What's the best render engine for BUSY architects in 2023? | A must watch!

[Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] this video intends to end the debate on what is the best rendering software for busy architects now I should say that this isn't all about quality this if anything is more about speed as a busy architect whether you're a one-person office or a 10-person office you are always rushed off your feet and what I'm trying to search for here is a is a rendering software that's very very quick very very intuitive and can still produce me some really good images in no time we're going to be testing six different programs all with slightly different technology number one is lumion two twin motion number three is Unreal Engine fourth is D5 render fifth is enscape and last but not least v-ray for SketchUp the majority of the programs that we're going to be testing will be more graphics card heavy and what I mean by that is that it utilizes GPU rendering and it uses your graphics card to create renders and that has become more popular in recent years because it's actually cheaper to get a higher end graphics card than it is to get a higher end processor v-ray the one that we finish on you you rendering and it you know it's arguable that I am v-ray has got the most accuracy and that could be because of its CPU rendering technology however that does come at a cost when it comes to render times we are going to Benchmark each program against a series of Statistics like it will start with cost things like render time special features the ease of use ease of creating animations and so on and we're going to go through each rendering program methodically at the end of each I will give a short review and at the very end of the video we will then compare two images of each of the programs using the same SketchUp model as a base at the very end of the video I will then give my verdict on what I think the the best kind of all-round software it is I hope you find this video useful and I hope that it informs your next decision on what rendering software to use you might not agree with my um summary at the end of the video but I hope that each of the um sections of analysis for the six programs I hope that helps inform your decision nonetheless all we're trying to do here is open it all up for a critical analysis really and as I say stick around to the end of the video and we will do a direct comparison of 12 images six internals and six externals firstly let's just explain the starting point of this video and it is a cabin model from 3D warehouse and shout outs to the Creator John latrop and what I've done is I've taken this cabin I've stripped it back of any assets so I can make full use of the in-house assets of the six render engines that we're going to use so let's get on with it and jump into our first piece of software lumion foreign starting with price lumion is is on the more expensive side if you want to go for a one-year subscription and you want to go for the pro version because why would you want a third of the Content Library you're looking at 1300 euros and at the minute the conversion rates to pounds is about one for one so even if you wanted to say you know twelve hundred pound in per year for lumion right then let's jump into lumion we're using the latest release take advantage of the new Ray tracing technology so let's create a new environment obviously the first thing that we test with each of these is the import process and lumion does recognize SketchUp files which is a good start you know we content you then place the model wherever it actually doesn't doesn't matter too much the the placement of it the only thing I would recommend is that you lift it out the ground so it doesn't seem doesn't clash with the ground plane something like that and whenever theater it doesn't matter where you place it no matter if you if you move anything in here now it recognizes that little update accordingly so it's absolutely fine sew it in let's start applying materials now with the materials applied one big test that we're putting these engines through is ease of making changes now I'm gonna just Implement a quick one here now I've applied a like a nice stacked slate to the basement here like the basement wall let me just increase the scale a little bit right I want that to be on the exterior face of these walls too and the beauty of lumion is it breaks your models down via material so even though one side of that is different to the other it will then split them two into different groups effectively in in lumion so let me just group these I'll just explode them just for Just For Speed what's already for really okay so then if I hit save jump back into lumion go to the Content Library imported models select the important model and just hit re-import now for me that is a fantastic feature now while we're while we're on that if I then want to let's just say let's say the client comes back and says oh I want a bit more rain cover over there well you can simply stretch that hit save obviously you know that's just an example that is tons of changes you can implement but if I save that off jump back in and then same again reimport it's crashed on me well that's important to knows let's reloaded and see what happens this is this is important you know stability it actually is not our benchmarking but stability is a is an important factor so I've got no idea why that why that crashed we've not made the model any more complex but at least it's got a recovery and it looks like it has recorded that that change so not ideal but not not a disaster either so I think that's a that's an excellent feature of of lumion that you can refresh the geometry so quickly so now what we're going to do is utilize and test lumion's asset Library and the strength of its library in my opinion is the the vegetation it's absolutely fantastic especially when you can go into the fine detail elements as well for close-ups so what I will be doing is and it's one of the reasons why I've picked this um this model from the 3D Warehouse is that it will really test how we can pad this out with vegetation how how can we hide the horizon line and um certain things like that obviously another massive benefit of lumion is 3D grass as a texture and looking at the you know it's animated as well so that is absolutely fantastic so let me uh populate the theme with a range of the vegetation assets and then I will be exclusively using um only the in-house asset library for things like Furniture as well okay so that's that for our settler Library I think it's fair to say that it's an impressive asset Library and the speed at which I could implement back you know the very background trees then that kind of perimeter tree to just hide the Horizon and then just add that you know a bit more details you get closer and closer to the cabin and in the finisher as well it's decent enough I try to use some of the latest instances of the asset Library as well better move into rendering images first then we'll move into short just animation clips so the rendering interface in Lumin is is excellent it's very easy on the eye very easy to set up our those have or presets as well now these presets they always need tweaking that that's inevitable and as I've mentioned in the introduction we're not trying to get the absolute best images here the most realistic this is more leaning towards speed how can we get something quickly and then is that still an acceptable outcome or even more than acceptable is the such a thing as a you know the best of both Wheels so I am going to utilize the presets in Lumia because that's available to me and then I will just make little tweaks now the key to lumion is is to utilize these effects as almost like a series of filters to get the to get the best sorts of you know look and feel it that you're after there's a few extra ones that are outside of the presets let the volumetric sunlight just adds a little bit more realism I think this is the perfect scene to be utilized or something like this see we have to just coming across the face of the cab anything that's adding adding a little bit of something one really nice feature of lumion is is the precipitation filter adding rain to the scene is is fantastic and it gives you a little bit of extra fog in the background which I do quite like it adds that little bit of depths and it can be animated as well and you can add streaks of rain on the glass and and stuff like that so that's that's super we'll have a look at that in the in the animation phase just the depth of field I knocked the amount up and then just use that to testify focal distance to increase the sharp area size and then you don't want to go too much of this or just softly out depth of field but depth of field is if there was if there was a magic button for realism it is depth of field human eye always blares out you know naturally everything that it isn't focusing on so that is something to something to keep in mind that'll do for talking through a still image that's for the next area if we then the good thing about lumion is you can actually copy effect list you can actually now do a master effect list and apply that to everything but I'm gonna I'm going to just copy the effect list and then I'm going to move inside and that will cover all exterior and interior shots I'm not 100 say I'm naughty I was looking out on so onto that view is the one isn't it something like that I hate that noise just a little side on get that sun beaming in now look at that now if we add the ray tracing effect here you see it has a big impact on the look and feel you can see that that sense of realism Has Lifted but I'm getting a little bit of strange coloring I might need to just mess with the um the color correction maybe just the saturation yeah there we go I think that's that's doing a job that looks quite nice I think that's that's working well and again disappointing thing is it doesn't yet support glass so what I like to do is I like to take two render passes there is a work around for glass where you can use a transparent metal material but that's a little bit of a bit of a pain so what I do is I jump into the reflection mode I will take uh raster render as well and use the reflection plain method for that I think that works quite well but again that's that's it's not ideal but there we are so let's render those two off and you know at the end of the video we will obviously compare the set let's move on to the ability to render animations we're not going to test the render times of animations because that can that could get a little bit carried away we're just talking render times of still images and then you can obviously just proportionally scale that up for animations what we're testing here is just the ability to create animations very easily now what luminous ghost is a separate area to images which is called movie mode and you very simply create a start an end frame and it fills in the blocks so add a keyframe there move across frame there hit play nice and easy you can change the duration which would then obviously slow the camera down I will always encourage you to do nice kind of pan type shots I have a nice slow pace as well there's nothing worse than if I just do like two seconds it doesn't often waste and something too fast like that nice and smooth there's your first scene a little bit it's on the second one there and what's good is you can actually if I just go to the exterior you can copy an effects from your images and paste it into your animations which I think is absolutely brilliant and then I mentioned the precipitation well it now animates the raindrops which is super click of a button that is absolutely fantastic so for me ease of Animation in lumion is is right up there again when we're talking quality I will compare the quality of the still images and that will 100 translate to the quality of animations just one last little thing what a quite like as well is see the way this guy is is Idle but he's got a little bit of casual movement that translates to your clip as well which again all adds to that ease of creating animations so thumbs up for leaving me on that one to be fair for me lumion is likely to come out on top when it comes to speed there's no faulting how quickly it Imports a model from you know from pretty much any model and software um the the way you can build up the textures and add assets to see and stuff like that it is absolutely rapid totally honestly I'm slightly disappointed by the new release and the the ray tracing technologies that we've implemented it doesn't compare to others that have been used in that tech for for a few years now and using the equivalent raster rendering engine that was in the you know in the old Lumia and it's still there now you still you can produce some some good results but for me to get a really good image in a short space of time I I think the the image quality is lacking a little bit so what my personal advice would be to use lumion if you know if you are to use it use it for him for quick iterations but I think there's better to come when it comes to image quality this is my scoring for lumion it has got some great special features you can export 360 images I love that it's got a weathering feature it's got the rounded Edge feature as well so it saves a lot on your your model and things like that but for me it falls down on image quality and actually it's the most expensive of them all the price of twin motion is 493 pounds 20. and it looks as though this is a fixy yeah so Perpetual license tied into one Epic Games account so that doesn't pay a year or anything like that that is a lifetime fee I think that I think that's something to bear in mind and it's um I think that's very reasonably price right then let's move into twin motion and again we're using the latest version with the snazzy new interface I do think it's it is very good we're going to just remove all the stuff and then we are going to import our edited model Collapse by material that's fine everything else can be also again good advantage of to emotion as the it recognizes skp files one slight benefit here over lumion is the fact that we don't need to mess with the height of the imported geometry because we can delete the ground plane and we're going to start with materials again but just before I Speed the video up one thing I want to mention is the quixel Mega scans is built into twin motion which it it's all part of the epic games ecosystem and having Mega scans within within a software is is massive actually so for me that's a big big plus for twin motion and I shall be using some of the mega scans assets for the the Timber and the the external walls and and things like that um okay so hang on with the materials applied let's move into asset Library and as we've done previous we're going to populate with vegetation for the background foreground close-ups a lot of stuff and then we're going to populate the interior and we are again exclusively going to use on Wheels that's available to us within the software it's got a decent array of trees probably not as many as as lumion for example but still got really good quality assets I'm really populates away she'll point out as well that to implement grass in 3D form into emotion you've actually gotta scatter it along a surface it hasn't got like a 3D texture like lumion has um a little shortcoming not not massive but just you know just something to be aware of we've brought in a few things there from SketchUp and they're absolutely excellent so I think it's just a case of aim it's a cases using the sage function because when I when I have looked at this it just it just looked a bit random I faced if you just go in the sketchfab area there and then you type in see I even typed in like Eames to get a brand and and that that filtered through as well so absolutely brilliant though let's move on to the rendering aspect now the key thing about twin motion when it comes to still rendering is that it has a secret weapon and it's called the the path Tracer I'm just highlighting at the top there and path tracing is a technology is the same kind of tech as your higher end renders like v-ray and Corona now my understanding is that it's in swim motion it's not quite as as advanced as reading Chrome not quite as sharp both it it's it's very very good and it's it's it's more realistic more true to life than all the ray tracing equivalents let's put it that way let me just hit save before I am Chase it on and the good thing by the way just FYI about the new layout into emotions I think it's very easy to just collapse um saying viewports and tools so let's just give you more screen space and all of that the way twin motion handles still images is you have to go into media area and then within a Media mode you can see the equip Media mode within Media mode you can then apply say in settings they now live down the the right hand side so let me just take an equivalent View as to the one we've done in previous by the way just while I'm setting this up I just do want to point out a few things that I had to do differently in into emotion than with lumion and for me lumion is likely to come out as the winner when it comes to speed spoil the layers in a way because into emotion I had to create a surrounding plane to create um let me just cause a Media mode to create a backdrop like that and then feel you know fill that with the scatter tool didn't take didn't take me too long but still something to bear in mind whereas in Lumi and you know it's got those kind of back plates that you can just bring in those tree clusters so that was that was a slight difference and it also handles mapping a bit differently when there was loads of kind of groups within groups to emotion just just didn't like that so I had to separate things out explode them give them different materials and things like that she also the mapping of the materials was a bit more predictable just something to be aware of not not too much trouble at all but just just something to be aware of so if I then jump back to the exterior view before attaining the path Chaser on I try and make a few adjustments similar to Lumia it has got a rain feature it's animated surfaces pick up on it see the way like it's only wet on the corner there because of the Triangular roof there absolutely exam it's also got snow and like a bit of a mixture but a little bit of sleet as well I mean I think what what a lovely addition that is to you your Imaging your animations fog again you know we want to use fog so just give a bit of a bit of depth there's all kinds of extra color green as well that you can do clay rendering portugals very good we shall set our format to 4K right so again just you'll save it off before I turn the cheeks it on we'll do low quality for now just so it's not hitting performance too much and then what we want to do is we want to come back to our environment what I'm looking for is Sun intend to see them kind of darkens the image off compared to the normal real time View I won't do it right now but for the final render I will lift that too probably two thousand so hit refresh and by the way just while I'm talking of refresh what I've not mentioned yet is the ability to adapt to change this is massive for Architects so what I'm going to do is I'm going to add a different change to this one what I did with Lumia and say changing model units in this I didn't check that I must have moved I'm just going to add very very simple glazed balustrating just to demonstrate this aspect right hit save come back and then it's simply in the import window hit refresh sometimes have you got to hit it twice and there we are so instant pretty much so for our interior we're going to duplicate this just just so we can match all the lighting attributes and all that sort of stuff and then we're gonna just take a similar view now looking out now we'll see we have to lift the exposure when we move into Interiors let's talk a little longer than than lumion certainly people I think there's a there's a lifting in quality when you introduce this this path chaser my understanding that it's even more advanced when you move into Unreal Engine which is the the next one that will that we'll look at and obviously there's a link between twin motion Unreal Engine as well so if you wanted to build your scene in swim motion get to kind of this level you can then bring that into Unreal Engine and we do actually explain that in our Advanced to emotion courses academia.com but for this I'm just going to jump into Unreal Engine and just bring in the geometry separately so I think that's looking well the reflections on the glass and everything like that are brilliant no need for reflection planes and and things like that so I think I think they they're ready to render off I think only exterior one that that little bit of extra lighting there looks good to come from the fireplace and that's quite I think that's quite nice right so with the stills sources let's move on to ease of animation and you'll find that it's very similar it's the likes of lumient where we create a face frame panacross create our next frame and there we go you can reduce the duration to Speed the video and notice that the grass is animated that is again just absolutely brilliant things like that that are kind of defaulting into the program just make life so much easier and again if you add a bit of a a weather effect needs to just hit refresh the rain will actually then start to go off because the second frame doesn't have the weather which is nice you can see that scale layer going down if I just match that the rain then stays on so I think that looks very interesting you can turn on the path Tracer for just just set them on there obviously that's taking a little bit of time because it's trying to render it as well but the beauty there is you can actually then produce really impressive you know really high quality animations as well what I what I tend to do is I stay in the real time mode up until the point I am happy with the kind of the art direction of the of the animation in terms of the camera positions the the duration of it and all that other stuff I'll enter in the past takes it on kind of at the at the 11th Hour again something else to just demonstrate that we've got characters that are animated into emotion they are grouped as well you can't utilize groups which are very good so if we just pop them there and then play again you can see that those characters are pre-animated which is absolutely fantastic just before I finish this one a little special mention on some of the other features in Twin motion where you can actually export presentations for people to walk through as well which I think is a really really strong additional feature for twin motion as well twin motion has pleasantly surprised me actually I I have I've kind of dabbled between lumion and twin motion for many years now um I think the introduction of the past Tracer is an absolute Game Changer now I believe that that's a bit of technology to trickle down from Unreal Engine and that's another real strength of two emotions that it's in the epic games ecosystem so everything that on real engines are all else will not everything but a lot of it will it will trickle down to um to Twin motion so I think haven't all the real-time benefits that you always is is inbuilt into emotionally similar to lumion and others having all that and then be able to being able to cap it off with him with the path Tracer I think I think that's that puts in a really good uh position for a potential winner and I also think the additional special features like being able to Output it as a presentation being able to do 360 walkthroughs and all those other things I think him I think two emotions absolutely excellent and I'm glad I have a Revisited that software actually for this video so this is my scoring for twin motion I think it's very reasonably priced I think it's very intuitively it's very quick and it really keeps up with the design process and I think outputting to yeah using the path Tracer is absolute Game Changer it brings the level of quality of of a v-ray and a Corona into a real-time rendering software and I think some of the special features it's got like the the exportable walkthroughs and 360 panoramics and all that sort of stuff I think it's um I think it's absolutely absolutely excellent Unreal Engine is an interesting one because in the main it is free that is it's best for small teams and projects hobbyists learning that will apply to most architecture studios in in my opinion it only then moves into a price when you need a certain level of support now this will say for non-game professionals seeking premium support and private training so it does lift to fifteen hundred dollars a year um both in the main you are looking at a a free option really just keep an eye on some of the small prints if you think that you know it may creep into some of these other requirements this one is a more complicated program probably the the most complicated out of the the programs that we're testing bought the results in it are amazing and I I know that's I've been using for a little bit and it's a great place for animations as well it's also got the most advanced uh Ray tracing rendering option as well as having the the path traces so it's worth including weight including definitely but it has got the the steepest learning curve for sure additionally it doesn't read um going on the engine folder it doesn't read SketchUp files inherently or it may do but data Smith is the way to go so in the folder it's going to be data Smith export it's a free air plugin Unreal Engine itself is free as well actually so something's about in mind we don't want to import our data Smith file pop it in that folder there and we do just want geometry and the materials if I then change this to list you can see that we can't see anything other than a bit of a clue there so in order to start to see things we need to start adding lights and in the quality settings within Unreal Engine but with this little box here called the it's called the post process volume and you can change everything the the amount of Bloom don't forget much Gloom as it is change things like lens flares you can see the lens flare there we can turn that down so I need to make sure that it's affecting the whole scene yeah so you can see the see the bloom going up and down now with complexity though comes a greater amount of control that is important that with Unreal Engine the amount of control you've got over your settings here particularly in this post process volume when you've got that level of control you can really improve your level of quality there's a limited number of materials here so if we just and it is just a case of drag and drop I know there is an alternator which I'll explain in a minute so it has got so many built materials like those but the great thing about Unreal Engine is that it's got quixel Bridge loathed into it so things like plants assets all sort of stuff they're all ready to go and in addition to that it's kind of main asset library is the Epic marker please I'm here you can find all kinds of things if you just browse architectural visualization there is an infinite number of assets that you can use a lot of it is paid to be completely honest both depends how seriously you want to kind of take your crafting this in this field but the good thing with the materials they're all free now what I like to do is I like to go to the collections of this services let's go for the award for the deck I'll keep the qualities as just medium just sort of the downloads aren't taken taking forever just do this one example and then I'll Speed the video up so if we go back to our main content folder it's now made one folders called Mega scans services and then we can simply drag and drop onto the geometry now with a SketchUp input even even via data Smith the mapping is always tiny you can easily adjust that in the settings of the material if you just don't point one point one there we go something like that again you can see the level of realism is really impressive straight away so anyway with the texture I want to replace selected and the Slate selected there I then just replace the parents like so again look at that level of realism on that texture update the mapping in terms of the the tiling sorry the lower the numbers are bigger though detects your looks because it's less tiling okay and we go down here again we don't we open it up double click on it obviously the way the tiling of that is Tiny if we now affect it in here it'll affect it up there as well so what you want to do is you want to do a duplicate that duplicate is then assigned instead and then you can further effect the tiling allows affecting it up there supposed to say fiddly oh Unreal Engine will will yield stronger results and the ability to kind of navigate the thing as a game and all that sort of stuff and it has got the similar technology let me just send it on the path chaser let's just go closer to this wall it's that level of realism is absolutely fantastic so okay let me uh text you away I'll be back with you right so the thing we want to test is the ability to make changes so let's hit save and then what what I've done here is split the balustrating there keeping it quite simple to those little changes because with Duos demonstrating how to make those changes obviously in the real world the changes you're subjected to a lot more drastic than that you can see there that's one solid piece so what we want to then do is we must re-export it and I'm just going to do V2 as you can see I've done right the reason I've done that is it just just saves the previous Imports there's no harm in that then what we want to do is we want to go to our import folder we've which we've called Data Smith right click on the data Smith scene re-import with new file V2 now it's saying there's actually update actors within the scene now I think I think the Pierce that should be no that hasn't made the hasn't made the change I'll just let me just let me just undo that we've got some funky funky things going on there so apologies let's let's do that again V2 and then yeah so we do we do wanna we don't want to respawn any deleted actors so yeah so we do want to replace ones in the scene right okay then there we go so that we've got our split balustrating now so that's where it's replaced it and that's that that's great can't fold that however look what happened to our textures so there's a little bit of weight then in GEOS going around the scene and just paying attention to what's been affected it's not effective the floor the cupboards the surface and everything like that but it has just affected a few things so we've then got a whiz round now really and just reset some of those textures and that may happen each time that you're making changes so really my advice when using Unreal Engine because it I I knew I kind of knew that thing was gonna happen my advice for Unreal Engine is it it's not really a program for something dual design process I would if you want to use the kind of the epic games ecosystem I would say use a twin motion to keep up with the design process because that re-import features a lot more a lot Slicker and then when you've reached an uh a state of design freeze and you want to kind of just lift it or you want to use some of the extra features in um on real engine I would then bring it into Play Once the designers settle down a little bit so if you don't mind leave it with me let me just update the the textures again and then we'll get into populating the scene which is one of one of unreal engines a massive strength so with that texturing up they don't it's now time to populate the scene with assets vegetation things like that you'll notice I've got a handful of trees and plants at my disposal at the bottom there what I've done is imported it add this to the project the mega scans trees was available on the Epic Marketplace I think I think they were I think they were free so I've added them to my library and then out of the to the project I'll I'll be I'll be continuously that's all I'll show you um how to do that in a sec and then if I just drag and drop Tree in here you can see that they're pre-animated I'm just in simple wind just got a tiny little bit of wind effect in it you can see there it just looks absolutely fantastic it's so detailed so realistic now in order to bring these into play we go into foliage mode and then what we want to do is we want to select a handful of trees and we drag them up here just prepared in them before it drops them in it's got a kind of load them in they are quite complicated bits of geometry and textures and and the likes we are there we go so now let's let us do it so they're all selected we then want to go to fill and then we should just be able to select the geometry and there we go but that is a monster bit of tends to see that so let's go back let's go to one notice that's still too much all right so the density I hadn't affected the density across them all there we go that's better right so we've loaded in some some assets internally don't really know as much as the others because it is a slightly longer windowed process so I didn't want to drag it out too long we've got we've got something in to just you know frame a shot we can still judge render quality and and times and things like that so what I like to do is I like to position the view and then do create camera here and you do silly camera active that's the more realistic camera view it's like the true to life camera and then with with the camera selected we can jump into it the two point perspective isn't inherent in Unreal Engine there are plugins I won't go into that though but there are plugins that you can use to aim to create two-point perspectives both for ease you just make sure that on the y-axis the rotation is set to zero we then want to really we want to do a proper focal length maybe just change that too the 18 we then want to move into the focus settings if we bring this closer to as you can see that we want the focus to be kind of middle distance of the shot the lower the aperture the more pronounced the blade as you can see the blade in the foreground there we'll just set it to two we then need to create two sequences that the movie ran the cube can speak to so again look it gets a little gets a little more complex so just call them pull the folder level sequences we'll call that one exterior now what you do is you drag the camera let me just bring the hotline a bit more down you then drag the camera down here and that's now ready to render and then it's a case of telling it to use the path chaser in order to control the settings you need to use the anti-aliasing however you pronounce it anti-aliasing a setting and that's where you control the sample count and then you you render away basically to finish this off and where Unreal Engine comes into its own is the animation aspect now to just get a bit of camera movement going we use the sequences that we've created for the still images so if we jump into the exterior one it's a little more complicated than others but not not loads so we go into the sequence we then create a keyframe if I just start somewhere like here create a keyframe on the location there scroll to the end and just move that camera something like that and there we go really nice camera movement there oh in here you can add objects in the scenes of this sequencer and animate them like some pattern things like that so unreal engines Big Tool really is it's it's a gaming engine but it's also used for a lot of cinematic sequences as well in games you know like the real high-end high quality games all the cinematics in are built in Unreal Engine as well now if we just go to the other sequence let me just jump out of the camera though I want to drag in something that affects the weather now if I just see enough I think it's Skylight atmosphere there is something in the Epic Marketplace called Ultra Dynamic sky and it's a smart Sky system that you can change all kinds of settings we won't get too deep into that but what I do want to show is in conjunction with the sky you can introduce Dynamic weather if we change the preset to rain and thunderstorm and if we just select another object you can see that and that is certainly the most realistic weather system that we've seen so far and will likely be the most realistic of this test if I then jump into the camera that is ways of stopping the the rain coming inside but I'll just move to the exterior right cinematic view pause and you can see how that rain is continuing to animate in conjunction with the movement of the camera so you can see there just after a very very quick test how you can make some really striking animations so for me that's one of unreal engines secret weapons really and obviously you can render this out using the ray tracing mode which is very realistic in its own right or you can use the path Tracer that's completely up to you if an Unreal Engine there's no faulting quality the quality of image the quality of the the walkthroughs and the interactivity and all that sort of stuff but I think a lot of people will find a a big Lane in cave quite an intimidating program to learn and personally I don't think it's a very um very intuitive program to use as part of an architect's design process I personally think that Unreal Engine is more of a a final output type of software you've got the other orders like I say like Lumia and the name and twin motion enscape they they all keep up I think a lot faster than Unreal Engine can when it comes to design changes so my advice will be if you're quite taken by some of the technology that's Unreal Engine I would visit twin motion and then use that as part of your design process and then at the end you can drop it back into Unreal Engine because of the the made by the same supplier and um I would I would personally use unreal engineer for what are called like final pixels so from real engine check out my little score rating pop up here it has got many special features obviously it's the it's the daddy when it comes to animations and cinematics and all that sort of stuff but as I say I I don't think it's the particularly intuitive when it comes to him the the what can be quite an intense process for the um for the design basically of of a busy architect D5 is also very competitive if you go for the annual rate which is uh cheaper across the year than it is for the month you're looking at 360 dollars per year which works out at about 290 pounds what's good about the monthly one is that a rolling contract so you can kind of cancel whenever so the rolling monthly one is is a good option if you just need it every every now and then really but all in all very reasonably priced now we're jumping into D5 render which appears to be the new kid on the Block and again this program can read KP files you import face and then you kind of click it from the uh the outliner and this is a programmer works on a Ray tracing model and it is very realistic out the out the box and the thing that obviously we've been starting with is um applying materials and one massive advantage of D5 render is it's huge asset Library so it's got over 9000 3D models and over 2 000 materials built in it's also got these lovely particle assets as well so for me Fiverr has actually got the strongest a kind of default Library I was pleasantly surprised with twin motions one actually utilizing Mega scans and um and sketchfab put this one in in Builders is is absolutely incredible so we're gonna start off by applying some basic materials again using only those within the software and then a I'll see on the other side okay so that's the materials done and I deliberately finished on the grass one because it's absolutely fantastic that you can just hit a drop down and just use a grass template that is really impressive and as I've said the purpose of this exercise is about speed and who can handle the sort of speed and still reduce and still produce sorry uh top quality image so far so good with D5 the the material library was absolutely excellent there didn't take me long at all so with that said I'm not a fan of this vehicle Timber trim that we've got there I want that to be the the same metal as the trim Above So then this is a good test of the ability to make changes quickly so what I want to do is I want to select this perimeter here and group it same material as above because again D5 splits your model up via material so if I didn't save that jump back into D5 select oh sorry it was trying to bring another one in then sorry so I need to go on object select that right click hit reload and there we go everything else has been preserved that's fantastic so that's the ability to make changes nailed down and that's why these real-time rendering programs have have really come on and really took you know um the imagination of Architects as the the ability to make changes is compatible so top marks there so let me move on to adding assets to the scene and in this instance that shouldn't be an issue because of the amount of sets that are in there say over nine thousand you can see there that's decent quality and never use any of these for close-ups so again leave it with me and we'll uh we'll populate the scene see how quick takes now and how convincing it it looks so we'll buy and I've got to say that d5's asset library is one of the nicest libraries that there is it's it's such a lovely um just a little place to just explore some of these well actually that I didn't even mean to land back on that these little these little works of art are just Super Angel these little modern modern sculptures so very very good for me the the asset library and the tools to scatter them and paint them on all that sort of stuff it has got a path to those welfare adding you know cars to scenes people walking and all that it is absolutely excellent I can see why a lot of people have fell in love with with this piece of software so to now put it to the test we want to create some Stills and you may have noticed that what I've done is I've created two scenes creating camera positions in D5 is also an absolute pleasure so you you get a obviously a rough rough angle and then you simply add it as a scene once you're in that scene you can then adjust camera settings top right so I've gone for a nice 20 mil focal length and they've gone for a two-point perspective you should always have a two-point perspective then just to finish it off you want to add a bit of depth of field as I've explained previous now it's quite it's quite a it's quite a subtle subtle effect but that's fine you can just see a little bit of blaring going on in the back in the foreground there so if I just if I just change that to say six we'll probably see that a bit more pronounced on the interior and again that that transition from scenes is is excellent so same again 20 ml length 10 depth of field on let's have a focus on that chair and then we'll do six again and you can just see that that's sulfur in the foregrounds just softened a touch so it's that simple to create scenes then you've got the option of two different modes of some lights you've got the the Geo and the sky which has animated clouds which is fantastic and then you can literally just hit North offset and just change the Sun Path like that or you can swap to a HDR sky and rotate that accordingly it's got some it's got some out the box and you can use your own as well so they're very good I think I'm going to just stick with the the Geo and Sky just for just a bit more control we want our clouds to cast shadow that we just refresh that while I'm on this we've also got a rainbow which is absolutely oh sorry I'll say that was still obviously so I I just absolutely fantastic having these weather options fog as well I do like to introduce a little bit of high fog individuals it does you know creates depth so that's quite nice let's save that piercings see the way it's knocked it off there so let's just let's just put that high fog back on just hit refresh and then what you can do is you can actually make adjustments to exposure you can hit Auto as well it's just kind of you know figures it out on its own you can boost the contrast or drop the contrast and sometimes I do like to act I just dropped the contrast to give me a little bit more room in Photoshop you want to drop the Highlight because I think we're getting a bit of get a bit of overexposure on the ground just wondering whether just drop the angle of the Sun just to reduce it intensity a little bit blue lens flare just about 0.1 and again the slide there's an interesting in D5 because they're at the center they're not like it's like it's from just purely left to right so it just gives you a little bit more freedom no I think I'm I'm going to actually drop the exposure a little bit just to bring the a bit more detail into the bright spots I think that'll do after a little bit of a little bit of Tink and I might just drop the drop the angle to base and again outside I think we'll we'll take control of the exposure actually and then solid so I know you can do that do that forever really but it is nice loads of control and there's actually a full color grading area as well which again you can spend a lot of time on so we'll save them to off and then very very simple way of rendering you go in image mode you then pick your aspect ratio so we'll do 4K and then you can see it frames it just to make sure that everything's in shot 4K I won't use the render channels for this one and it is a symbol and it's hitting render and it does just then refine that image obviously and what I would say about D5 as well is that the render times are really quick D5 is phenomenal for animations it which we'll get into very shortly and just one final one on D5 as well I think these glass Reflections are absolutely stunning as well anyway let's hit the surrender and then we'll move on to animation last but not least on D5 render is the ability to animate now to create a camera path you add a camera in one position it's actually easier to just have it in perspective mode it's got a bit more control over the camera so let's just start here refresh that face frame pan across other camera and there we go there's our camera path very easy all the same sentence that you can apply to still images apply to your animations as well and then if we just take another shot outside you just add other clip add camera and again pan across ad camera and Away you go nice and easy and the thing with D5 is the rapid render times mean that you can make you know really good animations very quickly and you know the whole point of this video is about speed and D5 is is right up there for that one other thing that's great about D5 is the animated assets the dynamic assets so if I do ornaments Dynamic only and we'll pop something on this little coffee table here I do quite like these little balancing ones so we'll pop that there and then if we go back to our video mode and then hit play you can see that animating the that's brilliant and that's where D5 really does Excel so for me top marks for the ability to animates for D5 five render has really took off in the last 12 18 months in my opinion and I can see why it's a really fun program to use and what I mean by that is it's all it just all feels like it's all in-house the library is absolutely massive I quite like the uh the dynamic objects as well it'll Dynamic bit of furniture and all that sort of stuff I think I think I think it's a really really nice program to use um again it is very intuitive it's very fast as well but if I can be brutally honest I think when it comes to larger scenes and larger images and things like that I personally don't think it compares to uh a v-ray or the path tracing technology that lives in Unreal Engine and twin motion so I think D5 may end up as a very very close second and I really understand why it's it's growing in popularity but I think it just just falls short of the um of path Chase and Technology really this is my overall score for D5 render and as I say I think it's a really really good bit of Kit very reasonably priced and personally I think um if the the technology of of a Patrick's or something like that didn't live in a in the likes of Unreal Engine and swim motion I I think I think D5 would would be far ahead of its competitors because I think other than that I think it's inherent image quality is a is right up there the pricing of enscape is dependent on whether you want a floating license or a fixed seat license now a fixed seat means obviously it's it's a science and one computer you can kind of get around that by removing the license from one computer and loading it on another but that does get a little bit a little bit tedious um nonetheless for the fixed season license for per year you're looking at 478 Euros which again you always get equates a similar amount in pounds but for the floating license which is much more fluid in in a studio environment you're looking at eight seven four Euros for the year now enscape is an interesting one because it's a plug-in directly within SketchUp everything else we've looked at so far has been jumping into another software and importing the model enscape is different in that you make changes within your SketchUp file and it automatically updates use you know within the enscape window so to give you an example of that I've just downloaded a grass texture okay in the material editor which reads the same set of materials that are within the existing materials in the SketchUp model you'll see one for grass so then within schedule you can then apply it using the same SketchUp tools and within the enscape window we've got lovely animated 3D grass so for me that's that is something it's quite interesting it's it's personal preference really do you would you rather jump into another program or would you rather stay in SketchUp and that's personal preference but I think I I think it's quite a good quite a good feature there um on top of the fact that it sits within SketchUp you can also match camera angles and and things like that so it's it very very good piece of case very interesting and it does have a good level of realism so let's put it to the test and we'll start with materials as we have been with the others okay so that's the materials applied and personally I think the inbuilt library of materials is is quite weak there aren't tons of materials now obviously everyone's got the option to create their own materials and that's what I would always recommend anyway but considering we're talking about being a busy architect rushing around I think that was um a little a little more tedious of a process however what is nice is the ability to paint it within SketchUp it's an easier thing to kind of dive into because you'll either be familiar with your own modeling programs I do think that's good the ability to change the direction of textures using sketchups model is um SketchUp method so I should say is is good so the ability to kind of stay in SketchUp is is a good facet of enscape but I think that might divide opinion really because sometimes it is quite nice jumping into another another software and just just sort of immersing yourself in in that environment rather than sort of you know feeling like you're jumping between the two but anyway um not not a negative by any means I think the um if it just if it just cuts off the calendar link I do think it's looking quite realistic already and the interior is looking okay as well the floor material is quite nice and it's quite easy to to navigate as well so not bad not bad not the best in my opinion but not bad now what has improved over the years is enscapes asset Library I think having over 3 000 is is very good um so what we're going to do is we're going to dive into this Library we're going to populate the scene with tons of vegetation and then obviously populate the interior so I'll see on the other side right so we're back all the assets are in and what I would say about enscaping this experience particularly is that that was quite nice staying within SketchUp and having ultimate control over the positioning of absolutely everything sometimes the the scatter Tools in other softwares um the the little laws like over automated so you do lack control whereas once once the trees have been scattered in enscape it translates into SketchUp and you can then you know put fine tune basically and what I've done is I've actually selected areas and then just duplicated them across just to increase the density I thought that was really nice feature really or a nice aspect of of using enscape additionally fine tune in the position of you know the the the furniture of the people it's it is a yeah it is it is it is quite pleasurable really and obviously it's it'll be instinctively within you if you're used to using a certain program obviously we're using schedule here to be able to place them within the software you're comfortable in is is certainly um something worth considering basically Lee I have created two scenes now the reason I've created these scenes within enscape and not use the duplicated or the synchronized view is that enscape doesn't recognize the two-point perspective from schedule so you have to kind of create the two-point perspective within enscape and then and then set the scenes within the view manager but that's that's not an issue as far as as far as I'm concerned because obviously in in other programs you're you're you're in there anyway creating views so it's it's no different to that really so all that's left to then do within enskey is you wake up the um the render quality in a visual sense and then there are little tweaks that you can make you can drop the highlights darken the Shadows off reduce the saturation and so on really and I think the the the fine-tuning with the landscape is incredibly responsive so although I did criticize the the material Library the asset library is great and the the kind of visual Fidelity does look really good it looks smooth and soft and and precise so it is it is a yeah a good candidate to think of so let me um make a few of these tweaks that are all within here make a few tweaks set a couple of images go on obviously at the end we'll we'll compare all six engines so what is enscape's ability to create videos and animations like now it's quite simple to get to it it's just a video editor at the top unlike most others it's a case of creating oh it's actually quite a nice little a little bit of something as we create the first keyframe move across create an end frame set the duration let's do six seconds something like that say now turn off ease in and out and there you go nice and easy and you export the video with the button in the bottom right very very simple the only disappointing thing we landscape when it comes to that is that our limited number of animated sets at the minute I believe it's something they're looking into but if I just I just turn on the Wind intensity the trees the trees are moving and the grass is moving so that's that's fantastic well to my knowledge there aren't yet any animated objects like fantasy and things like that and there aren't any animated people the likes of lumion and twin motion and and D5 they all come with pre-loaded Dynamic objects that you can drop in and you don't need to worry about animating that that character so then when you are in when you are in your video that you've set you can rely on the fact that it's quite easy to just have animated objects within the scene you can see here from the clip that the trees are animating really nicely and it's just a shame that you haven't got the a full library at your disposal that that you know you can you can animate but I do believe that it's only a mass at a time for enscapes that other than that though the the quality is good and the ease of video creation is very good friendscape basically I think it's okay but I think the inbuilt library has got a long way to go and it's a shame that it hasn't got all of its assets or or plenty of them pre-animated as well I think that makes the animations quite lifeless personally I don't think the image quality is any better than the D5 render I do think it's better than Lumia it is quite reasonably priced but again I don't think it stands up next to next to D5 so it's a good to go program to use and again I do understand why it's got a lot of popularity it does have a really strong virtual reality connection um you can also export scenes as an executable file for someone who doesn't have the software to walk through so I do I do get all that but personally I I don't think the image quality and the inherent Library stands up to to a D5 render and then I'm then saying that I don't think that um D5 render has the the final output of of a path Tracer so personally I think enscape's kind of middle of the Roll for me um it's okay but there are better I'll do and for v-ray although they've got a a little offer on at the at the time of recording v-ray of have kind of changed their licensing now from software specific and what they do is they include all Integrations now in one license so you can see all the software there that you know you will have v-ray as a plugin for which I think is a great way of doing things and for the solo version which is probably what a lot of a lot of people will be interested in for this video I think for the quality of v-ray 358 pounds for the year is absolutely excellent and if you want to lift that to the premium version which comes with um all other kinds of um additional tools like Phoenix and scans and scans are great for um you know Mega realistic materials and things like that you're still only looking at a five three pounds for the year um so I think that's yeah you know fair enough as well so they're all pretty similar just with Lumi and being on the on the more expensive side I'd say this is a program that I've been using for years v-ray is the first rendering program that I've ever used so I've always kind of jumped between others and uh I'm back to v-ray and I still believe the v-ray and Corona by the way Corona gets a special mention at this point those two are the the the best when it comes to Absolute quality if if quality is your only factor that I believe that those two are still the the the kings of the rendering program but this video isn't about quality alone it is about speed it's about being able to test ideas quickly adapt to change and we've thrown in other aspects like the cost and the ability to create animations and videos and as a result a little spoiler layers I don't think v-ray for SketchUp at least would win all of those categories but what I can tell you is that there is no doubting the quality of v-rays imagery and that is primarily down to the fact that it doesn't rely on real-time Technologies like Ray tracing it is a true path Tracer renderer and as a result it's got the most realistic Global illumination the most realistic Reflections and and so on so before I Speed the video up and get into um adding textures before I get into that I want to just demonstrate a very nice trick when it comes to when it comes to texturing in video for SketchUp so what you can do is you can add a material from the cosmos browser and this is the inbuilt asset library that we're going to use for VD for SketchUp so if I just type in or because I even maybe just find it you just type in slates that's no what I'll do for the example anyway so what you can do is let's load that in so it's brick gray stone you can select the material you want to replace right click select objects in scene and then the material that you've just brought in you can then right click on it and hit apply to selection and it's an instance replacement of a material I think that's very good a lot of tool I'll be using quite a bit leave it with me all the materials are done muscle mess I'm slightly disappointed some of the materials for the exterior walls I I've had to kind of settle for the okay stacked concrete which is isn't bad but it's not quite the look I've been going for on the other shots but obviously we can get around that with bespoke materials and v-ray does have a good um does have a good facility for creating bespoke materials for just it's got a little necessary slots that you need um but nonetheless what we then have been doing obviously is is moving into populating the scene with assets it's one of the most fundamental parts of a decent visual and again we're talking about speed and who's going to give us the best result you know in conjunction with speed and those with a good inherent aim Library will you know will obviously score more highly so we have got plenty of options when it comes to vegetation you know if we just go to the subcategory of trees and it is the cosmos browser is um it's a it's a nice interface very easy to kind of search and and navigate through that's good and the latest version of v-ray has got an improved scatter system where you can select a surface you can assign models so if I just I just hit scatter and then just find that scatter there we are you can then add models if we just import one let's just have a quick look so we import the model over there we jump into scatter and then we simply add that guest and then we reduce the density to say 0.1 that's that's incredibly quick and you can preview your scatter but then when you're navigating it doesn't seem doesn't hate the actual computer usage which is very good if I just turn on an interactive render I'll just sort of show you about that what that's looking like that's very good and you can see good quality assets as well so using that approach leave it with me and I shall populate the scene and yeah be back in the gif okay so that's all the assets loaded in to give us our two Stills that we've been using to compare and I hope you agree that the the scatter tool if we just preview for all of it the scatter tool is is absolutely excellent that hasn't always been available to v-ray for as a plugin for SketchUp so that that is that you know when it was implemented was a was a game changer I do like that you know it has very little bearing on the performance of your model it just it obviously just affects the the render I'm sure they um just while we're here I just don't want to forget my little feature tree um so yeah it's it is it is quick in implementing assets the cosmos browser is is fantastic the only thing there and it might sound an obvious one but the only thing that you know it hasn't got is that real time feel and as long of a video user as as I've been I have got a little a little bias towards VA just because I've been using it for most of my career you can't deny the fact that having real-time rendering in in you know illumion twin motion enscape D5 um just having did the changes occur real Time That's so important as a designer so this it has got this interactive renderer but it's it's slow it's it's you know it's it's well yeah it's slow so it's not the most convenient so the thing with offline renders is the fact that you have to kind of guess a little bit based on experience and then do test renders and continue to do that process which is nowhere near as quick as a as a real-time rendering program but other than that um the asset Library the scatter tool and things like that make it absolutely brilliant now of course we've been testing the others for the ability to make changes well the fact that and similar to enscape this the fact that we stay in SketchUp makes it completely seamless without having to re-import into another program so the ability to adapt to changes is excellent and the other thing obviously we've been testing then is the ability to create still images and animations so obviously we'll start with the ability to make still images and in SketchUp we just set camera positions using scenes and then you can simply render to to the view that it's in that's what it does it you know it's not like you create cameras it just renders to a certain view that you're in so you create scenes in order to save your views both are set to two point perspective obviously we want to implement the not the the interactive render we wanted that we want to set it to the still random but when you change it just it it cracks around the wrong person you just cancel that um you then want to attain Progressive off you want to render with the little buckets and if you look at this thing here where it says quality subdivisions are basically the the lingo for quality and as you move this slider these things move up as well so very easy to produce still images because all you need to do is just hit the quality so high you don't really have to change a lot of other things I do use the denoiser the v-ray the noiser I set it to mild just going to send it and then do custom and then just do three and point three just softens a a touch obviously set the resolution and uh you need you do need to change your exposure depending on internal external so you can't kind of render all over the shots in one hit because you do need to change the exposure values I'm sure there's a plug in something for that for you know out of the box you do need to kind of change the exposure value per view another thing just a little a little extra is I've actually not touched on the volumetric environment change it to environment fog and I do think out the box it's pretty good so the the features in in VR exceptional the the plugin for oh that's not it's not quite what I'm after let's see what the little guy I'd say controls density make the fog more transparents higher so if we do eight let's just lift that into I'm going to install them like that um so the feet the features are great and the the integration to SketchUp now is is brilliant it always lag quite far behind 3ds Max but now it's it's it's truly caught up um and then as I say the the quality slider makes things in incredibly easy um so I think that's that for the stills leave it with me to just fine-tune some of these settings and then we'll we'll set the two to render and then we have our six sets of Stills that that we can compare uh I think obviously at the end of the video and but before we get to that we'll then just touch on how v-ray in SketchUp deals with animation right so to finish off we just wanna test v-ray for SketchUp ability to create animations now the creation of a fly-through video on your camera movement the creation is easy enough but there are no assets that are animated unfortunately like in your twin motions and your lumens and and D5 things like that they all come with what you'd call like a you know dynamic assets so trees move people move and all that sort of stuff everything in v-ray for SketchUp is static um so it's easy to create a a video fly through but it's just not not quite as as convincing in my opinion anyway in order to create this what we actually need to do is we need to just focus our scene creation on two keyframes so somewhere like you know starting here for example we'll do two point perspective animation I've seen and then we kind of move across something like that I'm being a bit a bit crude with it on purpose just a sort of testing but then that's the that's kind of the animation it'll render we don't want to go in model info and we want to enable scene transitions because that's obviously what it's rendering you can increase the duration using number of seconds there you want to see in the delay off so that's a bit of a slower movement now and then to render an animation off let's hear an animation on there entire animation so it's just this is going to render the video between those two scenes motion blade and Camera motion blade turned on for render output you then want to hit save image and click a file path create a file path and the reason being is the way v-ray runs animations is a series of Stills it doesn't produce a video it's a series of Stills and you then will create user rendering aim around you'll use a video editing software like a Premiere Pro after effects or something like that and then you'll import all those still images and I kind of tuned it into that video that's that's actually the least destructive way of him doing an animation as well because if it crashes at some point you can just kind of pick up where you left off so animation turned on those two toggles on entire animation and then you set your render settings and your resolution like you would Stills and then you will you know you'll get the really high quality of a of v-ray but as I say it just doesn't have that that kind of real-time animation like some of the others have so it doesn't score very highly in my book on the animation front but it does have the option and finally v-ray now we used vray for SketchUp and my understanding is the v-ray 4 3ds Max is is slightly more advanced and you can just just get a little bit more quality out of the version of 3ds Max I think that's because there's more settings and likely there's more settings within 3ds Max as well but nonetheless it is the same technology and I think personally that v-ray is still the champ when it comes to image quality and again I have dropped in Corona render um you know throughout the video and I would put these two kind of side by side I know people have got the preferences but it's the same sort of Technology now I think v-ray was always going to win when it comes to image quality however the thing that separates the others is render speed and that kind of intuitive real-time you know the the ability to just change the sun angle in real time and see how that impacts Your Design how it impacts your imagery with v-ray you've got to constantly either do test renders or introduce the interactive rendering which is which is quite slow really it's quite clumsy so for me I will always use v-ray because sometimes you just need that that level of finish that level of quality but sadly I think it's let down by the the render times now v-ray can use GPU rendering but the GPU renderer doesn't utilize all of v-rays features so it's it's still lacking for me as well so I would say that yeah v-ray always going to have the the quality over the rest but I still think it lacks in render times and that that kind of natural intuition when you're making changes specifically you know more to the mostly with the imagery and the scene and the look and feel so this is my overall score for V Ray and specifically within SketchUp the animation facility is is lacking as well it's similar to enscape really it's it it can be quite lifeless and to just use a couple of like well like the transitional scenes within SketchUp I think I think it's it's got a long way to go with that really so as I say I I will always be a v-ray user when it comes down to speed and the ability to still produce a decent image I think there are better options so the big reveal what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk through each of the images one by one and then I will start to just put a a couple side by side and kind of work through it that way and the side a a winner if if you like so first and foremost we're gonna put them in a run so we're starting with lumion now lumine's the only one where they did three images because just wanted to compare the interior um interior shots using the raster and the ray tracing method but if we start with the exterior it's fine it's okay I think lumion does handle exterias very well or piercing I think it is let down with Interiors now I think that that image is quite good but again something that is frustrating with lumion is the use of reflection planes and I don't think the ray tracing method is is quite solving that just yet but not a bad start and I say the 3D glasses is is a wonderful addition for Lumia but as I say it falls down when you move into the interior now a common fault that I found is when you're looking through a window through glass the detail seems to kind of drop away and you can see that evidence here the trees just are just a mess now really when you move to the ray tracing I finally got a little strange results in terms of the coloring it was it was bouncing too much you're like the orange light around so just the saturated which wasn't too big of an issue now you can't see an improvement in the realism and absolutely no doubles about that when it comes to the furniture and things like that but again when you look through the glass it's just not it's not great and we're not really getting fantastic Reflections in the glass either what you know the raster one has got the reflection planes and obviously it doesn't work yet in Ray tracing as well so not bad but certainly certainly better options Zlatan brings me to Twin motion and I think using the path Tracer it's pretty close to the quality of of a v-ray and we will put those side by side so we're getting really nice reflections and I think the realism of the grass is is exceptional and the realism of the trees as well one little critique of twin motion is that it adds too much Bloom just a little bit too much Bloom and I had to take I had to take a little bit of extra time in just messing with the lighting settings to just bring that that bloom down but using the pass Tracer you can definitely see that lifting realism and I think that continues inside as well if we look at the the lovely materials that have been used from him the quixel mega scans Library you can see the difference in Reflections and bumps or something that's great and the path Tracer handles glass really well and we are getting some lovely Reflections in the window and you can see the fireplace behind us as well so for me I think I think that is you know a really really good set of images then we move into Unreal Engine and the the shame about unreal engines exteriors you can't naturally select two point perspective you've got to use a plug-in and I try to avoid plugins and things like that for this just wanted to be a kind of a raw test and by the way on Raw test none of these images have had any post production as well these are straight out of the oven so to speak so I think the level of realism against using the pathways I think the level of realism is good um it it certainly matches twin motion it's the same technology it's the same company the trees are certainly of a higher quality but that's more to do with the the library um using quixel Mega scan trees and things like that and when you move inside again the quality is there um you you should be you should be sure to tearing off the noise and the the noise are in Unreal Engine is incredibly destructive in Twin motion it's nowhere near as brutal so you can see a little bit of noise but there's a little bit of a saying um in the arguments game which noise is detail and you can kind of see that so level of quality it took me a bit longer to build this scene so the actual setting the composition isn't fantastic I must admit but we'll just live on a pure render quality and there's no faulting it but as I've said previously you can near enough get well you can get the same level of quality into emotion and it's an absolute fraction of the time as well so I would say if you're going to use epic games starting to emotion and maybe just bring that into Unreal Engine in a later points then we move into D5 render and I think the glass on this is impeccable it's it's pay effectively the glass is is fantastic and as I say the the ability to build the scene up in D5 was probably the easiest because the library is just exceptional and I do love these literally these little cartoon spaceman as well um and gone are the days of adding books manually as well on the shelves it's absolutely fantastic however the little critique of D5 and I've been using D5 last couple of months just to just a trial it for our practice I think the exterias still feel a little computer gamey the interior is a certainly realistic they are but I I personally think the exteriors have got a little way to go not not much but just just a little ways to go and what I have found is it struggles with dark spots you see these artifacts here now that might be something to do with the material as well as kind of a velvety material but that is a bug I have seen in in other scenes but as I say absolutely instant render times and a really good render quality but I still don't think it quite measures up to a path chaser then we come to enscape and I do I like the mood of enscape images I think sort of out the box it creates this lovely atmospheric feel however again and this is something to do with Ray tracing technology the we are getting strange artifacts on the trees and we're also not getting amazing glass Reflections as well and that does filter to the interior if we go if we go inside I've created these kind of like God rays but it seems to be hating the reflections of the glass and that that's that's too much to contend with again when we're talking about speed the level of realism on the materials and the glass you know the glass table and all that sort of stuff is is fantastic it is but it's just got too many bugs in my experience then we move to v-ray last but not least and the thing with v-ray is it's faultless so all those little little artifacts that I've picked up in the last couple you will not find any of that in v-day if I zoom into the vegetation it's Flawless it's absolutely exceptional the glass again is perfect when you move inside I have spotted a couple of faults the contact between the planter there and the floor is is a little dodgy but I think I could solve that with a little bit of you know maybe improve the lighting maybe even change the assets maybe that asset just isn't quite the best one but there is just no faulting again bear in mind that is zero post-production here there is no faulting the quality of the v-ray images if I even zoom in on the grass and The Rock there for me v-ray as it stands today is still the um the best when it comes to photorealism however a big drawback is to get a 4K image out of my machine and I have got a good computer I had to use the v-ray cloud so that cost me money in render credits to create two 4K images and that was a little critique that I had in mind and a summary of the software is that there's no fault in the quality but the render times are a lot slower than the GPU rendering of the counterparts that I've reviewed so in summary sorry I did say I was going to do some side by sides didn't I so let me just let me just do a side by side with say an Unreal Engine and instantly you can see the level of realism in Unreal Engine if I then take a twin motion sorry same again you can see that improved realism that improves atmosphere when it comes to the path tracer and then obviously if I then move it to a v-ray comparison again that is no question so if I then pop a twin motion next to a v leg so we're saying what I'm saying v-ray is definitely the best when it comes to image quality I personally think the twin motion and the path Chaser does stand up next to a v-ray shot if we then move inside let's do like a D5 interior with a v-ray interior you can see that there's just there's just a little bit more softness a little bit more realism going on in v-ray both again as I said the the imagery out of D5 is is fantastic and little spoilers that for me D5 is a very close second however if we then line up a v-ray interior next twin motions path tracer I think again they are incredibly similar when it comes to Quality so that brings me to my conclusion which is I think overall twin motion is the best rendering software for a busy architect and I'm saying that because it mixes two of the the kind of the best aspects of all these rendering softwares which is the speed and interaction of real-time rendering with the level of Polish of the path chaser I don't think the others can compete with that mix of technology so for me twin motion wins and I shall be using to emotion for the foreseeable future with maybe a little sprinkle of video I I still think v-ray does a better job of of diagrammatic renders thank you so much for making it this far I bet you there aren't many but um thank you so much for watching this video I know it's been a lengthy one but I think it was well well worthwhile and I know that myself by I was actually drifting uh a little away from Twin motion I must I must be honest but I think all in all my overall winner is Twin motion and I personally will be using that program now moving forward with little bits of v-ray um as and when I I need it really so I hope it's helped inform you you might disagree with my decision and that's absolutely fine but I hope that you've learned something along the way and I hope you you know we we've settled a debate in your mind because I'm I'm I'm constantly jumping between them so I hope we've we've settled any entire debate you might be having any debates you might be having in your studio and again thanks for following arcademia if you're a member of our platform thank you so much for that and if you're not head over to academia.com to find out more and we've got plenty more to come we're only just getting started

Channel: ArchAdemia

Views: 149,030

Keywords: Architecture, architecture student, architecture school, architecture concept, architecture design, architecture tutorial, architecture lecture for beginners, architecture 101, architecture students, architect, design, architecture history, architecture drawing, contemporary architecture, modern architecture, life of an architect, architecture student tips, architecture podcast, lumion, sketchup, twinmotion, enscape, unreal engine, d5 render, vray, archivz, best software, rendering

Id: 4HsK-gTRs1g

Length: 131min 7sec (7867 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 30 2023