Which plugins and workflow for Revit

[Travis Smith]

Good morning friends. I would like to get some feedback if possible.

 

I have been using 3DS Max and VRay for appox 12 years along with many of the other pre and post production tools. I am currently working for an architect that has fully embraced Revit (and the BIM process) with Sketchup also being used on a more limited basis.

 

Being in a mixed role with graphics management and also producing high end marketing animations and renderings I am looking for the best solution for Revit that allows for good quality renderings to be produced by myself and others in the office. For everyday quick design/visualization I would like to start to move more towards working in Revit and bypass 3DS Max and VRay. I know some would shoot me for saying that. High end and fantastic has its place but quick and pretty (or quick and beautiful if possible) is very important for the design process as well as surviving in a integrated delivery system.

 

My question is, what rendering plugins (if any) are you guys using to leverage Revit's capabilites and what kind of road blocks are you running into? Does Revit meet your rendering and animation needs? If so, what is the workflow that your finding is working best for you and your office.

 

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

Edited May 22, 2012 by Travis Smith
updated title

[Scott Schroeder]

Revit as a rendering engine has zero capabilities and is slow beyond imagination. Mental Ray that ships with Revit is a very stripped down version, think a Ferrari body with a Yugo engine. Your best bet is to stay with Max, but swap Vray for Mental Ray.

 

With Max's and Revit's file linking capabilities, you won't really need to run into long exporting/importing processes. You'll be able to keep a live link back to Revit so you'll get changes as they come. You'll keep the Revit materials but gain a stronger and faster version of Mental Ray.

 

[Justin Hunt]

We are in the same boat, After a short demonstration using 360 render (Autodesk's cloud rendering solution) I can see a way forward using Revit for rendering. We are in the process of testing it at the moment and so for I am quite impressed.

 

The speed is really good and it frees up the workstation to carry on working whilst waiting for a render to process. Downside is eating up bandwidth for uploading models. Not so much of a problem for larger firms though. You cant render walkthoughs yet, you can render panoramas but cant down load the stitched panorama, just the strip of 6 images. You can render solar studies either at set times or for the whole day.

 

We have to go through a process of optimizing the materials in the libraries, as you would do for the families.

 

Now for the interesting part, the cloud rending is not using mentalray or iray for that matter. Adesk apparently has written its own renderer for this purpose. I dont know many details other than its still relatively young, as is 360 rendering. Quality isn't bad, its no Vray but good enough for DA images. We'll have to see how far it can be pushed for marketing quality images.

 

If you are on subscription, then 360 rendering is "Free". If not they had a 75 credit system where each render will use 5 credits. Although than may have changed in the past couple of days.

 

As for the new linking revit files, it works great on simple models, how ever falls over with mildly complex models. You obviously still need to convert all your materials to Vray materials as before. Its a step in the right direction, but still needs a lot of work.

 

jhv

[John Dollus]

well, you can certainly use mental ray and the 360 cloud service from within revit to create good images in a respectable amount of time. Animation is a different story though. If you produce quite a few high end animations as your initial post implies, then i'm afraid you are a bit out of luck from within Revit and you should instead concentrate on a good workflow from Revit to Max. The file linking can work out well but with so much max experience, you may very well find the workflow limiting and inefficient.