Which rendering program(s) recommended mostly for interiors?
I haven’t completely decided on Vray – as I’m still unsure considering other programs available.
IF I were to go with Vray, best learning source? (I tried some videos and the biggest issue was using outdated software in the video or went very fast.) “Learning Vray” and the “onboarding” courses through Chaos seem ok(?).
Thank you!
There isn’t a best one. Different people will tell you the ones they like. Try some different renderers and see which one you get along with best.
If you get a Studio subscription for SketchUp, Vray is included. You might like a different one, though.
You also might want to try out SketchUp 2025. Maybe with it’s new features you don’t need an external renderer.
Enscape learning curve isn’t steep at all, it’s way easier to learn than V-ray and you can get very good results quite fast. If you need to have photorealistic images with accurate shadows and reflects, then you must use V-Ray or Corona, it takes more time to mastering but those are the industry standards when it comes to rendering.
There are also other softwares where you can render your sketchup models, Twinmotion, D5 and Lumion are real time rendering softwares like Enscape the difference is that enscape works inside sketchup and it’s faster to make changes to the model and visualize it, the other programs have also good synchronization plug-ins but it’s not like working from sketchup. Out of the three I would never recommend Lumion, it’s absurdly expensive compared to D5 that costs $300 or Twinmotion which is free.
You can try all of them anyways and see what’s the best software for you.
I agree with francisquitof. As an architect, I need fast results, and Enscape with a powerful video graphics card gives me real-time on screen and VR capabilities that are extremely useful for my design process as well as communication with clients. It’s probably not the most photo-realistic, but it’s darn close.
Also I like that it has some basic key word material overrides. So if I create a SU material, and just name it Steel, Aluminum, Marble, Ceramic, Grass, Water…etc, Enscape will automatically apply the characteristics of those materials. I can then tweak the material as needed in Enscape’s material editor.
Lastly and most important for me, is that Enscape let’s me keep a One Model Design process being embedded into SU. If I have a meeting with a client using VR and we live-change the design, that model is the same SU model that links to Layout for my Construction Documents, so all changes show up in the final output which ensures a WYSIWYG outcome.
Here is an example:
