BIM Coordinator Program (INT) April 22, 2024
Find the next step in your career as a Graphisoft Certified BIM Coordinator!
Collaboration with other software
About model and data exchange with 3rd party solutions: Revit, Solibri, dRofus, Bluebeam, structural analysis solutions, and IFC, BCF and DXF/DWG-based exchange, etc.

VRAY for archicad

Anonymous
Not applicable
hello,
is there a free VRAY plug in for archicad 13+15?

thanks a lot!
25 REPLIES 25
Anonymous
Not applicable
by no discussion, Vray is the top renderer... here is the thing, graphisoft claims to request Vray to Chaos Group and points this is the wrong place to ask for it, and Chaos Group said, Graphisoft has to request it, they have no plans for Vray for Archicad at the moment.

options:
Get archicad SOLO version, and render using:
1.Blender(is free)+Vray($350)... you still save $1500 from achicad Full version
2.Sketchup(fee to unlock all functions)+Vray($350 - year subscription or $60 month)

So yes, blender is better, but the learning curve is a bit of a pain...and Corona for Archicad is still in beta, and doesn't have the top functions Vray offers.
I tried installing and finding a way from ArchiCAD to VRay. I was having a difficult time even getting it installed on MacOS. I reached out to Chaos Group for assistance. Their reply very curt and dismissive. Sorry, no support for ArchiCAD... period. Anyway, putting my eggs in the Twinmotion basket for now. It's good enough for what I need, much more streamline and faster than Cinerender, and with support for Raytracing coming for ACv23, I'm hoping it's a keeper.
Rex Maximilian, Honolulu, USA - www.rexmaximilian.com
ArchiCAD 27 (user since 3.4, 1991)
16" MacBook Pro; M1 Max (2021), 32GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, 32-Core GPU
Apple Vision Pro w/ BIMx
Creator of the Maximilian ArchiCAD Template System
squall_tmo
Booster
For a little time Chaos Group provided Corona Render (Alpha Version) for ARCHICAD, but unfortunately they stopped the development because they didn't find enough developer to go on...That was really great!
squall_tmo wrote:
For a little time Chaos Group provided Corona Render (Alpha Version) for ARCHICAD, but unfortunately they stopped the development because they didn't find enough developer to go on...That was really great!


Actually, in a little bit of rather unfortunate (brand-name) irony, it probably had more to do with the Coronavirus' early impact and the lockdowns causing a lot of companies to scale back their staffing and projects to deal with the economic hit that small companies everywhere were dealing with.

Yes, they were struggling a bit to find qualified coders and programmers to work on the project, but the guy they had working on it had to be shifted to working on the main plugins (3ds Max and C4D) as a result of that scale back and since he was the only one, the ArchiCAD plugin sadly had to be cancelled - even though it had gone really far for an Alpha version with all the features it had already, and being production-ready in many respects.

Maybe we can hold out hope that if (when?) things go back to normal, they could resurrect the project again (?)

But I wouldn't hold my breath.

If you're into GPU renderers with an interest in raytracing then I would suggest Enscape renderer, which has one of the best ArchiCAD UI integrations out there and really good performance on any NVIDIA 2070 series (and above) graphics cards, Particularly the RTX versions (which I have in my rig as a 2080 RTX).

(*point of note : I specifically got a new computer with this GPU in anticipation of using it with Twinmotion that was supposed to have Raytracing, but which sadly never panned out (so far). Fortunately I still get to use it with Enscape)

They've come a long way in just two short versions, really expanding the versatility of the current version (2.9) and I believe they even have a version for ArchiCAD 24 available as well.
Like the Corona guys, they also seem to have pretty approachable and accessible developers on their forums - which is always a big plus for me personally when I'm thinking of investing in a product.


Worth a look.
squall_tmo
Booster
Bricklyne wrote:

If you're into GPU renderers with an interest in raytracing then I would suggest Enscape renderer, which has one of the best ArchiCAD UI integrations out there and really good performance on any NVIDIA 2070 series (and above) graphics cards, Particularly the RTX versions (which I have in my rig as a 2080 RTX).

[...]
Many thanks for the suggestion!

I heard about Enscape and I'll try it soon...but I still strongly hope that the Corona's team will resume their work, because their plug-in was great!
JSN
Enthusiast
Not sure if it has already been suggested, but the workflow with Rhino is working pretty good as well in terms of interoperability. As we know AC exports .3dm natively and the VRay for Rhino has been improved a lot in the last years.
Learn and get certified!