What are the best (read as: easy, time-efficient) modeling and rendering programs for someone only interested in making simple 3D house animation videos based on floorplans? Looking for the absolute easiest tools to get a wow-factor home animation done without having to spend hundreds of hours learning a program.
I use sketchup for all my modeling, I then export to LUMION for renderings and animations. People will argue that VRAY and this or that is better and honestly the quality probably is but LUMION cant be touched as far as efficiency goes.
Love the Lumion sales rep. Make a post asking about software and they come running. Reality is, it's terribly
Expensive and heavily marketed to students so they only know it when leaving school.
Sketch up by itself or in combo with any of the hundreds of cheap plug ins will work. Vray is king thou.
Revit plus Enscape. efficient IF you are already using Revit for your drawings. Plus you can do this in realtime with clients, which makes it a lot more flexible versus a set script walk.
Sketchup plus Vray; not as efficient since you need to build the sketchup model.
You could pay someone who knows what they're doing. The visualization market is saturated to the point where it's cheaper to outsource than spend money on software which has increasingly moved to a pricing method based on subscriptions over ownership.
If you pick a thing to learn and buy it's going to be time intensive to get a 'wow' factor with no previous experience. That's why people charge for it...even if the rates have dwindled.
3DSMax + Vray is king, rhino + vray is a close second. Maxwell is the easiest to learn and make look good, paired with rhino you can own outright.
Thank you all for the suggestions. Most of the programs I'm reading seem expensive and time consuming though. I'm not a professional in any way or form, this is just something I enjoy doing. Are there any easy to use programs out there that still get you an okay looking video but don't require a huge investment of time and money to achieve?
Sketchup with VRay is pretty good, Lumion is the best for instant wow factor animations, you cant beat 3dsmax and VRay for quality but 3dsmax is a bit of a nightmare to learn.
I second ArchiCAD although I would never buy the software to do only that, so it might be a bit of an overkill. But it is precise, works well with making your plan layouts, and everything updates in real time when you make changes. What is also nice is that you can show the build-up of your walls with 3d sections, and the internal render engine is quite good since a couple of years. Maybe get yourself an older version at a discount that can still do everything you want. From version 18 or 19 on it became quite good with visualising if I recall.
Sketchup, free for non-pro version and the default style is probably sufficient for what you are looking for - set up scenes that "walk-through" and export as video. If you're going for more realistic rendering, there are affordable renderers available like Podium. Not as nice as the more expensive renderers but it should do the job.
ArchiCAD/Revit and Lumion/VRay would be overkill
Sep 22, 17 10:59 am ·
·
randomised
With ArchiCAD you don't need any extra renderer though, but still quite the overkill indeed.
Modeling and rendering software
Hello,
What are the best (read as: easy, time-efficient) modeling and rendering programs for someone only interested in making simple 3D house animation videos based on floorplans? Looking for the absolute easiest tools to get a wow-factor home animation done without having to spend hundreds of hours learning a program.
Thanks in advance,
S.
I use sketchup for all my modeling, I then export to LUMION for renderings and animations. People will argue that VRAY and this or that is better and honestly the quality probably is but LUMION cant be touched as far as efficiency goes.
Expensive and heavily marketed to students so they only know it when leaving school.
Sketch up by itself or in combo with any of the hundreds of cheap plug ins will work. Vray is king thou.
Revit plus Enscape. efficient IF you are already using Revit for your drawings. Plus you can do this in realtime with clients, which makes it a lot more flexible versus a set script walk.
Sketchup plus Vray; not as efficient since you need to build the sketchup model.
btw; I like Lumion too with the Sketchup
If you pick a thing to learn and buy it's going to be time intensive to get a 'wow' factor with no previous experience. That's why people charge for it...even if the rates have dwindled.
3DSMax + Vray is king, rhino + vray is a close second. Maxwell is the easiest to learn and make look good, paired with rhino you can own outright.
Thank you all for the suggestions. Most of the programs I'm reading seem expensive and time consuming though. I'm not a professional in any way or form, this is just something I enjoy doing. Are there any easy to use programs out there that still get you an okay looking video but don't require a huge investment of time and money to achieve?
archicad
Sketchup with VRay is pretty good, Lumion is the best for instant wow factor animations, you cant beat 3dsmax and VRay for quality but 3dsmax is a bit of a nightmare to learn.
I second ArchiCAD although I would never buy the software to do only that, so it might be a bit of an overkill. But it is precise, works well with making your plan layouts, and everything updates in real time when you make changes. What is also nice is that you can show the build-up of your walls with 3d sections, and the internal render engine is quite good since a couple of years. Maybe get yourself an older version at a discount that can still do everything you want. From version 18 or 19 on it became quite good with visualising if I recall.
Sketchup, free for non-pro version and the default style is probably sufficient for what you are looking for - set up scenes that "walk-through" and export as video. If you're going for more realistic rendering, there are affordable renderers available like Podium. Not as nice as the more expensive renderers but it should do the job.
ArchiCAD/Revit and Lumion/VRay would be overkill
With ArchiCAD you don't need any extra renderer though, but still quite the overkill indeed.
SketchUp+ Vray ... long rendering time
SketchUp+Lumion... problem with the camera, can't save scenes, and resolution of the picture is generally low
Max and mental ray or max+vray is your best option especially as a beginner knowing that you can import your models from SU to max
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