Hello from Texas

[glenncox]

Hello everyone,

My name is Glenn Cox and I am a landscape architect in Houston.

I'm trying to change my focus from design and client interaction, to one that is more 3D computer rendering based. I am still in the infancy of my transition, so any suggestions would be helpful.

I have 20 years of 2d AutoCAD experience, and an equal amount of hand rendering. I have just begun to delve into the 3d world, using autocad, sketch up, structure studios. I am considering all options, including 3ds max, lumion, lumen rt, etc. final product will be primarily stills and videos for small to medium landscape architecture firms, so vegetation is important, as is a rapid turnaround.

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance,

Glenn

[Francisco Penaloza]

Hello Glen from Houston Texas,

Why the heck you will want to switch from a more profitable profession as Architect/Landscaping to a pain in the B!@~ profession like Arch Viz....

If you have experience doing hand renderings, you already have half of the work done , Photoshop should be your new bread and butter software, and if you want easy interaction with other Architectural firms 3Ds Max is your best option. If you want to do it in a smaller scale Cinema 4D will do great too, but loading REVIT files in any other software that is not inside Autodesk circle is a pain. So Sketch up- 3Ds Max-Photoshop will help you in your daily task.

BTW I used to live and work in Houston TX, I moved to South California because I didn't have more job of Arch Viz over there lol.

[beestee]

Here is a good write-up from a well regarded member of the 3d rendering community comparing the two most commonly used software packages for creating realistic 3d vegetation:

 

 

http://bertrand-benoit.com/blog/2011/05/04/digital-bark-and-sap-onyx-vs-growfx/

 

 

But this approach is not exactly what I would call rapid-turnaround unless you have time to devote to building up a library, or additional budget to purchase libraries of pre-made 3d vegetation.

 

 

If you are required to do animation in a rapid-turnaround situation, then there would be some significant benefits to considering the real-time packages that you mentioned, but there will also be significant compromise with the realism in that approach, and from what I have seen in these packages the ready-to-use vegetation catalog is not very deep.