Best software to use.

[LoKeL]

Hey Everyone,

 

Im new here and ive started to get into doing architectural visualization and Im not sure which software to use. Ive seen some threads that talk about this, but they arent up to date with the new Maya 2012 and Max. Ive taken a brief class on doing a room in Maya, but I see alot of people use Max. Ive started to use Sketchup as well, as it seems fast to get your foundation setup, but Im looking for a software to do final details and such.

 

Im wondering what the difference is between the 2 and why you choose the one over the other.

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated,

 

LoKeL:D

 

PS anyother software other then max and maya that you guys use Id like to hear about too.

[ihabkal]

every arch companu in Ontario is using sketchup, maybe you should learn that it would be so much easier for you to apply for a job.

[LoKeL]

Thanks Im defiantly gonna learn sketchup. Good to know im going in the right direction.

Im actually looking to startup a small business where I show people what there small or large home renos are going to look like before they start shelling out the cash to contractors, so they can change anything they need to without it costing them lots to change plans.

[Brodie Geers]

I've not used Maya but from what I gather its supposed to be more geared towards animation and rigging apparently?

 

I typically use sketchup for all of the modeling I can and only go to 3ds Max for very high poly stuff like high poly furniture, cars, and trees.

 

-Brodie

[LoKeL]

Ya thats what I would be using Maya and or Max for. Doing the finishing touches, adding furniture, lamps, stuff like that. What do you do your materials, textures, bump maps and such in?

[Scott Schroeder]

Max is more geared in arch viz. Maya is more for video games and film. Granted, modeling in either program is the same concept but the user interfaces are different. For detailing, Mudbox, Sculptris, or Z-Brush are key as well. Slowly, more and more firms are adopting using Z-Brush or Mudbox to add in fine detail and bake out normal maps.

 

Blender is taking a foothold as well. I've seen quite a few US firms using Rhino as well.

[pumbaa]

Actually a lot of companies use Max for game development as well. I started out using Maya, been using it for years. But I am actually in the process of converting to Max right now, I find Maya quite buggy and uncompatible. Also an advantage in Max is the use of the modifier stack that gives you more flexibility in editing your meshes whenever (as long as you don't collapse it). Maya has history, but I find it very unreliable editing commands that are at the bottom of the history stack.

 

And the biggest advantage Max has over Maya has to be the thousands of plugins and stuff downloadable all over the net. Foliage for an example, I've been trying to find a good way of creating nice grass in Maya, it's hard. Max has Autograss, OnyxTree (Which is getting more & more compatible with Maya, but made for Max as I understand it) to name a few.

You have awesome libraries of V-Ray materials available for download, for Max, even models, more often in 3ds format which Max can handle than obj format which every program can import.

 

In conclusion, I would recommend using Max. I am not experienced at all in sketchup tho.

[LoKeL]

Thanks VE and pumbaa.

I think a big benefit you mention P is the different plugins and how its less buggy. The little big ive used Maya, Ive found it buggy. Maya does have this grass and plant feature now, but its not very nice looking. Im defiantly going to play around with max, vray and sketchup together and see how they work out.

Have you guys heard much about Maxwell render?

Also do you know much about the difference between max and max design? I read there is lighting difference and such in the design version. The only reason I ask is I also enjoy character modelling. And im not sure which venue to take.

Edited August 26, 2011 by LoKeL

[M V]

SketchUp gas made leaps and strides in the last 2 years. For arch viz it's great. Fast to learn and there are a million plugins to take it as far as you want. Plus, it's affordable. 3DS dominates the pro market, but Autodesk just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The more I can avoid them, the better.

[pumbaa]

@LoKeL: Np mate, just happy if I can help some. I have no experience in either Max Design or Maxwell so I can't comment on it, but I do know this dude who uses Cinema 4D and from what I've seen from it it seems you can get very quick satisfactory results with it.

 

@Valerio: Price is a huge plus on SketchUp's side, that's for sure. It's probably easier to learn than Max too. For Max tutorials, check out either Digital Tutors or Gnomon DVD's, they're great.

 

Good luck LoKeL, I am interested in what you might find out from your research so keep us updated

[LoKeL]

@Valerio, I didnt even know about the Sketchup plugins, thanks Ill have to go check them out. What kind of plugins are you using?

 

I think what I might do to start is use SketchUp and use Blender for any high poly modeling I have to do. Im familiar with it and my husband uses it all the time. Im looking into using Vray as my Render too. Still undecided on that one. And of course photoshop, cant miss that, lol Since Im just learning and starting my business, im gonna keep the costs low and go from there.

 

I really appreciate all your helpful info and guidence. I look forward to posting much more as I progress.

[pumbaa]

I think those are very wise decisions. Probably easier to learn = Quicker getting stuff done, and most importantly, as you say keep the costs down. I am not familiar with SketchUp's renderers, but I've used Mental Ray and V-ray and V-ray was the renderer that made rendering fun and comprehensible for me.

 

Looking forward for your first renders! Good luck LoKeL

[M V]

I seriously have over 50 plugins on my machine. There are some really great pay ones on Smustard and through Vali Architects. The folks on Sketchucation are awesome and have made some incredible free plugins. These are a must to take the program to the next level. I also use the VRay plugin to render inside of SU, it's the best by far for obvious reasons. There some great affordable renderers out there and Kerkythea which is free.

[Brodie Geers]

Lokel,

 

I've been using a Sketchup/Maxwell render combo for a few years now with some 3ds Max thrown in for high poly stuff and I'm slowly learning Vray for future animation work. I think you're on the right track with a Sketchup and Blender mix and Vray is a great renderer (it's just that, like any good biased renderer, it has lots and lots of settings, many of which have highly nonintuitive names or settings).

 

Sketchup is great but be sure to browse the plugins occasionally as people are always making new ones. There are a couple threads if you browse sketchucation about which plugins people find most useful. A few must haves for me are Purge all, ThomThom's Cleanup, Joint Push Pull, bezier spline, make faces, soap skin bubble, and CLF's scale rotate multiple. I have many others but those are the ones I tend to use on most jobs.

 

Since you asked about Maxwell, I think it's a wonderful unbiased render engine. For about the same price as Vray you get the render engine and you can download as many plugins as you want (you don't have to decide if you want Vray for SU or Vray for 3ds Max or whatever up front). Currently they have plugins for 3ds Max, Sketchup, Cinema 4D, Houdini, Lightwave, Maya, Modo, Rhino, and a few others (but not blender for some reason I'm afraid). It also has it's own Studio program. This is a life saver for Sketchup because the Studio can handle very high poly scenes. This allows you to import your Sketchup scene (building and site) and then import your cars and trees into Maxwell Studio and place them there (placing objects in studio is a bit clunky but you get used to it and it becomes pretty quick). It also has a very nice interactive render engine (no need to buy something separate like Vray RT). And the render settings are much more intuitive than a biased engine. All of the settings deal with real world parameters. There's still some language to learn but if you want to figure out what turbidity means in terms of environment, in addition to the manual, you can just google it and wikipedia will give you a wealth of info.

 

Disadvantages with Maxwell? It's only got 1 quality setting - High. That's not as bad as it sounds because it clears up quite quickly in the beginning (particularly with the interactive render engine) so test renders aren't a big deal. However, final renders can take awhile depending on computer power and how little noise you want. Out of habit I usually just run my final renders over night but in a crunch I can have something in good shape within an hour or so. It will mean though, that Maxwell isn't really good for animations however. Vray users typically use a lot of tricks to get render times down for animations - maxwell has very few of these tricks.

 

-Brodie

[xEndlessxUrbiax]

You can import SketchUp models straight into 3ds Max, which is my current work flow and it's been great so far. The materials from SketchUp also get imported and make it easy to alter/adjust in Max. I find these two programs to really benefit from one another. Max has a very steep learning curve, however, but that's the same with most rendering softwares. Max is also very expensive. A co-worker of mine uses Kerkythea to render, which is also compatible with SketchUp, it is a free software and you can achieve some great results with it, plus they have a really supportive online community. Max also just came out with a new rendering engine called iRay which is very easy to use compared to vRay or mentalray.

 

All in all I suggest you use 3dsMax if you have the money (or are a pirate), or Kerkythea if you don't, to render out your SketchUp models. Photoshop for post production yes?

[LoKeL]

@ Brodie You've certainly given me alot to think about. Im going to have to try and demo them and see.

@Endless, thanks for the heads up about Kerkythea. Im going to play around with these 3 renderes with sketchup and blender.

 

Thanks so much guys for the great info, certainly given me alot to think about. This community rocks

[Brodie Geers]

For what it's worth I tried Kerkythea as well but it's been a few years. I found it to be a very nice renderer also. The only reason I didn't go further with it was because I found maxwell. But as a free option it was great and as I recall it has unbiased and biased options which is a really good idea.

 

-Brodie

[LoKeL]

@Brodie, Im defiantly going to play around with Kerkythea and see. Cant pass up trying the free option,lol.

[Helen Ni]

I just give my personal explanation. Both Maya and 3ds Max are commercial software programs used for three-dimensional computer graphics work. Maya has versions for use in Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The program 3ds Max is only compatible with Windows and Mac computers.

[comatose]

How about Modo? It is a real pleasure modeling with Modo (check out the caddbudy plugin and align vertex script) similar to Sketchup but with more tools for finer details. The Shader tree is great too. It works just like photoshop layers. The rendering is just a little bit behind Vray in quality but I think its faster. it costs much less than Autodesk products - so if you are working alone it could save some money. Go to http://www.luxology.com

 

to the maxwell user- how do you deal with grass and vegetation? does Maxwell have instancing or replicators? I know Thearender has instancing but I couldnt get the same results for vegetation as i did using modo replicators .

 

*Forgot to mention Modo is compatible with both Mac and PC

[lylemills]

This is a loaded question as there is no "Best software to use." It is whatever you feel comfortable using and are able to get up to speed quickly on and be competent with. Get the trial versions of software you are interested in and give them a go. You can usually get a sense of what they are about in the trial time period. That being said....

 

Sketchup is easy to learn and best of all its free! Most companies use it to some extent but don't rely on it for final work as it tends to look a bit cartoony and amateurish. I use Maxon's Cinema 4D which is a direct competitor to 3DS max in the 3D modelling and rendering market. It is quite intuitive and rather easy to get up and running on quickly. Plus the renders are very good out of the box.

 

However, all things said, you really have to know photoshop as that is where all the post production is done, and where the ability to set yourself apart from others happens.

[Brodie Geers]

to the maxwell user- how do you deal with grass and vegetation? does Maxwell have instancing or replicators? I know Thearender has instancing but I couldnt get the same results for vegetation as i did using modo replicators .

 

It does indeed. I've been working with this quite a bit lately and it works quite well. It uses normal instances for memory savings. I'm not sure it has some of the more sophisticated aspects of this which Vray seems to have (i'm only a novice at Vray but I gather that it has some capabilities Maxwell doesn't). However, those seem more geared towards animation, which Maxwell can do but without the tricks available to a biased engine, render times are typically unacceptable.

 

Within 3ds Max there's a nice proxy system in which you can turn a tree into a proxy represented by a number of points. These proxies can be scattered about using something like Object Paint or Advanced Paint. Pflow works well to this same effect. You can see some of this at work in the food/nature gallery...

 

http://www.maxwellrender.com/gallery/index.php?album=nature

 

There's also this image of...a lot? of buddhas

 

http://www.maxwellrender.com/gallery/index.php?album=technical&image=062.jpg

 

-Brodie

Edited September 12, 2011 by brodie_geers

[Brodie Geers]

Sketchup is easy to learn and best of all its free!

 

One small caveat here would be that SU 8 free doesn't have a .dwg importer which is quite important for us. However, even still at $500 it's one of the cheapest modeling softwares out there.

 

-Brodie

[M V]

I have yet to dive into MAX because SU+Vray+Photoshop has been all I have needed. I do not do any animation work though. I have been on the wire about Maxwell. I love the renders I have seen but there are quite a few discussion on this board that say to stay away from it because its just too slow. It is rather overwhelming how many modeling and rendering programs that are out there these days. I had to just say to myself to focus on SketchUp and learning Vray for now. I was using Kerkythea a few years ago, which is a great free rendering engine with a 64 bit version thats in beta now.

 

It's really all about what you can afford and how much time you have to learn and MASTER each program. Knowing 10% of a program is a waste of money. I say pick the ones that appeal to you and learn every setting and tool proficiently. Nowadays its all about doing it faster then doing it at the best quality. Clients' budgets are tight and ours are even tighter do to outsourcing and an over-saturated marketing of guys who will do it cheaper. If you can get a rendering to a client in a day, they will always pick you over the guy that needs a week but was $100 cheaper on his quote. Time is money afterall.

[Brodie Geers]

I have been on the wire about Maxwell. I love the renders I have seen but there are quite a few discussion on this board that say to stay away from it because its just too slow.

 

If you haven't tried it, I recommend giving the demo a shot. I don't find it slow at all, but I guess it depends on your workflow. The interactive engine works great and full renders clear up a lot on the front end. For final renders I usually set them to about 4,000px wide and hit render when I head home for the night. It doesn't take 16 hours to clean up but it doesn't hurt anything and comes out nice and clear when I get in the next morning. Only thing I wouldn't use it for is animation because there's no Low quality setting to speed up the process.

 

-Brodie