Best architecture render workflow with Rhino

Hello, fellow architects. In your opinion, what is the best rendering software to work alongside Rhinoceros modeling? I’m somewhat familiar with Twinmotion, Lumion, and I’ve been trying to learn Unreal, but I sometimes feel that software like V-Ray and Enscape offer a better workflow with Rhino since they work as plugins (and I often need to return to modeling during the rendering process).

I already have a Twinmotion license (though it’s free now), and Unreal is free as well—is it worth the effort to learn?

Please share your opinions, and if possible, show examples of render results compared to the raw Rhino model.

I’ve had good luck with D5. It also seems to be the fastest developing/improving offering of the bunch. It’s a real time render so if you want top-end photo-realism…

I’m also committing to learning Twinmotion. I’ve found that there’s things I can do in one renderer that I cannot do in the other. And Twinmotion just has way too many features to ignore if you don’t have the $$$ for the more expensive options.

Just this week I’ve been experimenting with things like animations and importing textures with various maps for opacity/transparency, metallic, etc… and I’m finding something will work in one but not the other. D5 was way easier to do animations in (gave up on Twinmotion’s… for now… I literally think a button or something has gone missing). Twinmotion was able to import some custom textures better than D5 for a close-up of a small project.

When I import a Rhino file into D5 I’m pretty much stuck with that Rhino file as is. There’s ways around this. For example I can just split up the file. Twinmotion allows you do modify the import. The former’s system can actually speed things up. The later’s gives more flexibility.

I really liked Enscape but just the timing (they had a bit of a battle getting it to work with R8). At this point I just don’t have time to try it. I’d recommend just sticking with a couple. You’ve tried so many different ones already (you’re kind of an expert by the sounds of it) but all that time spent could have been focused on one or two of them.

Unreal Engine has some advantages but as people pointed out to me the learning curve is brutal. One thing I saw it do for example was an animation of a car driving down a back alley then pulling into a driveway: You could see the suspension and everything working. Ultra high-end marketing visuals and stuff… which can pay well… might be a use case for Unreal Engine. I personally need quick, fast, and decent-looking, so D5 is the perfect weapon (and plays as nice with Rhino, if not better, than all other options).

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I’ve tested D5 and liked but didn’t have time to learn a new software from zero that time…

Yes, yes, the thing is the features I most like, don’t runs fast at my current PC (like path tracer and lumen) I have a notebook rtx2060 and it runs but struggles a lot depending on the scene. Maybe I’ll continue using it and upgrade my PC after getting some jobs.

Good to know… i think i’ll be trying to render a scene from zero at d5 before deciding in which i’ll focus from now on

That’s why im searching this… I used to use SketchUp, and now I’m migrating to Rhino as my modeler tool. Struggling a lot but in the long term i think it will compensate as my definitive software (it can CAD draw, Model with precision and freedom and become a BIM sofwate with VisualArq, and don’t have toxic licensing fees). My current thoughts is to continue using twinmotion for fast rendering, and master unreal for more professional rendering, and maybe earn better from architectural animations, as it have some integration with twinmotion.

I’m not an expert just a enthusiast :smiley: and maybe a confused guy that loves tecnology :confused: but searching the way to become more professional and productive.

I apreciate your thoughts. Can you share any modeling you have done in rhino before exporting to D5 and the rendering results in D5?

If you’re not a die-hard GPU rendering fan, then it may be also worth considering Chaos Corona (not used) or bella (my daily goto).

As a curveball, if you decide to change to Rhino 8, the work done on Cycles is very good as well.

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Never heard of Bella here in Brazil :open_mouth:
Corona is very good, unfortunately the lincensing prices here are absurd. More than 3 minimum wage :frowning:
Do you know if this Rhino 8 Cycles is the same as the Cycles X in Blender? Same quality and options? I never found any Rhino 8 Architectural render tutorial with quality :confused:

I am sure @nathanletwory will correct me if I am wrong.

From my memory, Cycles X was the larger project that kicked off the changes to Cycles in general.

However it then later dropped the “X” and reverted to Cycles.

Rhino 8 Cycles is based on Cycles 3.5 or 3.6; so relatively recent. It does not have the complete number of material types nor settings (Volumetric, for example) of Blender implementation.

However for Archviz, you can probably get very far before hitting walls. The PBR implementation is good, and most of it works well. I get some odd behaviors, but it depends on what I am doing. It’s worth a try for the sake of downloading a Rhino 8 trial.

Bella is a relatively young spectral renderer and is CPU based. However for normal day-to-day work it is very fast when you don’t need (semi-)exotic behaviours like dispersion. It also mostly complete Rhino integration for, I guess, 98% or so of its features. Again, definitely worth a try; and they have a Discord community where you can ask questions.

Bella license is permanent/perpetual, and it effectively has an infinite 1080p watermarked trial mode.

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I use Rhino and V-Ray for my architectural visualizations mostly. As long as you don’t have any incredibly complex needs for texture mapping I find the workflow to be very manageable. If I have an issue with texture mapping in Rhino I’ll export my model to Blender and do the texture mapping and rendering there instead.

Twinmotion and D5 are also very good options for real time rendering. But I’m not particularly enamoured with the AI features that D5 has. And a lot of real time renderers have a kind of look and style that they impart to them that I like to avoid. I like to have complete control over the final image I guess.

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I use Twinmotion with the datasmith exporter plugin for Rhino, which keeps the model into Twinmotion updated everytime I refresh the changes I did in Rhino.
I don’t see much difference from using an internal engine like Vray if you use the datasmith connector, since you don’t have to export/import from Rhino to Twinmotion anymore.
I have used Vray for many years and I used to love it, but after experiencing UE and Twinmotion I am not looking back to more expensive and less flexible rendering engines

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With Rino and Twinmotion over Datasmith exporter is a great way to create highend vizualizations for a very low price. I can not see great different redults by vray and Twinmotion. Twinmotion have very big library. When you know all features of Twinmotion then you can create powerful highend visualizations.