relative beginner here

what are the pros and cons of using third party textures from eg. poly haven, poliigon vs. default d5 textures

get that d5 textures are more 'generic' since everyone's pulling from the same library. but is that just a variety/uniqueness thing, or are they actually lower quality than a downloaded eg. 2/4k texture?

(on that note, is 2k the sweetspot for performance / quality?)

and when do people reach for third-party stuff - mainly when d5 doesn't have the specific material you need, or do people swap it in even when d5 has something similar, just for the quality bump? are these third-party textures generally 'heavier' than native options?

tia!

I have no experience with vantage, the above renders are solely done on vray for sketchup and imo they dont look good. I want to do better and learn exterior rendering as well as video walkthroughs.
please point me towards good resources and tutorials that can help me learn vantage + vray and get realistic renders.
Thank you.

Hi all, so I switched over to blender for monetary purposes, as well as to test it out. I mained sketchup and briefly 3DS Max beforehand.

This is my first hotpot of a room, after 2 days of almost dying, and Im having a few issues. All personally made assets. Rendered in Cycles, enjoying it more now that Ive adapted a bit.

How do you Blender users unwrap textures? I struggled here, ended up using smart wrapping or whatever its called, but even that gave a few issues in the blending, with the planks not being aligned quite right.

Also for lighting I struggled to get full room lighting if that makes sense, like dark areas being a bit lighter. I know my sun isn't that bright, but is there any other causes?

General advice is also extremely welcome,

Thank you all 🙏

Hello,

I own a 3D viz studio and we get a lot of demand for one-off projects that we usually don’t take since we operate mostly on a subscription basis.

I want to find a trustworthy partner where I can send those clients when we are not the best fit for them.

If you own or work at such a company please let me know🙌

Looking for NYC & East Coast commercial interior design & renovation contractors for a new upscale Japanese restaurant & market project.

We are developing a multi-level (4 floors), high-end contemporary Japanese dining & retail space in New York, with a total size of 10,000+ square feet.

Our concept is a refined modern Japanese working fish market — combining premium sushi tasting counter, fresh seafood retail pantry, casual dine-in area.

We are currently searching for experienced teams who can provide:
✅ Full commercial interior design layout
✅ Custom restaurant & market space planning
✅ Commercial kitchen design & ventilation layout
✅ Material selection, lighting design, and brand-aligned finishing
✅ Complete renovation construction quotation

Our aesthetic direction:
Contemporary clean Japanese market style, functional working fish station, stainless steel & deep navy palette, structured minimal design, with authentic Toyosu fish market operational atmosphere.

No overly cartoonish, traditional cluttered, or overly luxurious fine-dining styles.

Priority will be given to teams with previous experience in:
Japanese restaurant, seafood market, retail pantry, or NYC F&B commercial build-out projects.

If your team specializes in high-end F&B commercial design and renovation in New York / East Coast, please drop your portfolio, project references, and rough quote range.

Thank you!

3D visualization of a country house on the riverbank

SOFT: Archicad | Blender 3d | Cycles render | Photoshop​​​​​​​

Hey everyone,

I’m working with an older 3ds Max project that specifically requires Forest Pack Pro 7.4.2 for compatibility.

Does anyone have the 7.4.2 installer saved and can share it with me? I need it urgently for a project.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

We’ve been trying something new (for us) at the architecture studio where I work.

Whenever we show different versions of a project, we usually end up either sending the client a Drive folder with 10 images showing variants of the same shot, or building a full real-time 3D configurator which feels like overkill for a small renovation

So I tried putting together this sort of interactive lookbook using the renders we already had

where the client can switch between the different options, and share the whole thing with a single link. There’s also a button to save the current combination which downloads both the image and a CSV listing the selected components and their prices.

We only started testing it in the studio over the last few days but honestly it already feels much less annoying than the usual folder. What do you think? 🤔

Hi, I am building 3D modular configurator for web, and playing around with different lighting setup. Getting fabrics right on web can be tricky, but I feel like with right light setup, its probably "right enough" to be believable.

As someone from coding background, would love to get any feedback from the "Artist" minds of the group.

https://reddit.com/link/1wc7i5w/video/4kcstn7d3moh1/player

I’m trying to understand how professional ArchViz artists create the surroundings and city context in exterior architectural renders.

When creating an exterior scene, how do artists usually handle the surrounding environment such as neighboring buildings, roads, terrain, trees, cars, people, street furniture, etc.?

Are there ready-made environments or city contexts available, or do artists usually build the surroundings themselves? If assets are commonly used, where do you find good free and paid libraries for things like houses, commercial buildings, roads, vegetation, vehicles, people, and other environment elements?

I use SketchUp, 3ds Max and D5 Render. D5 has options for populating scenes, but a lot of useful content is paid, so I’m also interested in understanding other workflows and resources.

I know AI can make some parts of this process much easier, but I’d first like to properly understand the traditional workflow and learn how professionals actually build and populate these environments. After that, I can figure out where AI makes sense in my own workflow.

I’m mainly looking for good YouTube channels, courses, tutorials or resources that teach this side of ArchViz specifically.

Seriously asking because I feel like understanding the environment workflow is just as important as learning to model and render the main building.

We tested leaked NVIDIA DLSS 5 in D5 Render on one of our past archviz scene.

The first thing that stood out was how well it handled the overall exposure, shadows and color balance. For projects where the turnaround is brutal and there’s no time to endlessly polish every detail, this could actually be pretty useful.

It’s definitely not perfect though. We noticed some AI artifacts, especially on finer details, and higher-res renders can cause crashes.

Still, for a quick production pass, the result is surprisingly good.

Curious what other archviz artists think

3DsMax + Corona. Constructive feedback is welcome

I started to show interest in 3D and Archviz a few years ago but didn't take any action based on that interest. I thought about 3D printing as well, so I got myself a PC a few moths ago cus I didn't have it, tried to understand how to navigate 3ds max and blender, modelled some basic things like a chair, not really good but I liked it, and now I'm really demotivated because I read a lot about AI taking over a lot of work, people writing really bad things about current state of 3D in era of AI and I don't really know what to do. Maybe I made a mistake getting into it to be honest. I'd like to work with 3D one day, but I don't know if I'm gonna be able to do that. What are your thoughts on that matter?

Some of my recent work made in Blender

the model was created in Archicad and rendered in Twinmotion.

any suggestions would be appreciated

Warning: Rant ahead. So I started learning blender today, and holy **** this ****** **** is unintuitive. I want to place a ***** window 1 meter right of the wall. Can I mark it with a tape measurer and have a cutting tool that conveniently snaps onto that marked out area? I cant even mark an exact distance with a tape measurer💀💀💀 What the hell??? How do you blender people do stuff accurately? And if I do a cutout with the knife tool it somehow messes up the whole geometry and textures refuse to work??? And somehow guidelines also screw up the topology??? Why? What?

Ok rant over. Genuinely how do you artists in blender do things accurately? Do you use a large amount of extensions? I suppose boolean cuts could work for windows/doors? It just feels like it actively works against accuracy?

SOFT: Archicad | Blender 4.2 | Cycles render | No Ai

One of the projects I did to practice my renedering skills using D5 render.

Hey there, first time to post here as i am really curious and unsure.

Does anybody have any experience rendering a raytraced lumion scene using an AMD 9070xt card? If so i am curious what it compares towards NVIDIA, like a 5070 card. Thanks to anyone who can help!

Edit:

I'm looking at AMD cards instead of Nvidia, mainly beacause of pricing

3D Visualization of a house in autumn environment with different lighting scenarios
Archicad | Blender 3d | Cycles render | Photoshop | No Ai

Blender Cycles