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Richard McCarthy · April 14th, 2005

Hi Andy!
Welcome to the forum. Glad to see another Revit person here.
For you question which renderer to stick with, well, I have always hated Accurender since Revit 4.5. Its rendering quality is pretty dismal, and the only redeeming feature is the integrated plant generation system.

So, if your company have the spare cash, and willing to get into serious presentation side of things, then I highly recommend you to purchase another renderer. But which one to choose from?

Right now you have many choices... and if you don't mind waiting, there are even better choices coming up.

Presently, to use most of the top quality renderer, you need to buy 3DSMAX/3DSVIZ before you even purchase those renderer simply because most renderer at present are just plugin to the 3DSMAX/3DSVIZ host. It is a pity because it will set you $2000 off straight off the bat to use a software you will probably not going to use that much. (since most modeling is done in Revit) So enable to use it, first, purchase 3DSVIZ (cheaper... because it is lacking character animation capability, not general "animation" ability. You can still make fly throughs with 3DS VIZ, you just can't use character studio.) Also, Mental Ray renderer (hollywood's workhorse renderer for decades... since Terminator 2) is included with MAX/VIZ so if you intend to use just "MR", you won't need to pay extra to buy other renderer.

But ofcourse, there are other renderers in the market that produce excellent results. Normally their priced around the range of $700~800 USD and the top 4 of these renderers are : Brazil, Final Render Stage 1, VRay, and Maxwell. Presently, These renderer requires a 3DS MAX for host, but each one of them have plans to become fully independent renderer (that does not require 3DS MAX in other term) in the near future (how near I don't know...) I will list briefly what each one does :

Maxwell (http://www.maxwellrender.com) It's one of the newest renderer to date, and produce remarkable result. Just head to their gallery and you will see for yourself. It is got very few button and technical term to overcome, and it is the easiest renderer to use out of the bunch. The shortcomings of this excellent renderer is that, it is extremely slow, as slow as upto 100 times slower than other 3!! Rendering time can be in DAYS (not minutes or hours). Because it use a very new technique to produce it's rendering, expect noise in the rendering too. Personally I like the noise because it makes the rendering feel more realistic, it feels like "film grain". For the near future, it will become an independent renderer, which will not require 3DSMAX. Presently, it is already got a seperate core, and it is bridged to 3DSMAX via plugin. The maxwell team is working on making as many plugin as possible, so it is possible Revit will get a direct plugin to this extremely easy to use, and high quality renderer.

Brazil (http://www.splutterfish.com) - Also a very nice renderer, It is much speedier than Maxwell, but suffers lack of ease to use because of myriad of many specialised CG term requires to understand it. It is rumour it will become an independent renderer.

Final Render Stage 1 (http://www.finalrender.com/) Another renderer that produce very nice results, but again, suffers from the myriad of CG term used. Speed is similar to Brazil, and this one also may become independent renderer in future.

VRay (http://www.vrayrender.com/) Finally, the current renderer of choice for many CG arch visualiser right now. It is the fastest renderer (slightly faster than Brazil or Final render) and produce excellent results. It suffers the same fate as Brail/Final render as not an easy to use renderer, but once you know how to use it, you can just bring up preset like other renderers. The team that produce this renderer has already gotten underway to produce an independent renderer called VRay standalone (v1.5) and presently, we don't know when it will come out, but the VRay.exe is there. So, It maybe very soon.

My best advice to you is to try out these renderers first, before sticking to any one of them.

April 14th, 2005	#10 (permalink)
Richard McCarthy Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 757 Name: Richard McCarthy	Re: What render package to pick? Hi Andy! Welcome to the forum. Glad to see another Revit person here. For you question which renderer to stick with, well, I have always hated Accurender since Revit 4.5. Its rendering quality is pretty dismal, and the only redeeming feature is the integrated plant generation system. So, if your company have the spare cash, and willing to get into serious presentation side of things, then I highly recommend you to purchase another renderer. But which one to choose from? Right now you have many choices... and if you don't mind waiting, there are even better choices coming up. Presently, to use most of the top quality renderer, you need to buy 3DSMAX/3DSVIZ before you even purchase those renderer simply because most renderer at present are just plugin to the 3DSMAX/3DSVIZ host. It is a pity because it will set you $2000 off straight off the bat to use a software you will probably not going to use that much. (since most modeling is done in Revit) So enable to use it, first, purchase 3DSVIZ (cheaper... because it is lacking character animation capability, not general "animation" ability. You can still make fly throughs with 3DS VIZ, you just can't use character studio.) Also, Mental Ray renderer (hollywood's workhorse renderer for decades... since Terminator 2) is included with MAX/VIZ so if you intend to use just "MR", you won't need to pay extra to buy other renderer. But ofcourse, there are other renderers in the market that produce excellent results. Normally their priced around the range of $700~800 USD and the top 4 of these renderers are : Brazil, Final Render Stage 1, VRay, and Maxwell. Presently, These renderer requires a 3DS MAX for host, but each one of them have plans to become fully independent renderer (that does not require 3DS MAX in other term) in the near future (how near I don't know...) I will list briefly what each one does : Maxwell (http://www.maxwellrender.com) It's one of the newest renderer to date, and produce remarkable result. Just head to their gallery and you will see for yourself. It is got very few button and technical term to overcome, and it is the easiest renderer to use out of the bunch. The shortcomings of this excellent renderer is that, it is extremely slow, as slow as upto 100 times slower than other 3!! Rendering time can be in DAYS (not minutes or hours). Because it use a very new technique to produce it's rendering, expect noise in the rendering too. Personally I like the noise because it makes the rendering feel more realistic, it feels like "film grain". For the near future, it will become an independent renderer, which will not require 3DSMAX. Presently, it is already got a seperate core, and it is bridged to 3DSMAX via plugin. The maxwell team is working on making as many plugin as possible, so it is possible Revit will get a direct plugin to this extremely easy to use, and high quality renderer. Brazil (http://www.splutterfish.com) - Also a very nice renderer, It is much speedier than Maxwell, but suffers lack of ease to use because of myriad of many specialised CG term requires to understand it. It is rumour it will become an independent renderer. Final Render Stage 1 (http://www.finalrender.com/) Another renderer that produce very nice results, but again, suffers from the myriad of CG term used. Speed is similar to Brazil, and this one also may become independent renderer in future. VRay (http://www.vrayrender.com/) Finally, the current renderer of choice for many CG arch visualiser right now. It is the fastest renderer (slightly faster than Brazil or Final render) and produce excellent results. It suffers the same fate as Brail/Final render as not an easy to use renderer, but once you know how to use it, you can just bring up preset like other renderers. The team that produce this renderer has already gotten underway to produce an independent renderer called VRay standalone (v1.5) and presently, we don't know when it will come out, but the VRay.exe is there. So, It maybe very soon. My best advice to you is to try out these renderers first, before sticking to any one of them. __________________ Don't mess with my hat !!