Hi everyone

yesterday I decided I wanted to rearrange my furniture in my 20m² student room. Ofcourse, before I did so, I had to find out the right configuration in SU. And when I'd done that, I thought I'd make a render of it in Artlantis (really I prefer Vray, but I'm having some trouble with my license...) Anyway. I think it's turned out quite nicely. Added a screen and a color dodge layer in photoshop to finetune the atmosphere.

Of course it's a lot messier in reality

Well, you could argue that each step is big enough to serve as a landing, since two feet and a walking cane easily fit on each of them, so old people can take that rest.

really nice... but if it's a kid's room, shouldn't it be messier?

nice house!

I like it too how you took that photo 'almost done' from the exact same angle as the render gives us a good chance to compare them.

hi I do know of one renderer that can render fog...
it's POV-Ray.
freeware, bit slow but very precise. SU2POV exporter can be found here

it does a constant fog if you've turned on SU fog, but in the renderer itself it's possible to do groundfog as well.
only disadvantage of this renderer is that it partly has a text UI.

Hey everyone
I'm still sort of new here but hey this is fun. I notice people seem to have the same ideas... just a little while back I modeled an i-phone so I could test light-emitting materials in v-ray for SU. So I'll just post the renders...

And this is the sketchup file. Enjoy! I took the measurements from my own i-phone, and scaled everything by a factor 10. Though I didn't put in all the details...

hi Arjun I'm a student of architecture at TU Delft and the same discussion is going on here. Although here it's Maya instead of Max. Same thing.
Now for the answer to your question:

There is no right answer!

Some will prefer one, some the other. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage of the expensive packages is that they have all the advanced stuff already built-in, so they can do more. This is however also their main disadvantage, for it creates a steeper learning curve.

As for architecture @ TU Delft... we're still getting lessons in maya and autocad, but when it comes down to it - everyone uses sketchup. Even (some of) the teachers are saying "well, ok the curriculum says you ought to make a maya model, but if you hand in a SU model, it's fine with us!"

Personally, I like Maya a lot and I use it whenever I'm doing animation... but then, you were looking specifically for Stills. So, use SU! And tell your classmate to go and animate things if he likes Max so much

well, one could take the shot from the rear of the house... where the bbq is and the gezelligheid (a dutch word that isn't translate-able and which everyone should know )

you might want to add the taps... they greatly contribute to the sad feeling of the original picture. they are like little persons, bent over in grief...
oh my I'm getting poetic. stop me.

also, to make it a bit more HQ-looking you could add some textures and bump to the wood and the stucco. Maybe a stain on one of the walls...
I really like the finish on the tabletops though!

awesome! where can I get those people? I'm quite bored with Sang, Nancy and Bryce...

chris, these are a few rendering applications that I'm aware of, and what are to me their major pro's and cons.
Artlantis - (seperate application) really easy to use. comes with a material library. also, the studio version offers good animation options. reasonable quality, but not physically accurate, and has some quirks with its radiosity.
V-Ray - (plugin) very good quality. physically accurate lighting. option to light with hdri-maps. option for toon-materials. but way more complex to use.
POV-Ray - (seperate application) free. also physically reasonably accurate, but very slow if you want good quality. an exporter was made for SU6, but works with SU7 as well.
Podium - (plugin) rather cheap, very easy to use, but too few controls for my taste.

Now there are a lot more around that I haven't tried out myself, this is just what I think about the ones that I have. I must say my personal favourite is V-Ray, but Artlantis is a good second, especially when there are plants involved - because of a library that my boss has bought...

good luck choosing...