Best Sketchup Rendering Software
This is the collection of 25 best 3d rendering software available across the web. It contains GPU / CPU based, biased / unbiased, physically based, photo-realistic, real-time, fastest, easy and production quality rendering software.
Free Rendering Software For Sketchup
Maxwell Render is what I use, along with Podium (a plug-in for SketchUp) occasionally. Maxwell is extremely powerful and can produce photo-realistic results with minimal effort, as well as highly stylized and artistic images if that's more your style.
It runs great on my Mac Pro and takes full advantage of all the power. Go to benchwell.com to see what I mean. I use AutoCad Revit Architecture Suite 2009 through bootcamp on 64bit Windows Vista Business and that runs extremely well. I tried Bently Microstation, and it ran well, though the interface was not to my taste.
Maya, Form Z and such also run well through bootcamp. In the architecture field, you're really going to handicap yourself if you own a Mac and refuse to use bootcamp and install a Windows OS as well, too much of the software for the field is Windows exclusive. Hope this helps! Click to expand.Don't take this the wrong way but those renderings are far from amazing, personally I wouldn't even class those as a photo (realistic) rendering, do a google for autodesk viz or 3ds max and architectural renderings then you will see amazing, the lighting isn't bad but the materials are really poor. Note I do 3D work for a living and as such I may be overly critical on this area as I aim to make my work as close to being photo-realistic as possible. Now admittedly they are windows programs but I'd rather use 3ds max than archicad. Click to expand.Maxwell Render runs on OSX, supports nearly every 3D modeling software available, and creates much stronger renderings than even those excellent ArchiCad examples you posted.