
Mint Bedroom

@supercure said:

Do we need to buy SU Pro right away?

In principle you don't need to, but....
According to the SU Make EULA you're not allowed to use SketchUp Make for commercial purposes...

HornOxx

Hi Jean-Louis
if you're looking for a cheap yet good render solution, I recommend you to buy a plug-in solution that works directly within SketchUp. All these plugin solutions are pretty easy to use and often quickly to learn as well. Some of the plug-in manufacturers also offer stand-alone solutions, which are often much more complex! So you should remain at a SketchUp plugin solution. These plugins (Shaderlight, Twilight Render, Maxwell Render, Podium, Thea Render etc ...) put you in a position to make very good renderings by yourselve. There are also plug-in solution, which are indeed very very good, but at the same time a little more complicated and often more expensive - for me one example is Vray.

Please don´t be scared My recommendation for you is a combination of 2 tools: Shaderlight and Twilight Render. Shaderlight is extremely simple to use (just out of the box) and provides good renderings in a pretty fast render time.

Twilight Render is much better in material- and lighting qualities, but also requires substantially longer render times - especially when you're making interior renderings! That's not necessarily a disadvantage, but you need to know that.

So, if I want to make a good exterior or concept rendering very fast (which can also be any furniture or any different object), I use Shaderlight, if I want to focus on excellent material or lighting properties and it does not bother me to wait many hours, I use Twilight Render. Both tools have a pretty reasonable price and both tools are worth every dollar!
Together, they are the ONE render bundle which I need for my work...

Both tools run on Make and Pro and both tools you can install as a full version for a certain period to make experiences with it, what I recommend you to do ...

driven

on a mac...
Visualizer for quick and simple...
LightUp for well priced in SU render package...

Buy SU pro, as soon as you are charging for it...
you could test your renders by reworking old projects in SU and ask the former clients if they like the improvements...

john

Supercure

@Frederik

Fab renders! Thanks for your answer. In a way, these are probably to high quality for us to use simply to "give our clients and idea of what it would look like". But good to know this kind of quality is achievable for a relatively low investment in terms of software. Thanks for your input.

Supercure

@ HornOxx

@hornoxx said:

Please don´t be scared My recommendation for you is a combination of 2 tools: Shaderlight and Twilight Render. Shaderlight is extremely simple to use (just out of the box) and provides good renderings in a pretty fast render time.

Thanks for this explanation. I have checked Shaderlight and it is definitely on the shortlist.

I think i need to have a quick SU grounding training before I make a move, as going from our antiquated "all in one app" to SU plus plugins is a sharp learning curve.

Thanks for taking the time to answer us.

Supercure

@ driven

Visualizer looks quick, simple and...now free. Will check LightUp too, and thanks for the clear and concise advice, much appreciated.

Also, I sounds like we have to buy SU Pro - if nothing else, on moral grounds. But at least, it now seems like SU Pro + a plugin / render package is the way to go.

Thanks for your help.

@driven said:

on a mac...
Visualizer for quick and simple...
LightUp for well priced in SU render package...

Buy SU pro, as soon as you are charging for it...
you could test your renders by reworking old projects in SU and ask the former clients if they like the improvements...

john