chris

@rjtiedeman Yes all textures transfered quite nicely, I didn't touch the chair fabric at all. I've been playing around with the Corona textures today, which are very easy to set up and seem to improve the render even more.

After seeing all the comments about Corona, I downloaded a trial version of C4D and the Corona plugin, and I am really impressed with how easy and quick it is to render. I've only played around for a couple of hours, but managed to do these renders which only took 15 mins to complete.

Everyone's tips have really helped, I've just rendered this with fairly high settings in about 40 mins, so a big improvement. I also realised I was rendering files that were sat on our server, so as soon as I brought them across to my local pc, its made a big improvement. Still a bit of experimenting to do but I'm getting there.

Thank you everyone for your help on this. That was the problem I was having with the render times. I wasnt happy with the grain but as soon as I turned the AA to the highest setting, the render time was just unbearable.

@Tamsin Slatter Yes I thought that may dramatically increase the render time, but I find just a flat colour looks a bit fake? Any tips on a quicker way to achieve a painted wall texture would be appreciated 😀

Thank you Jim and Zoomer, those tips are very handy!

@Jim Wilson Thank you that is very helpful. I've attached an example file of a typical interior scene, and a render that took the best part of a day to do. Even that was not on the best setting and has come out quite grainy. That render was done on the custom render style 1. Any tips would be greatly appreciated. steve kitchen 3d v2019.vwx

@J. Wallace Thank you, thats really handy to know

Thank you, that render looks great. My only concern with investing in new software, is then having to train staff with the new software. The idea of having one very well spec'd mac in the office would mean all the staff can use it as and when needed. I've spent quite a bit of time looking into improving render times, and its not a problem when doing test renders at low res / dpi, but I cant get a high res / high quality render without it taking at least the best part of a day.

Hi there, We are an interior design company getting into the world of 3d modelling and rendering with Vectorworks. We do reasonably basic interior models with Vectorworks and we are working hard to perfect our renders through Renderworks to give the best presentations to our clients. We also have a number of projects coming up where our joinery needs to be incorporated into architect's buildings and be made BIM compatible. We currently all run reasonably new 27" 5k retina Imacs, with 3.4 GHz Intel Core i5 processors and 16gb ram, which has been ok so far, but we are finding render times can sometimes be up to 2-3 days long, and we've had a few crashes. Therefore we'd like to purchase one new Imac that can handle anything we can throw at it on Vectorworks, and also maximise render times. We are looking at an Imac pro as these seem to be very highly spec'd, but we are not sure how much we need to spend to get the best results. Is it worth upgrading from the base 8 core processor to more cores (they go up to 18) The clock speeds all seem to be similar, and correct me if I'm wrong but I think the clock speed is the key for rendering times, rather than the number of cores? Also there are two options with the graphics cards; one with 8gb of HBM2 memory and one with 16gb, so is that worth the upgrade? Money isn't really an object, but at the same time we don't want to spend 3-4k on upgrades if they aren't going to make a difference. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Chris.

Thanks Jim, I dont tend to use the indirect lighting, but I'll turn that on and see if that helps with the backlit textures. I do use viewports on a sheet layer for rendering. Also another problem i have is that while the images are rendering in a viewport, I cant print / pdf any plans if I am working on another project at the same time? It just freezes the computer and I have to force quit. Any ideas? Great, thats really helpful thanks! Chris.

Hi there, I work for a kitchen design practice and we have historically always worked in 2d on Vectorworks. However since I have joined I'm trying to expand our horizons and offer 3d drawings to our clients. I am very keen to try and produce the best renderings possible but I'm struggling to get anywhere near photorealistic renderings on Vectorworks. I'm no expert, but have spent countless hours watching every single online tutorial for Renderworks. I'm wondering if the Imac I am using is up to the task of rendering? For some reason it really struggles when I start adding lighting, or playing around with bump textures and displacment maps. Whatever I try I cant seem to get back lit / glow textures to work, and I've copied the process step by step from online tutorials and it just doesnt seem to work. I'd be happy to upgrade to whatever machine is needed to make the renderings work, and also try to reduce rendering time. Can someone advise me if its worth the investment of a good machine? I have attached my best render so far, as well as the spec of my Mac. Also is there any good online resources for downloading textures? Any pointers would be really appreciated, Chris.