What convinced you to buy? I thought you were an indigo recruit

Oh and i'm going to read that manual when I get back from holiday Tell me if those 100 pages are all worth the read plz

Anyone got any idea what programs were used? I'd love to be able to produce something similar

yeah high poly support is a must. In terms of rendering, I'd be in favour of google buying out podium. I don't think su would feel bloated with such an integrated renderer. I know a lot of people will disagree with me but I also want to be able to do all my plans in su; so i'm looking for fine lines with hatching options (a 2d drafting mode). I know the beauty of su is its simple interface but I think it could do with a real pro version with all these extras.

@unknownuser said:

Me, as far as biased rendering goes, I'm gonna wait for Tavi to wake up from his winter sleep. I like it simple, and I'm a loyal - though whiny - costumer.

I don't understand why the podium team is being so secretive. I'm not seeing how it's doing them any favours. Indigo is all the talk at the moment as a result of Whaat's endless improvements and feedback with the users. Anything you see on the podium wishlist forum is usually vetoed with little discussion. I do completely agree with their philosophy of keeping the interface simple and sketchup-like however..

@unknownuser said:

In the end (always the same conclusion after debates like this) the conclusion is: Wear what suits you best.

May I ask what you wear?

I just wish someone would tell me what suit to wear You can literally count on your finger the guys who use each render engine well. For 90% of users those 10 hrs will be down the drain - congratulations on wasting your life. I'm not one to argue with the biebel but a well coded biased engine is surely the future of rendering,.. lets hope v2 lives up to the hype

@unknownuser said:

Indigo is free!!

Right you are indeed, but architecture is all about deadlines. If I was to specialise in 3d visualization then maybe it would be a different story. I just checked how long it took for bnb (an indigo-blender user) to produce one of his latest exteriors - 30 hrs! It's just doesn't make sense in terms of workflow

@unknownuser said:

Wait for Podium V2, mate! I cannot go into details, as Tavi would surely have me shot, but V2 has got a great (biased) engine.

Are you part of the podium development team ?

Anywho, I just downloaded the 30 day trial for vray - the interface is full or words I don't understand but I'm simply going though each one one by one, checking, unchecking and then rendering the same test scene. I should have the hang of it soon enough (fingers crossed). On first impressions I'm impressed - just clicking the render button will get you a decent output And it is very fast! More info to follow but perhaps in a different thread.

Podium is fantastically simple and that's what everyone loves about it, but getting the hang of vray or indigo or whatever is a good exercise in grasping the terminology behind rendering. Once you know the meaning behind the terminology, your renders will naturally become better, regardless of what program you use.

@unknownuser said:

Whaat made the exporter in a way that it should be possible.(the option to choose the render method)
But on the other hand, I don't think Ono Sendai (developer of the engine itself) will ever want to code biased algorythms as Indigo basically is meant to be an unbiased render solution.

But you said it yourself, indigo becomes almost unusable when dealing with interiors. And someone said before that biased engines can be physically correct, the coding is just more difficult - surely they should be investing their time in writing these codes..?

I already know this is a stupid question but could indigo switch between unbiased mode and biased mode or does that involve re-writing indigo from scratch?

cool, I'm looking to get into a more efficient acad-su workflow for next year. So I assume you do all the plans and elevations in autocad and then import the plan for the 3d into su? But how about doing all the plans, elevations etc in sketchup and then exporting to acad? or is that too messy?

Hey all, from Dublin but study architecture in Queen's University Belfast. Anyone here actually get to use skecthup in the real world or do you find yourselves forced to use autocad? That's the impression I get from my lecturers anyway

Well I'm a podium user myself and I love it, but it certainly has its limits and i'm beginning to have doubts about v2 - look how fast (free) indigo is moving along. V2 still won't compare to indigo in terms of functionality but it's the speed and that little extra quality that i'll be looking forward to. V2 is taking it's time though..

@unknownuser said:

I need superb quality. I find the long render times horrific - but I have no choice. If you do, by all means, choose a biased renderer.

Well I'm looking at this 30 min vray render here and it looks pretty superb to me, only crit is the floating leaves.
However those blender guys on the indigo forum do make a convincing argument in favour of indigo..

Interesting, the thing is I just can't be bothered getting stuck into indigo cause it takes so feicin long! Although, those guys that use blender on the indigo forum get amazingly crisp/clean images, I can only imagine they must have super computers. I can't see what's the advantage with unbiased renderers, the difference in quality isn't noticeable enough to justify the wait. 30 mins for that image is more than acceptable in my opinion. I guess it's the setup time i'm worried about..
Shame it doesn't support instancing as well

nice! could be developed into some cool furniture

How long did the v-ray render take? It is clearly better than the other renders and I'm tempted to give vray a go. Just a quick question though; how steep is the learning curve? would it be comparable to indigo or are we talking much harder? And just finally, why don't you use vray as your default renderer?

yup the gun is how you pay for gas alright. thanks for the comments!

I imagine 2015 will look something like this..

Rendered with podium on default settings for 30 mins
Aircraft is also from the warehouse - it's a 'yelland fong'

Likewise, i'm a big fan of your work. Always looking forward to your next render