Why VIZ?

[dpasa]

I am new to Revit but I have used Accurender as a stand alone renderer for all of my previous works with AutoCAD. I was very happy to see it is part of Revit.
I believe Accurender is the easiest and fastest renderer because you have everything with a few clicks. Materials, plants, backgrounds...

For the last few weeks I see that all Revit community likes VIZ. Also I read that now there is a new release, VIZ 2005 and everyone is very happy because there have been many improvements. Of course there is also "mental ray".

I tried twice to use this software. I think that there are many capabilities conserning modeling and animation. How about simple rendering? Is there so much difference?

To be honest I think it is quite difficult for what it does. Maybe I didn't have the time to understand the way it works, but I was a bit disappointed. I don't want to learn a software as complicated as VIZ to make some renderings.

Please let me know what you think.

P.S. I send you a rendering with AutoCAD and Accurender to tell me if you like it!

[beegee]

There's more than a few of us who don't have or use VIZ. :wink: Many of those who do use it , are ex ADT or Autocad users who cut their teeth with it.

I agree that Accurender is also capable of producing very nice work, and its apparently much more user friendly than the full blown VIZ. The latest full release of Accurender, in particular has some terrific rendering tools.

Looking into the crystal ball for the longer term future, many people think its inevitable that a scaled down version of VIZ will eventually replace Accurender in Revit, not least because of Autodesk's proprietary interests. That probably won't be for quite a while, but it makes some sense to start being more aware of VIZ and what it can do. I think thats where many are coming from.

[Steve_Stafford]

...I see that all Revit community likes VIZ... not all, some, new users who are more familiar with it (VIZ) and some who are experienced with both. I've seen very high quality work done with Revit and Accurender as is...

[hand471037]

I think that it's just this strange idea that Viz is automatically better than Accurender, too. Accurender has some limitations, it's true, but unless you're heavy into rendering and already maxing out Accurender's abilities, I think you'll find (as you have) that it's ease of use actually produces better renderings than you could do with Viz. Viz is better at certain things, and certainly faster too, but it's also much more complex and unless you understand how to use it, or are willing to put more time into understanding it, it might not be your best choice for rendering at all. I've found that, even though I know Viz, I'll use Accurender for the vast majority of my work. This is because it's faster and easier to just use Accurender within Revit, giving me more 'tweaking' time and time to adjust materials & lighting, resulting in a better end picture. And then if I really do need something that's totally high-end, I can turn to other software for that.

But, IMHO, in a nutshell, the limitations are:
1. No way in Accurender to hand the Rendering job off to another machine(s).
2. No way to exclude items from a Radiosity solution, so you're limited in it's control.
3. It's a little slow.
4. The materials aren't as complex (two edge sword there).
5. The lighting isn't as complex (again, two edge sword).

There are all things VIZ *can* do better. However, VIZ sucks because:
1. The Radiosity is difficult and stupid.
2. The materials are complex, making for better materials that takes more time to make.
3. The lighting is complex, making for better lighting that takes more time to set up.
4. Simply setting up cameras and views is harder.
5. Have to do a lot of work that Accurender does automatically, like adding in a Sky, a Sun, dealing with Daylighting, a Ground Plane, ect.

But people get funny, they hear things like 'VIZ is better than Accurender' and not knowing very much about either, decide that they want the 'better' and decide that the other isn't any good. This would be like hearing that a Corvette is 'better' than a Honda, so you decide that you'll only own a Corvette, even if it really doesn't fit your needs and is harder to drive. :-)

What I'd love to see is the new Accurender & Penguin (the new 'sketch' rendering engine for the same folks) added to Revit. But I doubt that will happen, Accurender is just left over from when Revit was still independent, and I doubt Autodesk won't want to replace it with something they make instead.

[Andre Baros]

Accurender, as implemented in Revit, is a like a polaroid camera, easy to use but the colors are always a little off. Viz is like a medium format camera with several lenses (Max adds a few more) which takes takes more time to learn to use but gives you professional results. Inbetween there are a lot of 35mm cameras like Vray which have more power than the poloroid and are easier to use that the medium format camera which are very popular.

Why, Viz? because sometimes I need a more professional looking image and I'm horizontally intergrated with Autodesk products. One of my reasons for selecting Revit to begin with was a huge in vestment in Autodesk products and an assumption that they would talk to each other sooner than they would talk to other products.