Can any Ninjas help a new firm?

[garyg1]

Hi all,

I need some advice from professionals about what to do next. I have been in business now for under a year, and before that had done CAD work for years as an employee. We are in the peculiar spot of having a great deal of trust from our contractors. When they have brought needs we have found creative ways to meet them every time. For instance one needed to have drone videos of all the houses, and even though we had no experience we bought the equipment, learned the programs, and are producing high quality video for a number of clients. Another needed to estimate excavation work, and we learned photogrammetry and civil 3d, again buying the equipment and training hard.

 

This pattern is about to occur again, but we have made too many mistakes thus far, and really need some good advice about how to do this right. We need to improve on the quality of our renders. We use AutoCAD Architecture for the entire time, until a bit of post production done in pixlr.

 

This is not sustainable as it is, because the renders are not good enough, and the process too complex for the entry level help. For this reason I am considering moving over to SU, because it is touted as very user friendly, and is more likely to be accessible to the employees.

 

This is a complex issue, because we produce floorplans first, and Ive looked briefly at Google Layout, so that the entire modeling job could be done with a single system, and it seems promising, but how does it compare to ACA. Is that a switch that can even be considered from a floor plan, elevation, and section standpoint? Those are part of every set we produce, basic elements.

 

If SU and Layout can serve the Architectural purposes, where do I go from there?

 

Cursory web research lead me to an interest in Octane, because of the simplicity of the machine needed, and that with V-ray I would have to purchase multiple licenses to use multiple machines and get quick renders. That is an absolute deal breaker for me. I need to be able to set up a little farm for us with minimal exposure to licensing fees. I've also heard that V-ray requires much more in the way of learning to get going, while octane is much more straightforward. I read also that building machines for octane is much simpler as you can just load up on Graphic Cards, since it doesn't tax the processor.

 

Also, Maya or 3dsmax or something needs to serve as middleman here yes?

 

Is PS the best option for 2017 for post production?

 

We are going to need to find a happy medium where we can produce renders that are virtually indistinguishable from photographs, without wasting any time.

 

 

Thank you all

[philippelamoureux]

3ds max with corona renderer 1.5 might be your best bet. Corona is very cheap (it's about 25/30/44 euros per month for 1 station and 3/5/10 render nodes) and the new 1.5 version has nice features that can let you do the post prod directly in corona itself. Corona is straight forward and easier to learn than v-ray imo. A 3ds max license cost about 185$ (CAD) per month.

 

Also, the workflow between ACA and 3ds max might be easier since they're both autodesk products. You can import cad plans in max and use snap tools on the 2d plans to draw 3d shapes.

 

An example of images 100% made with corona, without photoshop post prod. https://corona-renderer.com/forum/index.php/topic,13691.0.html

and https://corona-renderer.com/forum/index.php/topic,13273.0.html

 

 

If you absolutely want to stick to Sketchup you could use vray for sketchup but don't expect to be able to make renders that looks like photographs that easily (if possible at all). Vray might be a bit expensive though. Octane isn't cheap either.

Edited November 1, 2016 by philippelamoureux

[Chris MacDonald]

It seems to me that licencing is your main concern, so with that in mind I'd go along the route of Corona.

 

As for computational power; when producing photorealistic images you are going to have to invest in processing power whether it be CPU or GPU (both have benefits and drawbacks) as at the high end you're going to be achieving much the same render times regardless of the render engine you choose. It's either that or use online render farms which have a cost overhead, but you aren't paying for them when they're not in use.

 

For the 3D software, you can do everything entirely in Sketchup if you want (I do loads in Sketchup) but you will struggle with the lack of third party assets (trees, cars, etc) in comparison to 3DS Max, and more importantly when working on large scenes the ability to handle huge amounts of geometry and proper UV mapping/unwrapping. If the world was a different place and Autodesk didn't have a monopoly on the market, I would be thinking long and hard about moving to something such as Modo.

 

One thing to keep in mind is that the "throw everything at it and it'll be fine" approach can work and arguably for you always has, but most people here will agree that it's taken them years and years to get any good at what they do and that it has very little to do with the rendering software or computational power. A quick forum search for topics such as "why doesn't this look photoreal" and "I have VRay but my images still suck!?" should give you an insight as to how many people get into it with the mindset that it's just about picking a "better" render engine to produce better images (I'm not suggesting this is you, but just be wary it's a large investment and the learning requirements are vast).

Edited November 1, 2016 by Macker

[philippelamoureux]

And OP can also rely on online renderfarm if he needs to and don't want to build the renderfarm immediately. Rebusfarm is a very good online farm that works with Corona.

[Scott Schroeder]

If you are going with SketchUp, I would suggest going with Podium as your rendering software. http://suplugins.com/podium/v2-features-page.php It's in the decent category and you get access to a large repository of ready made models compatible with Podium (http://www.suplugins.com/podiumbrowser/index.php). If money is an issue, then paying the software cost for Max just to use it as an overpriced rendering middleware is just a plain waste of money.

 

Online rendering farms are only cost effective for large scale jobs. They will cost you more money in the long run if you use them for stills than it would cost you for a one time render farm build.

 

Photoshop is pretty much a must here. With the $9.99 a month subscription cost, that one is easy to justify.

[garyg1]

Thank you everyone for your advice very much.

 

Corona is very attractive, I am still unsure of how to proceed though. I note that Phillippe said that Octane is expensive, but it does not seem to be ($399 single license). Corona is priced well and I love the post production capability. I agree with you that using Vray we will simply fail to achieve proper results simply because it will be too much for a busy firm to learn in the middle of actual projects for picky clients. For that Reason both Corona and Octane, the easiest ones that look truly realistic, seem far superior for my purposes. I'm going to try Corona's 45 day demo no matter what.

 

I need the machine to complete a fully realistic still in an hour or less, and I would want under a half hour if possible. Would I get a motherboard capable of having two blazing fast CPUs, and then cluster them to achieve the correct timeframe?

 

Would this not be far more expensive than doing the analog of this in the gpu world, building a system with like 4 titans?

 

How significant of a time saver in both learning curve and workflow is it to have the post work done inside of Corona?

 

My interest in sketchup stems completely from the ease of use argument. I need new drafters to be able to come in and proceed with intern level tasks without a great deal of training or degree requirement. Sketchup is intuitive and easy, and I've seen videos of the workflow between it and octane that seemed very workable to produce client visualizations. Does the fact that Octane will work directly from Sketchup without the hugely expensive 3ds max count for anything?

 

I recall Chris mentioning the lack of third party assets but aren't there well devloped 3d model libraries such as YepSketch and so forth? or are they simply insufficient?

 

Thank you all

Gary

[beestee]

I suggest that you take a look at Lumion Pro. It is costly on it's own, but it has tremendous capability on it's own. It is very simple and straightforward to use. Some people don't like it because the ceiling for achievable quality isn't as high as other options (VRay, Corona) but in real world use I find it to be an ideal trade-off.

 

It comes with a very broad content library with some excellent placement and management tools.

 

I do not know how well the DWG bridge works since I have never used it myself, but the Revit/SketchUp/FBX links have worked flawlessly for me since many versions ago. There are trial versions available so you could test it out to see if it would work for you.

[Francisco Penaloza]

Hi Gary, Welcome to this forum.

I totally agree with everything posted above, I just would like to add some other points of view.

First changing your base production workflow just to fit a new render engine, does not sounds good to me.

If you are having an increasing work supply for you now is time to optimize production and create some standards that should be use to for faster output.

AutoCAD, is a great software, if you have people that mastered already I would not recommend to move to Sketchup.

There are companies that only uses sketchup, and everything works fine, but you already have your licenses in place and people trained, so that has a value.

Adding better rendering you need to hire a senior artist, he can help your team to grow,. Self discovery and learning is very soul filling but it take time if you want "near to photography" output it will take a while. Besides doing photo-real renderings, in my experience is not always the best choice But only an experienced artist should know how to make the choice, intead of you trying to give anything that your client ask for.

 

If you are in Autodesk environment, 3D Max is a great choice. Now you can rent, so it should fit in your yearly budget.

Max by default come with 2 render system that can produce high end visualizations. Mental Ray and Art render. If you find someone who know how to use them, you don't need to pay for extra licenses.

If some one convinced you that you need something else, Corona is IMO the best choice. Octane is very strong but,well is up to you.

Material system in Ocatane is a bitch, interface... well take a look, Corona is fully integrate on Max and it is just click render. besides you can use any pre made library that you can find online already prepared for Corona or V Ray. it translate very quick.

 

Other option could be something like Lumion, not the same output as Corona or VRay/mental Ray but, it take a lot of less time, besides you can output movies and still very quickly it is on the expensive side but, it save lot of time when you are in a hurry.

 

Hope this help you.

best luck.

[Nic H]

you could also consider training on how to use the software you pick and look at employing a good artist to expedite this process to your other staff.

 

to be honest you already seem very successful so producing renders that are virtually indistinguishable from photographs, without wasting any time will be quite easy for you.

[Chris MacDonald]

I agree with you that using Vray we will simply fail to achieve proper results simply because it will be too much for a busy firm to learn in the middle of actual projects for picky clients. For that Reason both Corona and Octane, the easiest ones that look truly realistic, seem far superior for my purposes. I'm going to try Corona's 45 day demo no matter what.

 

Perhaps I was unclear.

 

Corona, octane and VRay all require the same amount of work up front to produce good images. There's no shortcut to producing photorealistic images - you either put the work in, or you don't. A render engine is merely a physics (light) simulation. All of the render engines mentioned are very much capable of producing very, very poor renders in the hands of someone that wants the "easiest" solution.

 

What exactly is it about VRay that you think makes it so much harder than the other two? Whatever it is, I can categorically guarantee you that it isn't the stuff that actually creates good images.