Which software is the best for modeling and rendering?

[West1000]

I currently use v-ray for SU and have been recieving some pressure to switch to V-ray for Rhino. Does anyone know anything about Rhino? I've tried 3d-max and it's much too complicated and takes way too long to model a scene. I guess my question is, can you model in Rhino just as fast as sketcup and is it just as easy to use? Does anyone think it's worth the switch?

[thomthom]

Re: Which software is the best for modeling and rendering?

Rhino is very nice. Much easier to get into than 3DS Max. (thought I started with 3dsmax and then tried Rhino)

You can model pretty fast in Rhino, as with any other program, once you're familiar with it. SU does have a shallower learning curve. But you'll get best speed when you learn to use the keyboard shortcuts. One hand controlling the mouse and one over the keyboard giving quick command to what tool to use.

I don't think you'll be disappointed of going to Rhino. But, as always, you won't be as fast straight off. And it won't have the extreme shallow learning curve as SU. There is a few more functions to wrap your head around. But it's one of the easier of the larger modelling apps out there.

You will benefit from being able to handle larger models. You can throw in them rounded edges as you please so you get that nice highlight when you render that gives you that little extra.

If you haven't already, dedicate some time, get the Trial version, go through the tutorials that comes with Rhino. Get the feel of it. Then try to model a simple scene.

[dalomar_cg]

Re: Which software is the best for modeling and rendering?

Rhino is a great program, and I really enjoy working with it. It has a slightly different interface that SU, since its more AutoCAD based, but its very easy to get used to working with. For boxy like things, it may be a little slower that SU, but once you get working with Rhino down it can get pretty close to the same speed. For anything that's remotely curved or organic, it will be 8 million times faster than SU. The program as a whole is also very customizable, so you can have it fit your workflow which makes things very fast (you can create custom keyboards, toolbars, aliases, display schemes).

Also, your V-Ray experience will likely be better in Rhino. There's practically no wait for renderings to start, since the scene parsing in Rhino is completely different. Mapping is more along the lines of typical 3d, so you'll have widgets and multiple channels and things (some may think that's worse, I think its better). We also are a little better integrated into the Rhino environment, so things seam a little more natural (ie we don't have to piggy back on Rhino materials like we do in SU, since we can actually have our own). Although you might not directly take advantage of it, there is the ability to script V-Ray functionality in Rhino, so people like myself can code up some tools that make V-Ray more useful.

Making the switch from the V-Ray end of things shouldn't be an issue at all. Almost every UI thing is the same and everything works in exactly the same way, so there won't be any "growing pains" there.

[West1000]

Re: Which software is the best for modeling and rendering?

Thanks for your reply guys. I know with sketchup, during complex sences with a lot of geometry, the software slows down a lot and gets really choppy. Is this an issue with Rhino?

[thomthom]

Re: Which software is the best for modeling and rendering?

Rhino deals with more geometry many times better than SU.

[dalomar_cg]

Re: Which software is the best for modeling and rendering?

The scene management tools in Rhino are many times better than SU IMHO. In SU it seams like you've got groups or components and that's it. Although layers are there, they don't seam very user friendly at all. With Rhino, you've got groups, blocks(components basically), a very friendly layer system with sublayer options, xrefs, worksessions, excellent hiding capabilities, layer states, and a number of other goodies. Any software will slow down if you throw enough at it, but Rhino does pretty well with large scenes. When you do get to a point where the scene would slow down, there are plenty of tools to make the scene more manageable. You can have objects displayed in multiple ways within the viewport, so you can mix wireframe display with shaded or rendered, shade only the selected, or flat shade everything.

[goutham_cg]

Re: Which software is the best for modeling and rendering?

really rhino is cool work very fast and neatly....but as an architecture student i always needed components like trees,plants ,vehicles...for the modeling and rendering process.... but i never heard of such components downlodable for rhino ..we can only import components from other software's??? or any other way, please help...