(click on the image for best quality)
I’m trying to achieve 3DSMax/Vray/PS quality with Blender/Cycles/Gimp (sometimes Pixeluvo). This is my current result after 2 years spitting blood with the second workflow 
(So far so good but I know still a long way to go)
1h.30min/image, 8000 sample and denoise in post.
Wow, amazing renders!! I can’t believe that it only takes 1h30 to render, since you have 8000 samples :O. Love the lighting btw, very realistic.
Tnx Art&fact! 8000 sample, 1000px orizontal, 1h30min & 40 Threat 
(Cycles for Archviz is so much slower than Vray, I hope for the future)
Problem I see is that how is Blender accessible?
Interior Designers already struggle with SketchUp 
then the Blender UI would be an overkill.
I teach Thea Render in SketchUp because it is perfectly build into SK.
Also as mentioned the slow performance with interior spaces makes Cycles actually in this fast paced
industry not that usable - sadly.
MC78 very nice renders with amazing lighting. @cekuhnen I’m interested in what renderer your students use for walkthroughs when using Blender. That slow performance for interiors becomes almost unbearable for walkthroughs then.
Being a hobbyist using only open source (Cycles) I have had some luck with baking walls lite by needed area lights and loosing one wall as camera moves. But, then of course you have the aggravation and time required for baking and a look which is not quite the same in my eye. Do you know of any open source renderer up to the job and if not what is the most reasonably priced one you have run across.
The thing is to be honest I was not kidding that SketchUp is already too hard for my students.
It is a silly mix of should not be in college at all and few gifted students.
I can stress my industrial design students significantly more.
So I do not even do walk throughs, sadly.
Time and cost is also an issue. Here in this area a walkthrough animation done in SketchUp will be sufficient
as clients will not pay for more realism.
Single shot renderings can be different and for that I found Thea to be king in that area.
Cycles is just too slow when time is important.
Excellent results! What did you use to denoise? I’m also curious if you did any texture baking since your lighting is so diffuse.
I’m around the ArchViz from 2004. I spent infinite days try to understand light and “emotion” in picture. Before I tried many engines above all Mental Ray, Vray, just a little Brazil and Yafaray.
Now I think that the engine is 30% important in how cool is the final result, considering a lot of work, experiments, coffee and manual post production too 
So I use Cycles because is super flexible, free and open source; it is young and I think (hope) it will become faster and less noisy in near future, because that guys works great and fast. I think that today many renders A4 300dpi in superquality are quite impossible in professional times, but it’s ok for tablet/monitor images.
I use the metric unit. Nothing is baked. Baking & walkthrough is quite another workflow-universe, considering that for me postproduction is foundamental. But, Theoldghost, Blender/Cycles is the house of bake, you are at home! In case look for Texture Atlas add-on.
Now…the noise. Arrr… ArchViz/Cycles now in 2016 HAS noise. Especially in large closed rooms. I don’t have a tried method for remove noise yet. In general my current method is 8000 sample, Clamp indirect 30.00, Multiple Importance, large lights and G’Mic addon for Gimp - Repair menu.
(@Naresh: not bad but far from photorealism.)
Hi Naresh,
I hate SketchUp - it is junk in my opinion.
Currently I test Shapr3D which is a CAD app working like SketchUp.
Thats how it should be done - direct modeling and interactive.
I am curious if it might make some way into interior design once layers and such are added.
The only great value of SKetchUp is the 3d models you can get for it.
Infinite days! Oh, to be immortal…sigh.
Looks very nice, how did you go about lighting this?
Looks really great. One thing I wanted to ask: are all the watches and jewelry on display modeled assets, or is that whole display a series of png images behind glass?
