joshuahale1

You can't go wrong with either Modo or Cinema4D, both of which offer perpetual licenses. I use Modo with Octane and it works quite nice together. I model most of my own buildings so Modo's toolset works well for that.

Having used Modo in arch viz for over 6 years, I can at least share with you my experience. Modeling: If you do all your modeling then Modo is much faster and fluid. With the addition of Mesh Ops, Modo has Houdini or Rail Clone like procedural modeling functionality. Stability: Modo's stability is like most 3d apps, probably less stable than C4D and similar to 3dsMax and Maya. Rendering: Internal - Modo's renderer is very good and can be setup to do progressive renderings like Maxwell with great results, also very good plugins for Vray and Octane (I use Octane). They're overhauling their rendering API for better integration with 3rd party renders from what I hear. Large scenes: I can't speak for C4D but with Modo, you have to be careful with scene management (particularly the shader tree). Modo can handle large scenes fine if you take the right steps such as converting any geo that doesn't animate to static meshes. I import Revit files via DXF in meters, all the geo comes in clean with the normals flipped (easy to fix, select all imported layers->switch to polygon mode-> press 'F' key to flip them). Materials are not imported though so you have to assign them yourself. FBX from Revit is a mess unless you process it through Max. One final thing: One thing I really like about Modo is its consistency. Once you learn the basic approach to Modo (action centers, falloffs, gradients, profiles) it's applicable to all areas of the app.

I foresee in the near future a convergence between real-time and offline as workflows, shaders, materials, etc. will start to overlap more and more. Couple that with the advances in GPU rendering engines like Otoy Brigade blurring the line between offline rendering and real-time rendering.