What is the best GPU Renderer Plugin for Archicad 20?

[Anonymous]

Hey there,
I would like to start a poll about the title, what do you say? additional reasons are welcome

best wishes

[Steve Jepson]

I use Maxwell Render when I need to be the best quality rendering I am able to make. Not that CineRender is inadequate, it's just that I don't know how to use it well enough to get the best out of it. I think it takes a smaller skill set for me to get adequate results from Maxwell Render. It depends on the necessary end results I suppose. ? Also, the speed I can generate renderings using my small skill set is much faster with Maxwell. I can take advantage of my GPU CUDA cores with Maxwell, but not with CineRender.
There is a nice Maxwell plug-in for ArchiCAD. However, it's a problem sometimes that the plug-in is not available for the current version of ArchiCAD.
To compensate, I just save the model as .3ds and use that in Maxwell. Not the best option always but is works fine for me most of the time. I like to manage the textures in Maxwell Studio better than with CineRender. Also, the quality of materials/textures I have available for use in Maxwell is better - I think. I am not sure if CineRender can use X-Rite AxF MATERIALS, REAL-IES files... some things like that. I see that Revit has improved integration for Maxwell plug-in with the FIRE preview window like we have with the ArchiCAD plug-in.

Anyone know if there is a Maxwell 4.1 plug-in for ArchiCAD 21 yet?
http://support.nextlimit.com/display/maxwell4/Plug-ins

UPDATE: Yes there is. And it works.

[alemanda]

Cinerender is a great render engine but it's not GPU based. It's only CPU.
With the proper settings canndeliver nice rendering at good resolution (HD or more) in few minutes. Especially for exteriors.

Some of the engines mentioned are not suitable for all the purposes I think.
For example, if I'm not wrong, lumion is good for large landscaped areas, exteriors renderings. Some others are more "general purpose"

[mikas]

I am experimenting with Cinema 4D Radeon ProRender right now. It's a new and as I read it, a free GPU renderer.

It seems to be in an early state as of now. But I hope it gets enough development resources to be a contender in the render engine fight.

I've got a RX 570 now in my older Mac Pro. I've got couple of other cards too, but thats my main contender now. And in a Mac, my nVidia GTX 1060 does not compute with Cinema 4D. Maybe it gets support later, I don't know.

There is no benching software for this yet with C4D, but I think openCL is the key with AMD Radeon ProRender here. To mention one, GeekBench openCL test can give you a hunch with your performance with ProRender.

ArchiCAD materials imported to C4D do not seem to render exactly as they should with ProRender. Water for example. But they seem to render though. This renderer is called physically based. That might give a few headaches to us. I am sure there are some geniouses out there who will a little bit later explain for us how to use this new engine properly and efficiently. With some pretty pictures, of course.

I've got a mid-sized swimming hall indoor view going right now with ProRender. It's gonna take something likemaybe a half an hour, and then I will know.

updt: I know allready. It's not quite up to it. But it is fast, though.

I would want to see this new render engine thing updated and maintained.

Thank You for taking part in the accelerating game of rendering engines, AMD and Maxon.

Update. 24 minutes with ProRender - no good. I'll now try 8x iterations time, but I doubt it can make it on bar with egular CPU render with traditional C4D engine..

[mikas]

I'm quite sure that the water is not going to make it. It's not that see-through type of water, like in my earlier AC and C4D renders it used to be with this particular scene. It's almost black.

But maybe I won't give up yet. It's a battle with so many parties.

[Anonymous]

As far GPU Render Engines go, Lumion is a great solution i think (Windows only). This latest release (8) has come on leaps and bounds. I've experimented with a trial version. The livesync function is brilliant and worth mentioning. I have also tried Twinmotion, but feel the lighting quality is not as good as lumion at this point in time.

As a side note, I do use cinerender also, and think it does a great job. My issue though with rendering inside AC is the assets library for producing decent photo realistic type renders, in particular the poor vegetation. How many times have i asked myself over the years where can i get better looking trees and grass?". Too many times to count!

By the time you add 3rd party trees, entourage etc, the a/c files clog up and cinerender time frames start to blow out a little as do many CPU based engines. Attached is a sample of two differing projects. One through cinerender and the other from the Lumion 8 trial.
As a comparison, the cinerender took about 2 hours to render and lumion 1 minute. similar res for each.
Bearing in mind, if i was more proficient at cinerender, the rendertime may come down a little.
both Rendered on same imac (bootcamp for lumion)

[Anonymous]

I don't really know which GPU renderer is best - but we looked at all and chose quality 1st & ease of use a close second. Price was irrelevant as we only had to wind one job with it to justify its cost.

Bought Lumion, a new PC i7 6 core, P4000. (we are still mainly Mac based).

We also employed a 16 y o with an eye for design. He learnt archicad v quickly - sufficient to manipulate & edit our mainly residential files, and v quickly got the live link working with Lumion, and learnt Lumion in a day.
Excellent renders, v quickly. Only need to find out now how to get Matterport style VR out of Lumion, or else Lumion VR files into Matterport, and we can sell our show home.
Cost savings have already paid for entire setup. Won the job we needed to.
Graphisoft (Nemetschek) should (IMHO) ditch C4D renderer and simply buy Lumion & integrate it.
Make it work on Mac (eventually Apple will have a pro machine again w decent GPU's)

[Paul King]

Octane is pretty good, but not particularly easy in all cases - a huge array of options for advanced users, but very definitely better quality than the likes of Lumion

[Steve Jepson]

Paul wrote:
Octane is pretty good, but not particularly easy in all cases - a huge array of options for advanced users, but very definitely better quality than the likes of Lumion

Have you tried Lumion 9 Pro ? The speed is of rendering is off the charts and the ease of use makes it unmatched for value I think. It will render in seconds what would take hours to do with CineRender.
And I am not exaggerating. The quality is completely adequate for the work I think any Architect would need. However, it does not have the same quality as a CG Artist might like to have for some things.
The other really cool thing about Lumion is how fun it is to play with.
The biggest downside I think is how expensive it is.
https://lumion.com/archicad-rendering.html

one of my test renders - https://www.screencast.com/t/6lit6SsaaDA2 about 80 seconds to render. It will take you longer to open this link and see the image than it too me to render it. And this about 1/2 the size it was rendered at ( 7880 x 4520 )

[Paul King]

Nice image.

A physically unbiased GPU accelerated version of Lumion built into ArchiCAD, and able to export standalone viewable files (like BIMx, only a decade more up to date) would certainly be the ticket.