Sketchup & Shaderlight vs. 3ds max & vray

[rogue3d]

My office is looking into adding shaderlight to their sketchup workflow. I'm the in-house 3d artist working in 3ds max and vray. They want my input on how to incorporate it into their workflow.

 

The problem is that they are terrible at sketchup. I spend more time cleaning up their messes or flat out rebuilding from scratch then anything else (which not only adds to the amount of time it takes to complete a project; but derails any hope of proper post-production). Editing their work of course takes time, they are looking for a faster solution.

 

I've glanced over shaderlight and it seems like a brute force rendering engine with little control. I'm assuming that this will equate to longer render times. In addition, due to their poor modeling and scene construction skills, I have no doubt that once they see what happens when light + realistic materials are added, their final rendering is going to be anything but realistic. Plus they can't make up their mind and I'm used as a design development tool far more then a production tool. which means they will render and re-render adding to the time it's going to take to get something out of shaderlight.

 

f.y.i - I've been through this in the past when the hot new render engine was Podium for sketchup and it took them 3 hours to render an 800x600 image.......

 

So any advice how to tactfully say "it's not the software, or the hardware, it's you......stop trying to find a one button fix and either learn how to do it properly or trust the people you have working for you?" Or at the least some hard facts to dispute their claims of how great Sketchup & shaderlight is vs. Max and Vray?

[Scott Schroeder]

Hit em where they only know one thing. Money. Show them the hours it takes to fix crappy SketchUp models. Show them the downtime it takes to render long image times, and how you could potentially miss a deadline. Show them the time differences, not only to create but to render. The only facts you can use are the ones gained from your in-house work comparisons.

 

If you want brutal advice, start looking for a new company to work for. The current one seems to be about cheap and quick, and those people are near impossible to convince otherwise. They will always talk the so-so render over the high quality if it means they can save 50 cents.