I’m doing mostly exteriors and looking for a renderer that is fast to work with and that can produce descent quality pictures. It should look professional, but doesn’t have to look completely photo realistic.
I have heard many good things about Vray, but that it has a steep learning curve. Does this also means that it take long time to produce good pictures with it after you learned it? Or is it quite fast to work with once you know it?
Also heard good things about Thea. Is that faster to work in?
Any renderer can do what you want but there’s no way for you to avoid the learning curve. Speed comes from learning how to use the renderer to set things up correctly and having a computer that is up to the task. You should try out different ones and see which one suits your way of working and test your system.
I understand that I cannot avoid the learning curve and that there is no best renderer for all tasks, but that wasn’t what I was wondering.
I’m was wondering if there is any good renderer that is noticably faster that others, both setting up the rendering and when its rendering.
The “Fastest” and “Decent” question used to have an answer: ArtLantis (despite its other quirks) but in its latest incarnation the developers produced something that is a lot slower for an infinitesimally small increase in quality.
Indigo Renderer is very fast and produces good renders of sketchup models without much effort…and it has a good Sketchup extension (Skindigo). However it doenst have a lot of pre-loaded materials or environments so to get truely photorealistic results you need to learn how to set up your model with accurate materials and objects. If you dont want to create your own materials, environ,ents, etc, then maybe VRay or Maxwell have more pre-made materials.
Shaderlight is very fast and easy -it isnt as high rendering quality though. Podium is similar. They are designed to be easy, not ‘photorealistic’.
Also you could try Lumion - the full version is expensive but powerful and there’s a free one you can try. The new versions are getting quite realistic and works very easily with Sketchup.