samsung wrote:
I must say, I am just architect, but not a professional renderer.
In my situation I can not invest for renderingwork from outside.
I must do everything from myself.
For this reason I am searching easily handled, but effective rendering programm...
To try everything costs too much time (and finally no ability)
I am in your situation (lone architect, short of money and time).
As I have no experience in C4D, my opinion will be biased
AFAIK, C4D is a direct competitor of Max (which I know a bit), but for a slightly different market. One for animation, the second for games.
Both are very powerful modelers, and have superior rendering capabilities.
Both are VERY expensive (to buy and maintain) and VERY time consuming - steep learning curve.
C4D has the advantage of Maxonform, which is C4D light without rendering capabilities, for freeform modeling for ArchiCAD. I have seen it work but have not used it, as I have no project with that kind of needs (or clients with that kind of money...).
LW inside Archicad allows you to do some nice renderings, with the advantage of being inside AC. But it has its limits (no radiosity) and the final automatic quality is about the same level as Art.lantis 4.5. If you spend some time tweaking and post-producing images in LW, you can get some very decent images, but they always lack the depth you get from rendering engines with radiosity.
Art.lantis R is a special case.
It was developed to do exactly what an solo architect needs: A clean interface with ArchiCAD, a very intuitive handling (albeit french...) and a VERY fast rendering engine, even with high settings.
You do not get the same level of reality automatically that you get from C4D or MAX or others, but what you get is a very fast and powerful rendering program. And cheap.
I do not use ArchiCAD internal rendering engine, never have. The former ones where very weak, the inteface stinks (camera and light positioning, real time preview, material assignment). If I need a quick image from a developing work, I take it directly from the 3d window.
Every time I need a rendered image, even if it is a small and simple one, I go into Art.lantis. This is no problem with todays computers - You hop from one program to the other in zero time.
Art.lantis R has some huge improvements over 4.5 version, some of them obvious, others not so, but as important:
-Radiosity. This is the star of the show. You get some very interesting effects with this. Formerly (or in LW in AC) you had to cheat a lot and position lights underground pointing up, so you could compensate for dark ceilings. Not any more with radiosity. Also, gone are the monotonous plastic like surfaces. With Rad you get a very rich gradation of light on any given surface, without having to use computer consuming tricks like bumpmaps.
- Fresnel effect. This is a whole new ball game on glass and water, as you can see in the image attached. this image has no postproduction (I don't want to buy and learn photoshop, i'm a poor architect with little time, remember, so I need a final image straight out of the rendering program).
- Soft shadows. No more crazy tricks like multiplying lights and whatnot, you get a very natural looking effect from soft shadows (hard near the object, soft further away).
- Object handling. You can insert 3d objects from a library. (cars, 3d people, plants, whatever. It is fast and easy. You can even take 3d objects from other programs (like 3ds files) and convert them to Art.lantis objects. After you build a decent library, this makes your work very faster. The cart you see on the image was a free 3ds object downloaded from the net and transformed into an object. AC objects are not so easy to handle (specially the positioning and the material assignment).
- Radiosity real time preview. Well, not realtime, but fast enough. I know of no other program that does this.
- Album. This is a very underestimated characteristic. As you progress in your work, you make this small snapshots from various models with various materials. Then, when you find have a model that needs a shader or material similar to one used on a former model, you just drag and drop it from that snapshot - 1 second material setting!
- Fun to use. A must in any software!
- Other stuff. You must be yawning by now
That is my opinion, for what it i worth. And no, I have no commition from Abvent.
Have fun
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