Jose Negrete

Hi Declan, I recommend Nikos' work. I believe there is a lot of his content available thanks to Chaos group. https://www.creativelighting.co/live-shows/ Also, check out: https://www.stateofartacademy.com/courses/ https://brickvisual.com/academy/

Here's another reference for you. https://www.cgarchitect.com/features/articles/f5dddae4-business-in-arch-viz-vol-10-finding-your-look I would focus on showing the space. In your first video there are a lot of close-ups

Hi Declan, First of all, I want to say I appreciate your posts lately as it reminds of years ago when this forum was more active. I work in archviz but would still say all of the above to your initial post. Most of the time I avoid uv unwrapping, use tri-planar mapping, and/or use procedural materials if I can. I used 3DS Max since 2005 but eventually rendered stills and animation in Lumion for about 5 years because of the library of entourage it has and the "what you see is what you get" workflow while building the scene. I'd still prep my scene in 3DS max. I buy assets I need and when I can't find something I model it. I would add to your core workflow as you go rather than trying to learn everything first. Some visual scripting doodling eventually comes in handy whether its grasshopper, geometry nodes, or tyflow. Some examples are a column generator w/ geometry nodes or procedural fences. I've switched to blender 3D around 5 years ago now and its more fun for me to use than 3DS Max ever was. For me, the add-on ecosystem was very familiar because when I was in 3DS Max I was constantly looking for scripts or plugins. I really like the shortcut-key heavy workflow in blender but this was after I'd forced myself to learn shortcuts for different software over the years anyway. Try to keep navigation controls straight when moving between Rhino/Revit/Sketchup for example. I'd say you can find similar libraries for blender as you can in 3DS Max. Landscaping is also a hurdle that requires either forest pack or geo-scatter to setup quickly. it also helps to have some form of asset library for when you model things or make procedural materials you want to re-use. For that I'd recommend Connecter app or blender's internal asset library. For archviz there are some popular brands I see repeatedly. Some examples are Louis Poulsen pendant lamps, Herman Miller furniture, Steelcase furniture, etc. All of these major brands provide 3D models and some even provide viz versions in addition to revit versions.

I wouldn't worry about certifications, I think a strong portfolio is more important. I got a 3DS max certification over a decade ago and renewed it a couple times but it didn't help me other than to verify I knew a handful of obscure settings that served no purpose to my daily work. I think your tool is not as important as your portfolio.

Just logged in for the first time in a while wondering the same. Is there a discord server "everyone's" in?

? I try to do some cleanup in the Revit model as well before exporting it as .FBX. For any edits I've done to the mesh I usually compare against a new update to see if I can retain my modified version.

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Hi Eliot, We have a mix of software use - 3DS Max + Corona/Vray, Maya, Twinmotion, Lumion, Blender 3D, UE, Adobe suite, etc. Similar systems except we have 3990x threadripper for CPUs. I think the Xeon's single core speed is low enough to cause a bottleneck with most Max processes being single threaded. Additionally, I would check what type of network speed you have. If you're loading several xref from network on a slow network that could be a headache. We upgraded to gigabit network and that improved read/write speeds. Even w/ the faster network and workstations. When using max, I break up scene to xref files then when those get referenced in set them to not visible, ignore animation, etc.

Check out Cityscape pro by Simpolium. https://www.simpolium.com/

I had been exporting Revit models to .FBX with the twinmotion plugin until recently as it seems that the newer version of that plugin exports only twinmotion format now. The benefit for me was the materials were converted to standard in the .FBX using that plugin. I've tried linking Revit to 3DS Max years ago and it worked but I would end up breaking the link at some point anyway so I stopped using it. +1 to Francisco's suggestion to learn Revit so you may do some edits there before exporting out. Sometimes it's convenient to do model edits there or even filter things out before exporting/linking.

The new version is typically released in early November.

To add to what VelvetElvis said, I worked mainly on a MSI GS75 for the majority of last year. Static renderings in vray/corona/lumion, UE4 w/ gpu light baking and animation rendered in lumion. The laptop was able to do all of the work but I had the fans on max speed most days and eventually one of them failed and I switched back to a desktop.

Hi Francisco, I'm doing dedicated in-house arch viz. I've worked with a handful of Architect teams over the last couple years that have dedicated in-house arch viz as well. I also remember this forum being more active when I first started to frequent it but it seems facebook groups or maybe discord servers may be more popular these days.

I actually wanted to get one of those rotring to compare but jetpens has been sold out of it.

The Ohto MF-20K3B is my favorite for a couple years now. It's as slim as the flat c in my original post and holds 2x D1 refills and a 0.5mm lead pencil.