Hi there everyone
I am just wondering, I want to start rendering to a higher quality and have just upgraded my graphics card and RAM etc to help this …
I have previously used Twilight Render but want to move to something like D5 or Twinmotion.
95% of my work will be external views of landscapes, showing buildings along with vegetation, grass etc.
So does anyone have any views on which software I should be focusing my attention on or any recommendations for this sort of output?
Thanks! 
I also use and like Twilight Render. They have hinted that they are working on a new version that should go into alpha testing soon (not mention of a date). I like it for exterior renders and I also use the Skatter plugin for SketchUp for placing foliage in my model.
Here is a recent model where I used Skatter to place bushes and trees around a building. I then found some interesting backgrounds (which is what this test was for). I am very satisfied with the results of this test.
I use Twinmotion, for external architecture including vegetation, landscaping and weather, it’s good. A lot of built in options and control and access to a big library including the megascan stuff. It can be pretty demanding on your system and does not suffer low clock speed well, but it’s worth a look at.
I use twinmotion, enscape and for almost a month I’ve been using Brighter 3D, twinmotion and enscape are real time rendering engines, twinmotion is a separated software, you must either import your model from the program or use their Datasmith exporter from sketchup, that way you’ll have automatic updates on any changes you do to the model, if you have a gpu with ray tracing hardware you can use the path tracer feature, it’s very demanding on the gpu and consumes a lot of vram but you can achieve hyper realistic renders with it, it’s obliviously not real time if you use path tracer, enscape and Brighter 3D work as plug-ins inside sketchup, enscape is a gpu based real time rendering engine, the advantage of it is that you can get pretty nice renders very fast, with just few settings, Brighter 3D is a cpu based engine that also uses gpu for some calculations, I just downloaded it to try cause the price caught my attention, $75 subscription and $175 perpetual with all the future updates, I wasn’t expecting much cause of the price but it has amazed for good, I bought the perpetual license and I don’t regret a bit, it’s easy to set up and delivers great images in few minutes or even seconds.
Twinmotion has a perpetual free trial license, it’s for non commercial use and the only limitation compared to the commercial license is the export quality, it’s limited to 2K while the other one can export images up to 16K, the price is also attractive, $375 per year, enscape is the more expensive out of the 3 it’s $552 per year. All of them have free trial period so you can try which one fits you better.
Hi mate, thanks so much for the comprehensive reply. I really appreciate it.
Cheers.
Have a look at vRay. I love the cloud rendering service - keeps my machine free to keep working, is fast and very reasonable in cost.
I’m presently learning Unity engine… much like Unreal Engine (but apparently easier to learn), its free to use for commercial purposes up to something like $250k profit
