Ah, the age old question of which software to invest in. I work in a medium sized architectural office (about 50 people between 2 offices). Currently we have a smattering of software used by several people. Our production work is done in Revit, and post production work is done using Adobe products (PS, Illustrator, In-Design, etc).
That said, the modeling + rendering software is all over the place. Some use a combination of Rhino/Flamingo/VRay, some use Sketchup/Maxwell, and some use Sketchup/3DS Max/Mental Ray.
We are trying to standardize one workflow. We need something intuitive to most people in the office, but can produce a range of quick concept images, all the way to photo realistic images and try to control cost + training budgets.
I'm one of the sketchup/3ds max guys and appreciate the level of control 3ds max presents. However, it's complex and very expensive. Training would be intensive and costly to get everybody switched over. So I started looking at Maxwell. Most people in our office know sketchup really well but would struggle with Rhino. I think I could be convinced Maxwell is the way to go - due to intuitiveness, plugin directly to sketchup, floating licenses, etc.
However, the hang up is with the quality and time. I've heard quality images take a really long time to get the graininess out of the image. Is this still true? Often we need to get marketable images extremely fast - and photo realism is a rare luxury and less important.
I'm looking for input/opinions on these software platforms - knowing that super high level rendering capability is not necessarily the goal. Speed, cost, ease of use are all important.
Thanks,
Ryan