Rendering - Revit vs. Sketchup

[crutledgeX3SU3]

Hi, 

I am looking for advice on the best software for rendering. We are moving into doing more render work for clients and  I have heard of a few people using a combination of Revit & Sketchup for their design processes. Mainly Sketchup for Rendering purposes.  To anyone that has used both, in your experience, do you find any benefit to use Sketchup for rendering and Revit for the construction drawings? I am trying to decide if its worth learning Sketchup for this reason. Is it faster than Revit? Are the renderings comparable? or is it worth it to just do it all in Revit?

Any advice would help!

Thanks

[ToanDN]

What sort of rendering? Realistic or cartoonish, sketchy? 

[crutledgeX3SU3]

I am thinking a bit of both - Realistic for the final renderings, sketchy lines for a schematic design.

[L.Maas]

Sketchup and Revit are more geared to modelling than to Rendering.

It al depends on what you expect and want to do.

I assume that the standard work like modelling and documentation is more important than renders.

So that should be your basis. Are you going to use Sketchup or Revit or...?

After that you can do your renders. If it is a simple render Revit can be enough (not familiar with Sketchup renders).

However if you want high quality renders then you will need more control and need to look for more sophisticated render engines. There are addins for Revit which might be useful (e.g Vray) or you can go to an external package like 3DSMax (e.g. Arnold renderer).

Of course the more control you get the more complicated it usually becomes (rendering is a job/art).

So it is not a straightforward solution to your question, many factors come into play.

[ToanDN · Accepted solution]

I would stay within Revit.

SketchUp is only quicker if you model and render directly in the program.

There is no direct linking/ syncing from Revit to SketchUp so everytime you make change to the Revit model you need to export to CAD, import CAD to Revit, reassign materials then render.

Revit shaded/realistic/rendered images are okay for at least 80% for visualization purposes. For higher quality, hyper realistic, VR AR ready, you can use Lumion or Enscape addin for Revit.

[barthbradley]

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@crutledgeX3SU3 wrote:

Hi, 

I am looking for advice on the best software for rendering. We are moving into doing more render work for clients...

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You're moving into doing more render work for clients?  What are you moving from?   

[crutledgeX3SU3]

We are a structural engineering company but I am branching out my work and will be taking on more Arch. designing/ rendering.

[crutledgeX3SU3]

Great, Thanks for the advice!

[steven.m.lacy]

For the record, I use lots of Sketchup objects but I don't use it to render or create anything.