topic Re: Archicad + Cinerender - Is Cinerender obsolete? in Visualization

Archicad + Cinerender - Is Cinerender obsolete?

Carstenem — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 04:15:46 GMT

Hi all and Happy New Year.

Some of you know me from my Archicad Youtube channel - asmtechbase - and some through courses they have signed up too.

I can see that a lot of Archicad users still use Cinerender, because there are a lot of people downloading the free texture pack that is on offer through my website.
Now, even so I think with a direct Link to Twinmotion or Enscape, you don't really need Cinerender anymore. But, there are plenty of users that are quite happy to stay "inside" Archicad for all their 3D render work. I totally understand this as it seems easier and the user is familiar with their working environment.
Because Archicad's Cinerender is using now Redshift as a render engine it is a bit faster too. Not comparable to Twinmotions or Enscape speed but faster never than less.

The question that is coming up now, do I invest and spend time on a new Cinerender course? The current Cinerender course I have is based on creating outdoor/exterior images. This course even today is still very much up to date. What I do contemplate is producing an INTERIOR Cinerender course for interiors only, what are your thoughts on this?

It would be great to hear your thoughts and if you are too busy you can always do a quick vote in the poll re your interest in an interior Cinerender course. Link to click here.

Cheers

Re: Archicad + Cinerender - Is Cinerender obsolete?

Erwin Edel — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 12:06:34 GMT

Interior and exterior artist impressions require different approaches, so I would say there is value in having a course.

For us the 'switch' to cinerender from at the time Artlantis, was prompted by having similar quality option built in (no extra software license needed). I would guess more companies have the same approach.

I haven't worked with redshift yet, but we are pretty settled in using cinerender. It does help that we have workstation PCs with Xeon processor, which is well suited for cinerender.

Re: Archicad + Cinerender - Is Cinerender obsolete?

mikas — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 16:20:57 GMT

was going to give up with cinerender a while ago, because of twinmotion, and mostly because of my ancient hardware. I was on Mac. And I still am, but now I use a cheap HP Z4 18 core for final renders.

Cinerender is slow, like almost every other CPU based renderer today feels slow. But it's still good for some. Especially the lighting is pretty good still, if you manage to get the settings allright with everything at every corner there is to tackle. It's kind of mostly realistic, and almost reproducible in real life. I know it lacks a lot of fines, but still - it's built in.

Carsten makes good tutorials. I've watched a few on modelling solutions of popular architectural subjects of today. He's using mostly the traditional ways of modelling, and they are straightforward and intuitive ways of achieving. All tricks within the basic tools available in Archicad.

I'm not saying I couldn't figure it out myself with these 3D's. But these videos are free, and you get a good grip of it with Carstenem. And then some inspiration comes with it too.

It's just that I don't have much time to watch them unfortunately.

It's the same with Grasshopper/AC connection for me. I'd love to dive in there, but there's no time for it. Need to make a living first.

And same goes for the GDL too, blah blah.

A realized project with 3D viz accompanied. Somethin like 8 years ago. We didn't know about GPU rendering that much by that time.

Cheers Carstenem !

ps. I still use cinerender in every project I've got. At least in some stages I do.

Re: Archicad + Cinerender - Is Cinerender obsolete?

Carstenem — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 21:10:18 GMT

Thanks Erwin for your feedback. I agree with interior v exterior.

Doing an exterior with Cinerender/Redshift engine can look quite good but the problem is the assets, especially the landscape. There is NO library part in AC that renders realistic in regards to Landscape. This is unfortunate, because a lot of the realism comes from the actual environment.

If you have ever done a photomontage, then you know what I mean. Adding a new designed building into an existing photo, even with an average rendering of the building, it actually looks ok.
You render the same building with AC assets (trees, plants, cars, etc) and it will look a lot less appealing, even so you have not changed the buildings rendering quality.

Re: Archicad + Cinerender - Is Cinerender obsolete?

Carstenem — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 21:18:06 GMT

Hi Mika, good to hear your experience with Cinerender and thanks for watching some of my tutorials and letting people know about, in this topic, appreciated.

The swimming pool images looks great especially considering it is 8 years old, nice. I think as I mentioned with Erwin in my reply the problem with Cinerender comes when you do external renderings in regards to landscape, see my reply to Erwin.

Same here, love to get into Grasshopper but just can't find the time and I still think it is too complicated for main stream users.

Re: Archicad + Cinerender - Is Cinerender obsolete?

jl_lt — Fri, 06 Jan 2023 21:09:13 GMT

Hi. Eventhough we use a variety of solutions depending on the situation, personally im quite fond of the Cinerender engine. Maybe its because of its straightforwardness and non pretentious interfase. We use it a lot specially for initial stages and quick conceptual images, but wouldnt mind if we could get the most out of it. So yeah, we would find a tutorial for interiors quite useful.

Re: Archicad + Cinerender - Is Cinerender obsolete?

stefan — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 07:52:40 GMT

Redshift access in Archicad is limited by license. So not every Archicad user will be able to access Redshift. Cinerender is still very relevant, IMHO. There is a time and place for external and internal rendering systems, but since it's included and works out-of-the-box, I find it still relevant.

Re: Archicad + Cinerender - Is Cinerender obsolete?

Erwin Edel — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 08:12:48 GMT

For the run of the mill renders, we don't try to make things look realistic. We use the 2D 'cardboard' people and so on. Embrace the limitations and make them work.

We can have a very long discussion about the uncanny valley and so on, but I didn't think that was the point of your post!

I'm sure individual users will all have their own needs and so on, but I'm very content with having found a way to make quick renders (under 2 minutes) for exterior shots at 195x135 mm 300 dpi. This size shows up fine on HD displays and mobile devices and still prints out decent on a full size A4. We don't need additional software, so no extra costs and no need to learn to use another interface and so on.

Interior renderings are typically only done for sales brochures and we budget these at 4 hours of work (dressing up + post production) for the first shot and assuming we can re-use assets, we charge 2 hours for additional shots. The rendering times on those are higher, obviously, but we don't really babysit those.

The quality is lower than the 'pro' artist impression companies (also down to assets), but we are also a lot cheaper and the product still sells. It's up to our client really, if they want to outsource or keep things in house with us.

Re: Archicad + Cinerender - Is Cinerender obsolete?

Carstenem — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 21:31:04 GMT

Thanks again Erwin and yes that was the point of the post!

It is interesting to hear your workflow and budget, which I am sure are very useful for other users too, thanks.

As for the renders or render quality. I agree fully you don't need to do high end renders all the time especially if you do this as an "extra". With extra I mean, not being a professional 3D Visualization Studio but still add some decent looking renders for your client. I know form earlier days most clients do appreciated to get any 3D renderings, no matter the quality, as most of them struggle to understand the design just from drawings.

Glad you mentioned the assets as this is one of the 3 keys I teach to create a nice looking image. The 3 Key System I teach is - the 3D model - the textures and the lighting of the scene. If any of these "3 Keys" are not up to scratch it will "drag down" the other "2 Keys".

For interiors this is even more enhanced as there is nowhere to hide if you know what I mean? Like you can't hide some of the design behind a tree as example or there is no environment which helps you to enhance your image.

Anyway it is good to hear Cinerender seems to be still alive!

Re: Archicad + Cinerender - Is Cinerender obsolete?

Carstenem — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 21:34:00 GMT

Hi Stefan, I knew Redshift has not been rolled out to all Archicad users when it came out but I thought by now everybody has access to it, interesting.

I can see from responses here and the poll that Cinerender is still used quite a bit which is great to hear. Having the render built in and being familiar with it certainly is a plus.

Re: Archicad + Cinerender - Is Cinerender obsolete?

Carstenem — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 21:38:29 GMT

Hi thanks for your input appreciated. Yes I can see it is extremely useful for initial stages and quick conceptual images. Being familiar with the interface of the renderer, especially if you have used Archicad for a while, it is always useful.

Re: Archicad + Cinerender - Is Cinerender obsolete?

Carstenem — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 00:47:24 GMT

Hi all, Thanks for all that did fill out the pool about if Cinerender is obsolete. It was interesting and I can tell you that around 30% still would be happy to see a Cinerender course.

So I have been looking into this while at the same time finishing my new Twinmotion course. If you are interested here is an article I wrote on LinkedIn. I do know quite a bit about Cinerender and rendering in general. After a couple of hours working in Cinerender to get an interior image "going" I had to tell myself: Who would still use this outdated Software? The frustration pretty much started with the first test render. Even so I was on very low settings the render took forever and please don't ask about the look.

Now people that know me and know what I do, being a 3D Digital artist, the difference of working in Cinerender compared to a realtime Software like Twinmotion, Lumion or Enscape, is probably, how to I put this, 100 times enhanced for me. It is really like apple and oranges.

Now for people who only ever have used Cinerender, that is probably not the case which I do understand, as they know no better. So they keep going with what they know which is fair enough if they happy with their results.

The conclusion that I will not invest time in creating a Cinerender course for Interior images.

Cheers Carsten

Re: Archicad + Cinerender - Is Cinerender obsolete?

mthd — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 07:22:46 GMT

Hi @Carstenem, thank you for producing your YT videos to help many of us AC users. I appreciate them very much. I have experimented with CR & RS OOTB solutions and agree with the other users here about the results.

If you don’t mind, how would you rate the options that you have used in ease of use and results with AC ? That would also help many of us in choosing a paid option too.

Re: Archicad + Cinerender - Is Cinerender obsolete?

alemanda — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 14:39:36 GMT

I always use Cinerender.

I think it's ok for most of the "normal" visualizations we need every day, especially for exterior views.

I think that a new pack of materials and texture will be very helpful to produce better renderings.

I also think that material definition should be much easier than it is now.

There too many parameters in surface settings and most of them produce not significant results.

One of the winning key points of the real time renderers is the easy material settings. The same should be in Cinerender.

Re: Archicad + Cinerender - Is Cinerender obsolete?

joaomourao — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 17:10:47 GMT

Hi Carsten, this really come to what your target is...

Cinerender with Redshift is the quick option that comes along with Archicad but it surely is not ranked up comparing to Enscape, Twinmotion, D5 and a few others that do have a direct link to Archicad. If you are aiming to architects that use BIM authoring software not because of renders, then their focus is what comes before rendering and nowadays the real shift is not RED, its "realtime rendering" that you can use as another way to be creative and get feedback as you come with ideas. Waiting for renders is long gone, the game has changed for some years now and once you get into the real time render feedback, you will not go back to producing renders even its for 5 minutes, just like you will always focus on BIM and not 2d CAD methodology. The diference between immediate or minutes until you get a visualization is huge.

Enscape has an advantage relating to other platforms, integration, and in BIM that is very important. Unlike others, with Enscape you do not leave Archicad and there is no standalone software, and little to learn to get to quality renders, either realistic or more conceptual and about project ideas. In the end what WE all want is to make early decisions and this time based on visualization as you evolve your project. Renders are going away from the idea that they are a product you can sell... nowadays and in a near future, you need to sell your ideas and being able to easily see and show what will be built.

Hope it helps, cheers!