Hi all,
I need some advice from professionals about what to do next. I have been in business now for under a year, and before that had done CAD work for years as an employee. We are in the peculiar spot of having a great deal of trust from our contractors. When they have brought needs we have found creative ways to meet them every time. For instance one needed to have drone videos of all the houses, and even though we had no experience we bought the equipment, learned the programs, and are producing high quality video for a number of clients. Another needed to estimate excavation work, and we learned photogrammetry and civil 3d, again buying the equipment and training hard.
This pattern is about to occur again, but we have made too many mistakes thus far, and really need some good advice about how to do this right. We need to improve on the quality of our renders. We use AutoCAD Architecture for the entire time, until a bit of post production done in pixlr.
This is not sustainable as it is, because the renders are not good enough, and the process too complex for the entry level help. For this reason I am considering moving over to SU, because it is touted as very user friendly, and is more likely to be accessible to the employees.
This is a complex issue, because we produce floorplans first, and Ive looked briefly at Google Layout, so that the entire modeling job could be done with a single system, and it seems promising, but how does it compare to ACA. Is that a switch that can even be considered from a floor plan, elevation, and section standpoint? Those are part of every set we produce, basic elements.
If SU and Layout can serve the Architectural purposes, where do I go from there?
Cursory web research lead me to an interest in Octane, because of the simplicity of the machine needed, and that with V-ray I would have to purchase multiple licenses to use multiple machines and get quick renders. That is an absolute deal breaker for me. I need to be able to set up a little farm for us with minimal exposure to licensing fees. I've also heard that V-ray requires much more in the way of learning to get going, while octane is much more straightforward. I read also that building machines for octane is much simpler as you can just load up on Graphic Cards, since it doesn't tax the processor.
Also, Maya or 3dsmax or something needs to serve as middleman here yes?
Is PS the best option for 2017 for post production?
We are going to need to find a happy medium where we can produce renders that are virtually indistinguishable from photographs, without wasting any time.
Thank you all