I create 3D renderings for interiors for clients and have had a few express interest in high quality photo realistic or near photo realistic renderings of their interior designs. Is VRay still the best go to as a solution to this or are there any other similar or better options? Thank you!
I don’t think there is a best renderer. There are a lot of good ones. You should try a few different ones and see which one you like. If you update to SketchUp 2026 you might find you can get what you need without going through a rendering application.
D5 and Thea Render
Twinmotion is powered by Unreal Engine, used for Fortnite, Borderlands, etc. It’s free for users that don’t us it to make more than $1 million. You can make animated videos, but all have different qualities, free is a good one.
Are you referring to the Photoreal Materials option first introduced in 2025 or something else?
Yes. That and the addition of Environments. Worth experimenting with, anyway. If you get suitable results there’s no waiting for a rendering application.
I’m running SketchUp for Mac. Do you know if these are supported or are they Windows only?
Thea render can work with mac. D5 its just for Windows SO
VRay and Enscape both run on Mac.
I tried Twinmotion but it’s not for me. Happy with VRay.
Vray is still one of the industry standards and it’s one of the most powerful engines, it’s possible to make good quality renders knowing the basics, but it has thousands of settings, for materials and lights, they have also added new features like enmesh and every major release brings new features that make it even better, probably corona and Cycles are at the level of Vray.
A tier down I’d put Twinmotion and D5, those are real time rendering engines, Twinmotion also has path tracer that can give you VRay like renders but it requires high end hardware and works only on windows, the other features like lumen and nanite run on Mac though. D5 only runs on windows.
A bit below is enscape, I think that in terms of quality it’s a bit behind but it’s one of the easiest to learn and you can get quite good results with a few clicks. I’d also put brighter 3D here, it’s also very easy to use but the best of it is that it costs $175 for perpetual license with free lifetime updates, it has improved a lot since in the past years.
If you want to get to photorealism, then you need a render engine that can simulate light with real physics and fewer tricks - an offline renderer like v-ray fits the bill.
Incorrect. See System Requirements | D5 Render
I suspect that was a typo.
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I wanted to say windows, it doesn’t run on Mac.
Stick with Vray. It plays well with SketchUp. My stuff looks photoreal, but the only two problems I face are large file sizes and the Vray screen not showing the proper exposure when opened in a different format. Also, get studio. You get more than buying two programs. Use the savings on an inexpensive program to correct a Vray image that’s not quite right and you don’t want to wait for another render. Everything will be covered that way. Most professionals use both a rendering and a high end program like Photoshop to really make ideal shots.
I’ve tried several different rendering software. I keep going back to V-Ray. It just makes the nicest renders in my opinion. D5 isn’t bad if you use the AI upscale feature and it’s easier to use. V-Ray can be a bit complicated, and it crashes Sketchup sometimes if you try working in the model with it open.
I have been using Enscape for a while now. It’s an easy software to use and the results are quite impressive.
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Thanks for the advice everyone! It looks like there’s plenty of options to choose from.