Hi,
I am an Architect and doing occasionally visualizations, but I'm not gratified to the results. They are ok, but requires tons of photoshopping. Renderings is mostly just a 3D-geometry and some lighting and everything else is made in PS. I want to learn to make better renderings, but I'm not sure what is worth of learning.
I use Archicad to model everything. That's my basic tool. I have done renderings with cinerender but there is some issues with that. Vegetation is maybe the biggest. I haven't solved how to get realistic vegetations to the renderings with AC and cinerender. Maybe it's just not possible?
So the first question is, should I learn to use some other 3d-modeling software? I know that 3ds max is almost a standard in architectural visualization, but I have a mac and Cinema4d seems the best solution for that. Blender is also tempting because it's free, but is it easy to import archicad model to Blender? And are there available some 3rd party vegetations for that?
Is it necessary to buy and learn Cinema and maybe external renderer to get next level in visualizations? I know that learning is slow, but I want to do it. I just need to know which direction should I go?
So what do you guys recommend to start doing?