The Chaos Group has a range of rendering products that operate with, among others, Autodesk products:
- Revit
- 3dsMax
- Maya
Recently I have been investigating a VRay trial for Revit by the Chaos Group: https://www.chaosgroup.com/vray/revit. It can be run from Revit 2015 onwards. I would recommend trying out their software to anyone interested in rendering. It offers much more still rendering features than Revit does natively, and also makes it possible to swarm render (distributing the render across multiple machines).
I did have to send their support staff a message to grant me a 30 day trial:
After that download and installation was straight-forward. If more information on licensing is required, please refer to: https://www.chaosgroup.com/support#faqs.
Learning how to use the software together was easy when great help resources are readily available: https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VRAYREVIT/V-Ray+for+Revit+Help, and in addition, there are video tutorials on YouTube.
While I am a particular fan of Lumion, This software has it’s advantages:
- Operates in Revit as an Add-on so there is no import or export needed.
Revit section boxes are supported. - Render interactively by fine-tuning lights (including sun and sky) and materials within Revit.
- Uses Revit materials and their appearances (Autodesk Materials are not guaranteed to port into Lumion)
- It can operate in a “farm” rendering mode managed over the internet through VRay Swarm: https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VRAYSWARM/V-Ray+Swarm. Watch this in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzXDFeSsUVI.
- Real-World Cameras (use Revit’s native camera views).
Other benefits Include VR Rendering (Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfIBuDKfbv0
VRay for Revit cannot generate flythrough, so if videos are required for client presentation, Lumion would still be the easiest solution implement.
Recommended hardware may be viewed here: https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VRAYREVIT/System+Requirements. Note that it uses multi-core processing, so I would recommend a fast new i7.
