Which are the best 3D softwares for architectural visualization?

[Robert Lamp]

Hey guys, i just want to know your personal opinion.

What is the best 3d software for 3d arch visualization needs?

[martinkrasemann]

Hey, if you are looking at real-time archviz, there is Twinmotion.

 

Here is a quick look at some of Twinmotion features:

 

And here is a final video created with Twinmotion in just a few minutes:

[Robert Lamp]

Thank you Martin, i will check!

[aliasgar]

i would suggest you free blender 3d software

[Lewis Garrison]

3ds Max, Vray, Photoshop.

My personal opinion of course, but this is pretty much the industry standard that other programs compare themselves to.

[Marti Zanden]

There is no "best" software for architectural visualisation. It al depends on your own preferences and with what software you are comfortable. The software is just the tool for you to make the pretty images. In theory you can make the same image more or less with a lot of different software packages.

 

However if we talk about industry standards than that is still 3dsMax and Vray. But there is other great software like Maya, Blender, Cinema 4D, Corona renderer, Fstorm and many more.

 

Personally I use Maya for modeling and 3ds Max in combination with Fstorm for the rendering. I like Fstorm alot as it is fast and pretty straightforward wich gives me good results right out of the box. As a result I can focus more on creating materials and setting up good camera angles. More time for the artistic side of things.

 

But like I said: In the end it is just personal preferences.

[beestee]

Personally, I can create most building types fastest with Revit. Sketchup comes in a close second for modelling speed. Max in third despite a decade of experience with it. It also depends on the style of the building, the more abstract/organic it gets, the more my list reverses.

 

Rendering has to be considered separately. Real-time is the future of rendering, but it still has limitations that keep the offline render engines such as Corona and VRay relevant. That said, I spend most of my time in Lumion for rendering, second would be Enscape, third would be VRay. I have looked at Twinmotion many times but as a Lumion user they have not yet done enough to catch up in my opinion.

 

I feel that within the next 3 years, the discussion of which real-time engine to use will be pointless as both Unreal and Unity are making their engines more approachable and compatible with each release. Also to consider, if Abvent can follow through on their promises of Unreal export capability, then Twinmotion could become the one to beat, it just depends on if Unreal Studio and the Unreal Marketplace will eclipse it before that happens.

[3darchitect]

Hey Ben,

 

I came across this thread and really appreciate your response. I'm in the process of trying to select a software to learn and learn well. Nothing worse than knowing a few bits of lots of software. As we all know, good images can be achieved many different ways and there is a skill and practice involve no matter what programs you're using.

 

I use Sketchup for 100% of my modeling. Although I'm learning Revit in my job, I can't see it as a good free modeling software and don't plan on using it that way. If I ever look into a different modeling program, I'd like to learn Rhino because of it's powerful manipulation with geometry. But right now I don't have time to try and bring that up to the speed I have with Sketchup.

 

For rendering, I've been trying to learn Lumion as I believe it has the most all around capabilities that I need. Lately though, I've come across a few things that it lacks that I can get out of Vray for Sketchup. Parallel projection being a big one, the rest I think I can manage once I learn Lumion better.

 

I also have the beta version of Unreal Studio and desperately wish I had time to learn that, as I believe that is definitely going to be a big player in the arch viz industry soon. But again, I don't want to spread myself too thin and need to be able to produce work and improve.

 

I saw that you posted this 4 weeks ago, any additional thoughts on this topic since then?

[beestee]

Lumion's lack of parallel projection is a negative attribute for every real-time engine that I am aware of. Even the ones that have some form of parallel projection, they are very limited in terms of usefulness. This is part of the reason that I like modeling in Revit, if I have a good template to start from I can easily get "color elevations" out of it and just keep the Lumion content more photographic. Sketch-up is equal or better in that regard really, I am just more comfortable with Revit personally.

 

An interesting development on this topic since the last 4 weeks is that Epic Games has updated their learning materials and they now have a TON of content tailored specifically to visualization. I still find the process of working with Unreal Studio to be significantly more tedious than Lumion or Enscape, even with this info available, but I don't think it will remain that way forever.

 

There are also the announcements of Nvidia's new Turing GPUs, and I think the advancements being made with them will directly affect the software being discussed here.