Which Photorealistic Renderer?

holmes1977

Hi there Zoom
I agree with everything Solo has said.
I'd push for you to look into Podium. Its a great program to start the ball rolling in the rendering world. If you head over to the Podium site you will see so fantastic examples of work done.
http://www.suplugins.com/
It’s simple and renders fast. One of the best things I have found with working on Podium is the forum support, which is helpful with learning a new program.

I have now moved on to working with V-Ray (because of the need of more options.) This is a truly amazing piece of software. But is differently a much harder program to use.

Can't comment on any other renders, because I haven’t used them.

Good luck.

Zoom123

Thanks holmes,

I will give the free version of Podium a try!

decipher

I have always used Maxwell, for an unbiased renderer the interface is fairly intuitive and there is a wide library of free (and excellent) materials available. It probably costs a fair bit however, i'm not sure as i am not in charge of licensing at our place!

Solo, i had no idea KT was free.. I just assumed any decent renderer costs money. I will definitely be looking into learning that!

honoluludesktop

Hi Zoom, When it comes to selecting render software, you will be hard pressed to find agreement. I have tried Podiun, KT, PovRay, and IDX. All of them have different strong, and weak points. In addition, after you work with one for a period of time, you become vested in it, and will tend to prefer it over others. It hard to know what you want until you try several.

I made my selection on ease of learning, use, but if I was looking for more sophisticated renders, I might have continued searching. So my advice is to down load all the free ones, and give them a spin. After you get the feel of making renders, download the "free to try" ones, and see if they give you the results you need. Only in this way will you figure out what you need.

remus

@zoom123 said:

So from what you say Vray is the absolute best, but expensive and with steep learning curve.

KT and Indigo come second in quality and are free, but are still hard to use (but easier than Vray?)

Podium is free, easy to learn and use but not as good as the above in quality (but possibly good enough)

I wouldnt say KT and indigo produce second class renders, i think its more to do with the adaptability and speed of vray.

Gaieus

I absolutely agree with Honoluudesktop and Pete in a kind of learning curve like this:
[list=][*]try the easiest ones that work from inside SU and which have some kind of free/eval versions such as (for instance)

Podium (eval size limit: 500x500)
IDX Renditioner (eval size limit: 640x480)
iRender NXT (30 day trial)
I could also mention LightUp (30 day trial) with a totally different approach
Indigo (still has the free version although for the current one, has gone commercial)
[]then I'd go for Kerkythea (standalone but totally free with a great support community) as it has a UI which is generally "similarly built up" as many "pro" rendering engines and you can "finish" your learning curve of all the basics there.
[]finally, when you are experienced enough, go for the (generally time limited) trial versions of the "big, expensive" engines as now you won't waste your time (and your limited edition) with learning the basics of rendering in general but only the "specialities" of these apps.[/list]
Of course, you may find yourself stuck with any of the above

pichuneke

We need exporters for opensource renderers. Like Lux Render.

Serge.N

To extend the topic, does anyone know how much photorealistic are all theses tools?

I mean is there a way with one of them to know light levels and so verify the IEQ credits 8.x of LEED?

Thanks
Serge

pichuneke

@serge.n said:

To extend the topic, does anyone know how much photorealistic are all theses tools?

I mean is there a way with one of them to know light levels and so verify the IEQ credits 8.x of LEED?

Thanks
Serge

Not what you are asking for, but I have found this for Blender. Anyway I hope it helps:

http://abhishekfx.jimdo.com/tutorials/

decipher

@serge.n said:

To extend the topic, does anyone know how much photorealistic are all theses tools?

I mean is there a way with one of them to know light levels and so verify the IEQ credits 8.x of LEED?

Thanks
Serge

If this is what you want, there are packages designed specifically for this... such as Ecotect - i believe it was recently bought by Autodesk?

wmanning

@gaieus said:

free/eval versions such as (for instance)

Podium (eval size limit: 640x480)

IDX Renditioner (eval size limit: 500x500)

Just an FYI, but you got those backwards.
It's Podium 500 x 500
IDX Renditioner at 640 x480

Not that it makes too much difference.

-- William

Gaieus

Oh Sh*t, William, sorry. My mistake, you are right. I'll correct it right now.

Serge.N

@decipher said:

@serge.n said:

To extend the topic, does anyone know how much photorealistic are all theses tools?

I mean is there a way with one of them to know light levels and so verify the IEQ credits 8.x of LEED?

Thanks
Serge

If this is what you want, there are packages designed specifically for this... such as Ecotect - i believe it was recently bought by Autodesk?

You're right, Ecotect as Green Building Studio are Autodesk's products. 3DS Max is another one and is also able to assest the LEED IEQ 8.x credits. IES is also providing very interesting tools (just not to speak about only one brand).
Another way to answser this point is to use Radiance. There's a plugin to translate a SU file into one radiance can proceed. But it's not a very simple process. It also takes a lot of time. At one point I heard about another plugin for SU that would be accurate and very fast. But not news since then. Anyone knows what I'm speaking about and has some insights?

Whatever, somewhere my question is also "how much" photorealistic are all the tools you are speaking about? Clearly they gives nice pictures but (sorry guys I'm not going to make friends there) is architecture only about nice pictures?

Regards
Serge

Zoom123

Thank you all for your help! I installed 2 renderers so far and I will soon try the other free ones you suggested in this thread! (I will go only for free ones for now, since I am only an amateur)

I installed Podium and IDX and I played with both for an hour or two. IDX seems to have more options (more control over light and materials, while Podium seems to only have 2 sliders - "Light" and "Reflect"), the UI is more intuitive on IDX, and the resulting image is larger (for the free versions). But of course the result is what matters most and I need more time to decide on that. What I can say about the result is that the two renderers render the scene in a very different way and I wouldn't call the results of either photorealistic. But I guess that has to do more with my model and the amount of work I did rather than the renderer! Am I right to assume that to get photorealistic (or near) result I should tweak every surface and every light on the scene?

@unknownuser said:

Hi Zoom, When it comes to selecting render software, you will be hard pressed to find agreement. I have tried Podiun, KT, PovRay, and IDX. All of them have different strong, and weak points. In addition, after you work with one for a period of time, you become vested in it, and will tend to prefer it over others.

This is what I am afraid actually! That I will get used with the UI and workflow of one program and then it will be hard to move to something better! I understand that people can have different opinions but I would like to hear your opinion and the pros and cons of each one of those programs.

Thanks!

Pixero

@unknownuser said:

This was done with Irender Nxt it to 2hours to render.

Two hours for 800x600 pixels?
Sorry, but I think that is laughably slow at that resolution.
I have tried IrenderNxt but quickly gave it up because of its utter slowness.
Once again, sorry. Nothing personal.

Elibjr

@pixero said:

@unknownuser said:

This was done with Irender Nxt it to 2hours to render.

Two hours for 800x600 pixels?
Sorry, but I think that is laughably slow at that resolution.
I have tried IrenderNxt but quickly gave it up because of its utter slowness.
Once again, sorry. Nothing personal.

Hey,

Oh no offense taken, Pixero. We also have Maxwell render here too and that takes more than three as long. That's why render houses will take these files... I'd like to know that you use then...and how much did you pay for it? Sure, I could render it in shorter time but I won't like the results. I was able to use this software to make a presentation for a client on a Hospital that was more acceptable in the same given amount of render time than what Maxwell produced. I like the fact that it works inside of Sketch-Up and it has two versions both under $400. Most of the other renderers either look to "cartoony" or they just look unnatural. And IRender Nxt is very architecturally friendly. My main issue with it is that its CPU based and not GPU based.. So if I was running 8 cores on a dual CPU machine quad core machine, the same rendering would take aprox. 30 minutes or less. This is a dual core 2.6Ghz machine w/ 4GB of running on Win.XP Pro. with PC667 memory. So with a newer board this could be faster. Also, the more materials, light and reflections you have the slower it is too. This model has 6 sides and over 45 high-res materials, maybe 10 to 15 reflective materials and 8 lights in it with indirect lighting from surface bouncing (this room looks really great at 3600x2400). With non glossy materials and no indirect lighting, the same rendering with 1/2 the materials takes 15 to 20 minutes (to get the same number of passes)... What do you use? I'm always willing to try new things. Thanks.

Elibjr

@serge.n said:

To extend the topic, does anyone know how much photorealistic are all theses tools?

I mean is there a way with one of them to know light levels and so verify the IEQ credits 8.x of LEED?

Thanks
Serge

I agree with Decipher, but Light-up does feature a light meter in version 1.5+. I personally like IRender Nxt for a few reasons: It works inside of SketchUp so there is no translating to be done. The 30 day version allows you to make the rendering as large as you want. You can create lamps, foliage and video with it. And, you have control over every individual material with it. Here is a render I did for work with it at 800x600. It also works with Sketchup free and Pro. We also use Maxwell for rendering but if you have more than a hand full of lights, you may as well send it out to a renderfarm because it will take forever to get good results. It's also about $1000. IRenderNxt is $400. It's worth it though, and there is a light version that works similar to Podium for $80. FYI, the ceiling grid was done with 1001bit tools at http://www.1001bit.com

This was done with Irender Nxt it took 2hours to render. Some materials were materials brought into SketchUp from the maufacturer's websites.

This is the original sketchup model. It's too large to put on the warehouse.

Pixero

I use Vray for SU and MentalRay for Max.
For a current animation with a very heavy model exterior and interior flythrough, 800x426 pixels, the render time was approx two minutes per frame with Vray for SU. int7_.0135.png

Elibjr

@pixero said:

I use Vray for SU and MentalRay for Max.

Exactly. See you get what you pay for. Vray is almost $800 and Max, well, if you think that paying the price of a used car for software is worth it, then go right ahead. Right now for a starter that's too much for my blood.

My whole point for the questioner was that you can get Sketch-Up free and for under $400 you can get a renderer that works inside of Sketch-Up with half descent results.. Sure renderings may take a while but you get what you pay for. Or for less than $200 you can get IDX Renditioner, Podium, and Light-Up. Three descent programs that will give you nice results. Or for less than $100 you got IRender Basic with the same engine as IRender Nxt just less versatile with materials...and no animation.

My suggestion is to try as many as you like till you find what works best for you, then pick that one and master the settings... experiment for a month with each. Fall in love with software then make people ask you.. "How did you do that?"

By the way Pixero, that's a nice rendering... You did this in Max? How long did it take you to model it? Nice flower and outdoor space.

Yeah, I think when I finish putting together my new machine I will eventually look at VRay for my personal higher end renderer. Is it easy to use? That one I have not tried yet.

Pixero

@unknownuser said:

Vray is almost $800 and Max, well, if you think that paying the price of a used car for software is worth it, then go right ahead. Right now for a starter that's too much for my blood.

A quick Google search and I found Vray for SU for $720 at Novedge. I bought me a home license before the summer at a campaign price from somewhere for about $650 so its not THAT much more expensive. But if time is no restrain for you go with Maxwell...great images but takes forever to render.

Don't forget there are some great free renderers like Kerkythea thats most likely a whole deal better than IDX.
I can say I have tried them all and to me the important aspects are: Image quality, speed, workflow and ability to handle complex scenes without choking.
My advice is to go with a free renderer if your new to rendering. Then as you find it too limited for your needs go for a better one.
No renderer is better than its user. And to me as a professional user speed is one of the mayor factors to be able to deliver on time. Or for citing Electric Image renderers old slogan: Render fast, retire young.

@unknownuser said:

By the way Pixero, that's a nice rendering... You did this in Max? How long did it take you to model it? Nice flower and outdoor space.

Thats Vray and Sketchup. I'll try to post a lowres version of the animation once its done.

@unknownuser said:

Yeah, I think when I finish putting together my new machine I will eventually look at VRay for my personal higher end renderer. Is it easy to use? That one I have not tried yet.

I cant really comment on if its easy or not. That depend on your prior knowledge. I find it quite easy, but then again others don't.