Wishes
Post your wishes about Graphisoft products: Archicad, BIMx, BIMcloud, and DDScad.

Renderman or Vray for Archicad

Anonymous
Not applicable
hello anybody knows if there´s some plan to compliment archicad with some plug-in for render with more quality than lightworks, it would be super nice to have renderman or vray for archicad , that could make that we don`t need to have to change software for the rendering
18 REPLIES 18
Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin
Currently ArchiCAD has several Rendering Engines built-in. I do not think that more are on the way. For example, the LightWorks rendering Engine is there since AC9 but not much improvement has been made to it since.
If there are more connections in the future, I suppose these will be in the form of exporting add-ons, but you will still have to make those renderings in the rendering application instead of in ArchiCAD.
Of course the API provides a way to create Rendering Add-Ons for AC.
Loving Archicad since 1995 - Find Archicad Tips at x.com/laszlonagy
AMD Ryzen9 5900X CPU, 64 GB RAM 3600 MHz, Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB, 500 GB NVMe SSD
2x28" (2560x1440), Windows 10 PRO ENG, Ac20-Ac27
Dwight
Newcomer
You are correct that it is unlikely we'll see improvements in Archicad's included rendering engines.

Unless one considers themself elite, the most pragmatic approach is Artlantis. As far as free-standing rendering apps go, it is reasonably well integrated with Archicad.

And before you hack, be sure to try their fully-functioning demo.
Dwight Atkinson
Anonymous
Not applicable
We recently purchased Maxwell Render which produces high quality renderings directly from our ArchiCAD model. This has been a HUGE timesaver at our firm. However my past experience with V Ray in Sketchup is that it produces the same quality that we get from Maxwell in a fraction of the time. I was rendering high quality 2200 x 1600 images from Vray in Sketchup in 20 minutes. The same level of quality (Sampling Level 16+ as a minimum) takes around 14 hours to render using Maxwell. I haven't pursued network rendering yet. If there was a Vray plugin available we would be the first customers as it is so easy to get high quality results.
Anonymous
Not applicable
New render (CineRender by MAXON) in AC18 is really big step in right direction. Pictures rendered by CineRender look much more attractive.
I wonder when VRay will be adapted for Archicad to get real photorealistic pictures. Please consider VRay as new render engine to arm users with VRay Materials, VRay Lights, VRay Cameras.
Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin
My personal opinion:
CineRender was implemented in ARCHICAD 18.
Before that LightWorks was in ARCHICAD for 9 versions.
Since CineRender is the product of a sibling company (Maxon) I assume it will stay in ARCHICAD for a long time. This would mean you will not see a new Rendering Engine put in by Graphisoft for quite some time, so if VRay will come to ARCHICAD it will be done by some other company. Many Rendering Engines like Artlantis, Maxwell, Octane, LumenRT, were created by 3rd party developers, not Graphisoft.
Loving Archicad since 1995 - Find Archicad Tips at x.com/laszlonagy
AMD Ryzen9 5900X CPU, 64 GB RAM 3600 MHz, Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB, 500 GB NVMe SSD
2x28" (2560x1440), Windows 10 PRO ENG, Ac20-Ac27
Anonymous
Not applicable
Yes, I agree that Graphisoft in collaboration with Maxon made the serios rut for a long time. Don't know, what must be happen before it change.
Maybe, look to competitor's trend (Revit), maybe anything else.


Unfortunately, now they will not support two renderers in AC at the same time, i think.

ps/ don't understand a bit last sentence about Vray. This product of Chaos Group, isnt'n it? But it was integrate in Revit jointly.
Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin
Int_Skylined wrote:
Yes, I agree that Graphisoft in collaboration with Maxon made the serios rut for a long time. Don't know, what must be happen before it change.
Maybe, look to competitor's trend (Revit), maybe anything else.

Unfortunately, now they will not support two renderers in AC at the same time, i think.

ps/ don't understand a bit last sentence about Vray. This product of Chaos Group, isn't it? But it was integrate in Revit jointly.
I am not exactly sure what you are trying to say.
But if you compare the built-in Renderer in ARCHICAD (CineRender) with the built-in Renderer in Revit (Autodesk Raytracer - they have only one, too), CineRender wins hands down. It has so many more options in it. Maybe Autodesk Raytracer can get a decent result in a short time, but there are hardly any customization options in it in terms of rendering effects if you want to go beyond those default settings. Plus, it just doesn't have a lot of things CineRender has. CineRender in ARCHICAD has just so much more.

Besides that there are of course multiple additional Renderers for both applications (which all cost additional money). Maybe VRay was jointly developed for Revit, but it will nevertheless cost money when it is officially released. That would be nice if it didn't cost any money to put it in Revit, but I suppose it will cost the same cca. 1000 bucks for Revit as for 3D Studio and Rhino, etc. when it is released.
As far as I know GRAPHISOFT has worked with several other vendors in the past when they developed their renderers for ARCHICAD.
Loving Archicad since 1995 - Find Archicad Tips at x.com/laszlonagy
AMD Ryzen9 5900X CPU, 64 GB RAM 3600 MHz, Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB, 500 GB NVMe SSD
2x28" (2560x1440), Windows 10 PRO ENG, Ac20-Ac27
TMA_80
Enthusiast
laszlonagy wrote:
Int_Skylined wrote:
Yes, I agree that Graphisoft in collaboration with Maxon made the serios rut for a long time. Don't know, what must be happen before it change.
Maybe, look to competitor's trend (Revit), maybe anything else.

Unfortunately, now they will not support two renderers in AC at the same time, i think.

ps/ don't understand a bit last sentence about Vray. This product of Chaos Group, isn't it? But it was integrate in Revit jointly.
I am not exactly sure what you are trying to say.
But if you compare the built-in Renderer in ARCHICAD (CineRender) with the built-in Renderer in Revit (Autodesk Raytracer - they have only one, too), CineRender wins hands down. It has so many more options in it. Maybe Autodesk Raytracer can get a decent result in a short time, but there are hardly any customization options in it in terms of rendering effects if you want to go beyond those default settings. Plus, it just doesn't have a lot of things CineRender has. CineRender in ARCHICAD has just so much more.

Besides that there are of course multiple additional Renderers for both applications (which all cost additional money). Maybe VRay was jointly developed for Revit, but it will nevertheless cost money when it is officially released. That would be nice if it didn't cost any money to put it in Revit, but I suppose it will cost the same cca. 1000 bucks for Revit as for 3D Studio and Rhino, etc. when it is released.
As far as I know GRAPHISOFT has worked with several other vendors in the past when they developed their renderers for ARCHICAD.

that however would be a great addition to Cinerender for ArchiCAD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHaXrslAzWQ
AC12_20 |Win10_64bit|
Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin
Yes, it is nice. For ARCHICAD I think this is currently available only in the 3rd party OctaneRender, which is GPU-based, and which can work inside of ARCHICAD.
Loving Archicad since 1995 - Find Archicad Tips at x.com/laszlonagy
AMD Ryzen9 5900X CPU, 64 GB RAM 3600 MHz, Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB, 500 GB NVMe SSD
2x28" (2560x1440), Windows 10 PRO ENG, Ac20-Ac27