Sorry for a late response, but i just found this post,
I am actually trying to take ACA2015 to the point of rendering that revit or the cloud cannot go to. I am meeting with autodesk to go over what i have discovered while rendering in revit vs. ACA. I have seen al of the rendering tutorials online that were suggested to you, but there are some better ones,
and i will post a few below. I thinks its sad that when a new fad comes in -"revit" and youve been using ACA for so long, and everyone starts telling you that ACA is a thing of the past. We have been labled a "dinosaur". I can def. speak for ACA it blows revit out of the water, its just more complicated. the advanced render settings, exposure, and sun settings are a major key and are to be used all at once when rendering. But he was right in one respect, they are adding some more goodies to revit than they are ACA, -"ambient occlusion" has been separated out to modify, but thats about it. ACA's new materials are what will really bring out the perfection in the render now too, plus the render engine "mental ray" acts differently in ACA than in Revit, its faster.
you will def. need a lot of cores and max out the computer essentially. if your boss will let you get a new machine. Revit has gone the way of producing "soft-images" vs. perfection close to hdri renderings and the renders have become speckled with light. This really means they are trying to make it easier for everyone to render even the novice, but thats not really how its done. Light and how it acts on materials is extremely important in the drawing and these things can be perfected in ACA vs. Revit. Not only that but there isnt one thing really that Revit can do that ACA cant. But for some reason the resellers are pushing ACA out as if its old and outdated. No clue why, but I will get to the bottom of this and we will def. be keeping ACA around for years to come. No sense in learning something new if the old one works just fine.
dont give up on ACA just yet, there's still fight in this dog!
below i gave you example renders: one in aliminum is in ACA2015,
and skyscraper is in ACA2008. kitchen is also 2008, i geting ready to produce some new ones with 2015's full potential when im done ill try to get some
settings to you. by the way what version are you using?
search in google: v1_AC4606_Bartels, great lesson, also AB310-3_James_Smell, plus, 60525_1622_CH18, these are basic but will help you start to understand how to make the lighting come out good in a render, and what all the settings actually mean.
