So what dont you like about accurender?

[jwilhelm]

I dont know what people are complaining about
the attached rendering is pretttty darn good if you ask me
and simple to make. Somebody tell me what they dont like about accurender

[ariasdelcid]

That looks pretty good to me

[thommenbodo]

I dont know what people are complaining about
the attached rendering is pretttty darn good if you ask me
and simple to make. Somebody tell me what they dont like about accurender

It's good if you want "ok" renderings, but not if you want great ones.

[SkiSouth]

I dont know what people are complaining about
the attached rendering is pretttty darn good if you ask me
and simple to make. Somebody tell me what they dont like about accurender

Don't let the "nay sayers" discourage you. Every product has its pros and cons. Quite frankly, I love the light, textures, plugins etc you can get with Max, but I ABSOLUTELY love the simplicity of Accurender, and I think you can get really GREAT renderings from accurender. Stay with Accurender, your image looks great.

If you're in the business of rendering, you'd be using Maya or Max. If you're in the architecture business, you want something to sell/communicate an idea with and go on to production. Revit/Accurender is that combination.

[dpasa]

Accurender is great! It is very simple and fast. The only problem is that in Revit is not a "full version". Also now that Revit belongs to Autodesk I believe that nobody cares about upgrading Accurender to release 4 which is a big improvement. I have used Accurender for the last few years with AutoCAD and I can say that it is very fast.
I wish Revit 7.x or 8 has full Accurender 4.
If you want to see what I mean, go to www.accurender.com/whatisnew.htm

[SCShell]

Hey there,

Very nice! I really like the stucco pattern too.

I have to second what Skisouth said here. Regarding time management, I think that l get a little off-track trying to create great renderings! It's kinda like a "trap" that I (or we) fall into sometimes. Let me tell you, I would rather see a great design rendered well enough to communicate the intent rather than a killer photo like rendering of a 'fast feeder'.

But, just like you all, I am so impressed with Revit's abilities, that I strive to learn the program better and better so as to take full advantage of it. With that said, I can't help but feel somewhat jealous when I see someone like Zoog, Skisouth or some of the other render kings posting their latest efforts. And, the renderings on Accurender's, Revit's and that "other" revit user site don't help either; HOWEVER, I just have to remind myself that I am not a professional renderer or artist....I'm an Architect! I simply go back and look at my past renderings and images and remind myself that the Client was blown away and my renderings actually (and accurately) communicated the design which was my goal.

Accurender is easy and good enough to meet my demands and I can't see learning programs or techniques which do not substantially add anything other than making me look like a professional renderer. (I would rather them be impressed with the building when complete!)

Just my 2 cents
Steve Shell

[dpasa]

That was really a complete answer to all Accurender enemies! :-)

[Kroke]

I agree Accurender is great for effortless renderings.

"What don't you like about it":
No bump mapping
No control over the direction of some textures (IE fascia on rakes). Full AR has that.
Caustics - really could care less as I don't think it's super important for architectural renderings. (would be nice but not a necessity).

I guess those are the biggest and always have been for me.

[Roger Evans]

I'm generally happy

[Chad Smith]

It's good if you want "ok" renderings, but not if you want great ones.
Not to mention it does these "ok" renderings very slowly. VIZ in my experience is much quicker.
I also see no way of setting up a render farm, for doing over night animations, and I hate the lack of bump-mapping.

[gravelin]

and I hate the lack of bump-mapping.
Isn't it this kind of feature ?

[SkiSouth]

Isn't it this kind of feature ?

It is, but it isn't. What Chad is talking about is the ability to CONTROL the bump/bit mapping abilities. Hopefully, as the Accurender is an " render engine" that was incorporated into the code of Revit, that this control can be worked into the product. A previous thread talked about how much of the render engine is just not turned on as it takes coordination with other aspects of the project, testing, etc, and simply takes time.

If you've worked with Max, etc, you know that there's a royal pain involved at times controlling the maps and bumps etc, BUT you can completely control them, and that is what helps the realism as you actually can add 3 dimension texturing, and this texturing is then affected by the surrounding envoirnment parameters (cast shadows etc).

This is a weak spot in the Accurender offering in Revit.

[hand471037]

In a nutshell, what I like about Accurender:
It's easy, built-in, does semi-automatic daylighting/radoisity, and has great plants.

What I don't like:
It's too simple (not enough control over materials, cameras, lights, & enviroment), too automatic (no good control over Radoisity, lighting, and Exposure settings, and no batch render), and sometimes too slow (Accurender isn't the most efficent render engine and doesn't allow for any kind of distrubuted rendering).

So while I use other things for the higher end renderings, for the day to day things I still use Accurender, even thou I know how to use other programs far 'better', simly because for little quick renderings it's ease of use can't be beat.

Think about it as an Automatic 35mm Camera (Accurender) vs. the 4x5 Pro Box Camera (Mental Ray/Yafray/Radiance/Vray...). The first is quick and easy, but limited, the second is unlimited, but not quick and easy. Both are useful, and my wife who's a pro photographer has both (but in a digital form- a snapshot Nikon Digital and a Pro digital Cannon...). ;)

[shamshirha01]

you wouldn't write that had you seen what max would do on the same model.

[hand471037]

you wouldn't write that had you seen what max would do on the same model.

whatever. MAX in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing, maybe. At an old firm I used to work at of 60 we had a copy of Viz that no one ever used. It was simply too hard to use for quick renderings, took too long to relearn and setup things, and in the end the renderings suffered because of it. While Viz *could* do better renderings than Revit, it never did, because no one had the time.

Doing them in Revit however provided for better renderings, simply because it was easier to use, and built-in, so we wound up in the end with better results simply because less time was consumed by the software, so it could be devoted to making a better final image.

Now, if all you did was rendering, sure, then you'd be able to crank them out. But just look at how long it takes to set up a simple animated walk through Camera in Max vs. Revit, and you'll see what I mean about ease of use sometimes trumping the 'better' software. If it takes me a day to just set up a decent Camera path in Max because it's not something I commonly do, when the same thing takes about an hour in Revit (even if you've never done it before), then I've just lost 7 hours that could be spent tweaking lighting and materials and in the end my rendering won't be 'better' just because I'm using a 'better' software.

I use a rendering package called Radiance that puts Max and Mental Ray to shame in the hands of the right person. However I'm still learning it, and so I'm just about equal in quality IMHO right now. So are my renderings still 'better'? no! Especially if it takes me a lot more time over the job being done in Max.

Real pros who do Rendering work for a living, whether for Architectural or for Animations, Movies, or Games don't get into these silly arguments about what rendering software is 'better'. Most understand that it's all about the right tool for the job at hand, at least the ones that I've met. But to those that aren't pros, they see the work done with one package, and decide that they only want to learn the best, and don't really understand that it's all about the quality of the final image (not the level of photorealism, the *quality* of the image) and the time it took to generate it....