Bongo 2 + (Flamingo nxt 5 or Rhino6 Cycles) vs Blender for animated views/objects

I’m looking to do animated view fly-over/walk throughs (and perhaps some object animation) for urban-scale models, and I would like some advice as to what is a more appropriate tool for the job. The urban models would be generated using Esri CityEngine and consist of streets, sidewalks and buildings with all of the relevant details. I may also want to animate the movement of vehicles and pedestrians included in the model. I would export the model to an appropriate file, then import into Rhino/Blender for animating.

I currently own Rhino 6 and Flamingo nxt 5 and initially I considered Bongo for creating animated views rendered with Flamingo or Rhino Cycles, however it appears Blender may also work. I don’t have experience with either Bongo or Blender, so any advice on which tool might best fit my use-case would be very much appreciated.

If you like to stay in Rhino and you don’t need moving objects, than Enscape could be your tool - really fast rendered fly throughs in minutes (and stills in seconds). Also you could walk/fly trough the model per 3D glasses. Good price.

If you like to use a lot moving stuff than I would look for a solution like Twinmotion or Lumion. There you can easy add moved models from libraries. Quite expensive.

Today I have seen this question, maybe the answer will be helpful for a decision.

I’d wait a while for Bongo to finish their Grasshopper components and see how good it works with cycles. But until then Blender would be the logical choice for rendered animations

For animating pedestrians we would need the possibility to animated meshes with bones. This would be a big step forward.
I afraid an animated exterior scene is a quite big task if anything is done in Rhino. For example Anima could be a nice tool to animate pedestrians and load as animated FBX (not supported at Rhino yet).

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Thanks for all your replies. It sounds like Bongo is not ideal for what everything I’d like to do. Animated pedestrians aside, is the reason why something like Enscape is more preferable to Bongo is due to a much shorter animation render time? I did spend some time with the trial version of Bongo 2 in Rhino 6, and it seems adequate, however it does appear even a short animation could take a long time to render out. I attempted using Blender but my textures didn’t import properly, so I’m not sure if Blender’s an option anymore.

As for Bongo integration with Grasshopper, is this expected to come out in a new version (ex. Bongo 3) requiring the purchase of an update if I were to already own Bongo or would it be a service release in Bongo 2? I would qualify for a Bong educational license for the next little while, so I’m wondering if I should grab it while I still can.

Thanks again.

Maybe it helps to keep in mind what is what. Bongo is only the animation tool for animating camera and objects. It’s not a render engine. So, the question could be which engine you like to use with Bongo?

I know this both engines: Vray is like standard for architecture rendering. The current VfR3.6 is an allrounder, but a little bit buggy. Per Vray you can render anything. Octane is a nice GPU render engine, good speed for exterior shots, slow for interiors.

I don’t know how good cycles is. I havn’t seen so much renderings from this engine at Rhino, only a few simple tests.

Enscape is a render and VR engine with an own camera animation system. One advantage is that the scene doesn’t need to be send to render engine for each frame. Render times are around a few seconds (GTX1080ti), also for interiors. For an animations you need to wait minutes and not hours or days. The Material system is a little bit limited, but good for architecture. Only I can say - you need to test it. It is it really worth, it’s one of the powerfuliest tools for architects at Rhino. :slight_smile:

Per Enscape you can render fly throughs within render times you can’t archive with any other software, most for interiors. I’m using a GTX1080ti and a high res frame needs approx. 3s. I don’t know any other software that allow to render interiors in seconds. Exteriors maybe quite fast at other software too, maybe at 15s…20s per frame.

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