Buying A New Rendering Program

I have been using a old rendering program (Lightscape) that has worked great for me but, upper management wants me to look into a new render program to get up to date.

I have attached an image of what I do to give you a reference. We are a furniture company with a large Auto cad block libaray to pull from. We often need the draw up the inside floor plan for the rendering.

With this info can you help direct me what software I should be looking at that can give me the same or better quality than I am doing. I have started looking into

3D VIZ

Revit

Impression

Inventor

Maya

I have been using a old rendering program (Lightscape) that has worked great for me but, upper management wants me to look into a new render program to get up to date.

I have attached an image of what I do to give you a reference. We are a furniture company with a large Auto cad block libaray to pull from. We often need the draw up the inside floor plan for the rendering.

With this info can you help direct me what software I should be looking at that can give me the same or better quality than I am doing. I have started looking into

 

3D VIZ

Revit

Impression

Inventor

Maya

All of those programs you've listed aren't "rendering programs", they are full modeling/CAD programs. All you need is a rendering program/plugin itself. Something like V-Ray, that is a popular one:

http://www.chaosgroup.com/en/2/vray.html

Damn, Lightscape, that old workhorse is still in use. Actually, I’m not surprised. As your rendering shows, the quality was a decade ahead of it’s time. When I was using it, a fairly complex solution and subsequent ray tracing was a two day affair. Then again, with a Pentium 200, everything was a two day affair. With modern hardware, it must be pretty speedy. I may just have to dust off my 3.2 CD – any ideas on it’s compatibility with XP.

With regard to rendering software, have you given AutoCAD 2007’s renderer (MentalRay) a test drive. I’ve heard it’s pretty competent – and it should do the best to maximize your block library.

That suggestion aside, I’d have to agree with StykFace’s Vray recommendation (though I’m not sure if a standalone version is yet available). The last visualization work I did was with Vray and 3dsMax 3.

I’d be interested to hear your long term comments regarding whichever choice you make. The newer engines will likely offer an expanded toolset – procedural textures, sophisticated bump mapping, caustics, et al, but with a time constrained, “concept to quality render” project, a Lightscape master would be hard to beat.

Unfortunately, Vray is not an option if you're working in Autocad. It's mainly a 3DS Max renderer. But they also have a plug-in for Rhino, and of all things, Sketchup.

I would suggest giving Autocad 2007 a try before spending money on another piece of software. You should be able to achieve similar results to the image you posted, although you will have to learn the ins and outs of Mental Ray, and that will take some time to get up to speed.

I would recommend forgetting AutoCAD for rendering unless you have a few spare weeks to spend adjusting lighting and material mappping. It's the biggest PITA !

Get a copy of VIZ - you can open the DWG file direct make and save changes back and forth and mapping and lighting is simple and quick.

I don't understand why your upper level want to change it!I think you already had autocad and lightscape ,they will give you great.But 3ds-max+vray is my favourite!You should show some simple images of 3dmax+vray to your upper level.

Brazil is free and fun for Rhino3d now.

http://brazil.mcneel.com/

i feel like it as fast or near faster than vray with apearingly more simple and advanced controls

i am still waiting for Flamingo nXt, it is getting a rebuild ?