Kerkythea, Podium or Paranesi

[perk]

My company, an architecture firm is looking into using either kerkythea, podium or paranesi as a standard for renderings. I have only used kerkythea once before and never used podium or paranesi. Which one do you guys think is better and why?

Posted By.....Perk

[santiagom]

I voted for Podium for it´s ease of use, and integration with sketchup (at least on pc),
kerkythea for it´s solid community and it´s price...
Piranesi is the most expensive of the three, but it has a completely different approach than the other two. I would describe it as photoshop 3d. It works best on npr kind of stuff, the other two are more geared to photoreal stuff

[Frederik]

For obvious reasons, I voted for Kerkythea...

Next release, which is due in very near future, you'll get some very powerful features like network-rendering, instancing and much more...
There will be a complete new Material Editor GUI, which will allow the user to create very sophisticated materials...

With regards to Podium, Ross Macintosh wrote in another thread:

Ross Macintosh wrote:
Regarding Kerkythea and Podium: As you may know Podium uses the Kerkythea rendering engine, adding an easier to use interface that works inside of SketchUp as a plug-in.

So with all due respect for the work done with the interface, I would argue that Podium somehow is Kerkythea...
At least a simplified interface using the Kerkythea render engine...

As santiagom mentions, Piranesi is a very powerful tool, but should be categorized as NPR (Non Photo-realistic Render)...

[mateo soletic]

Perk,

Which do You think is better?
Visit the app. gallery pages or the render gallery here and see what
kind of output would You and Your company be confident with.

Are You prepared to pay and how much?

What is the average learning curve needed to achieve that output?

We can answer this one.

Hope this helps
Mateo

[bigstick]

I'm not sure you can actually compare these things, and I'm also not sure about the logic of a vote. Kerkythea is free and a standalone application, Piranesi is a non-photorealistic renderer, and Podium is a low-cost, very easy photorealistic renderer that runs inside SU.

If you want NPR images, then clearly Piranesi is the one to go for, and you will have to accept its price and complexity. If you don't want to pay for your rendering application, you'll take Kerkythea, and accept the learning curve and whole import-export business that you get with a separate application.

Finally there is Podium, it runs inside SketchUp and you keep the same workflow, with maybe a couple of mouse clicks to get a rendered image. Yes you pay for it, but you pay for the simplicity and convenience. The fact that you can just click 'render' from within SketchUp means that the whole process is much more efficient. Yes you have to pay for it, but in a commercial environment, the purchase price is really negligible, particularly when you compare it with any other software you may be using.

So, personally I think that Podium is the ideal solution for most companies, so there's no point in me voting. Also, arguably it doesn't make a lot of sense to judge anything based on the unsubstantiated opinions of strangers anyway...

[Scotty T]

I understand the logic very well. I have experienced the lack of standards and the confusion its creates within operations and leaves certain individuals hung out to dry. If you install all three engines and train everyone equally on there functions then fine, but your not going to find a company that will take the time to implement that so they choose one.