Your Thoughts on Enscape

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  • So my boss pinged me if we should experiment with Enscape.


    https://enscape3d.com


    We would be using it with Revit. A few questions for the community:

    Is it comparable to Lumion?

    What is the learning curve like?

    How much extra effort is involved other than the construction document level revit model? Compared to Lumion?

    Is it stable?



    Thanks for your input.

  • Obviously you're going to find a lot of fans of Enscape here :)


    - Yes, it is stable, especially if you use the official builds (they also release beta versions called 'previews')

    - One of the great things with Enscape is that it evolves very fast and the development team really listens to user feedback.

    - Learning curve is low, especially if your users are already familiar with Revit and 'game navigation'

    - The 'extra' work you need to do on your revit model is set the appearance of all your materials (assuming all your materials are already applied correctly). Depending on your models, you might need to add some extra detail to make it look nice (door handles, bases etc).

    - Enscape is cheapier than Lumion

    - We feel (but this is subjective) that the lighting quality of Enscape overall is better.


    The main advantage that Lumion still has over Enscape is that the asset library is much bigger and you can add custom assets. Enscape's asset library is much smaller and you cannot yet import your own. However, Enscape is rapidly increasing their Enscape library, and even more important, there is some talk that custom assets might come (although no ETA at the moment).


    So in short, Enscape has a lot going for it at the moment. Of course, you might hear a different story at the Lumion forum :)

  • tutu10 Better you direct ask, what are the limits of Enscape?


    I like Enscape but used it very seldom because the lack of possible materials and weak reflections. Also you need to know some tricks to work around hidden "features" like complex geometry is hidden for the GI calculation. So you need to add hidden low poly geometry to get the right GI look.

    Enscape is optimized for RT and there is no way to disable the optimizations for still images or animations. Materials are quite limited, you can't mix all effects, for example textured transparency isn't working. Glass will be rendered as thin glass always. Lights doesn't allow to set disable to affect reflections, ... .

    All together Enscape is a very young product and not so feature reach like Lumion. Lumion supports moving objects and baked VR for your clients, right? For the Enscape standalone your client needs a good graphic card too.

    But the price is much lower and if you know the tight limits and to work with this, you can get really nice results within this limits. The output is very fast generated and plugins allow to direct work in Revit/SU/Rhino/ArchiCad.

  • :)Please note that any opinion here depends only on your own needs and requirements!! :!::)
    I also think that Enscape is a so great product :thumbup:however for me/us it is not finished yet. Speed and VR are cool but by far not the most important thing (likewise I could say that Twinmotion´s running cars and zombie like walking people are cool but in fact totally unimportant ;)) There are still too many quality problems and it doesn't fit into a graphical production process of an architects workflow. From our point of view it is too much focused on its own visualization features and too little on the processes in the architecture business. This circumstance still forces us to use other and much more compatible products for our real project productions and to run Enscape in parallel only to gain experience with it. Well, you might ask now why we are doing this at all? - because we believe that Enscape will get better and will have a great future ;)
    Yes, the exuberant features from tools like Lumion are great, but at the end of the day they always distract us from what we want and need to transport - namely only the essence and nature of our own project which will not get better by driving cars or trees blowing in the wind. So I am quite sure that for me / us often less is much better ...

    Our profession is designing, planning, representing and realising projects and not only the visualization itself - so the value of a tool is only measured by it´s ability to support us here.

  • I am far from believing that I could express any general truths and can limit my statements only to my own little world. - so for example I only learned this week that in addition to the for us never working capture shortcut there is a completely normal render button :)8o so andybot thank you for your objection and I agree with you regarding the simplicity of use which is certainly a big reason to love Enscape :) and it's really nice to know that everything's going well with you. Another important reason to love Enscape: There is not other tool on the market which is easier to set up and licenseing or updating ;)

    For our daily work it is an essential requirement that a renderer 1 to 1 is matching our used mother CAD which in our case is SketchUp and more rarely Revit. This must be done depending on the ratio of a camera setup to the model and in our case must be defined exclusively by the CAD tool. So we can make sure that a setup I make in Frankfurt can be reproduced by my colleague in Atlanta or Paris with exactly the same result - but exactly this step we do not succeed in and still I am not talking about completely normal perspectiveless elevations or axonometries. We already fail because of the simple fact that every workplace has an individual SkUp aspect ratio setup - we don't find the solution to this problem and as long as we don't have a solution here, there is no permission to use Enscape for our real projects - as similar as for example VW has to make sure that the fender produced in Poland fits in the same way as the one which is produced in Germany or or Dior reproduces a new product visu in exactly the same way as the previous one was done. As I now indicate, I work for a large industry company and I need to make sure that at each of our about 38 workstations and at each point in time the EXACT same product gets created but I can´t and be sure I'm very upset about that because I've been doing this "thing" for far more than 20 years now. I myself am surrounded by 3 workstations for myself - when I render variant 1 on workstation 1 and variant 2 of the same project on workstation 2 I never get the same image but at best similar. So, since I often don't see the simple solution, I admit that I simply don't recognize the Enscape trick so far:);) and since I want to believe in my own "stupidity", I wonder why there is not finally a tutorial to show me how it works which I have enquired so often...

    As far as quality defects are concerned - these actually exist and these especially for exteriors. We are not able to render one usable image so far - regardless of the used hardware - so I am looking forward to the announced new version especially regarding the shadow calculation and the constantly annoying moire effect which are the most important flaws at first - besides some other known ones ;)

  • One of the great things with Enscape is that it evolves very fast and the development team really listens to user feedback.

    I have some essential problems which are not solved since more than one years and so I can't use Enscape. So for example I can't navigate through a VR at a PC screen per mouse and tele porting. I always fly to the ground only. So, I can't send VR to my client since they don't use HMD and want to show interiors at the screen only. OK, I got an upvote.

    Additional there is a jumping up and down effect, like the observer would be a rubber ball. It's requested to disable it, but it's still there. So, I'm not sure what means "listen to users feedback". For me Enscape is an endless Beta good for some really nice experimental projects from time to time. I can't deliver what my clients need and so I need to wait for a client who match what Enscape offer. It's very seldom. I see a large potential for Enscape if it would work like expected.


    Edit: And the question "Is it stable?" - not really, from time to time problems popup and it need more time to fix it than a tight project dead line. For example the thick line output at 4k. How long the problem is reported and requested again and again? I write this in the hope that problems get more attention in the future so that Enscape will be a more stable and powerful tool.

  • Enscape has been designed to let people walk-through "live" architectural models seeing realistic lighting and surfaces.


    The fully rendered 'screen shots' and walk-through to videos are being compared to render programs designed to output single shot images: Enscape is a very natural, out-of-the-box program that will produce rendered images in a fraction of the time of traditional programs. However it is designed to model exactly what you give it: The traditional shortcuts and "cheats" that most render packages give you so that you can bend reality to make the model look exactly how you would like have to be considered when modelling rather than at the back end when rendering.

    It is WYSIWYG rendering with minimal tweaking - those who like to tweak stuff to pedantic levels will be disappointed that there is not a cockpit worth of minute adjustments, but there are enough not to overwhelm a novice and to give the experienced the tools they need.


    Remember that you are viewing a live model you have made: change something in the model and it will immediately change in the render. To do this Enscape cannot "bake" the geometry in models - this means that some things are limited (like reflections) and some things are much harder to achieve.


    This is the future of architectural presentation: flat 2D drawings/images are a legacy we will leave to our children. All architectural programs have the ability to model in 3D. All architectural programs are trying to incorporate a 'fully rendered walk-through' as an integral part of their program (...except SU it seems). Enscape has been ahead of the curve so far and has a development team dedicated to trying to keep it that way.

  • This is the future of architectural presentation...

    Thanks Gadget all this is absolutely right :) - and because of all your good arguments we run this tool in parallel and look forward to the upcoming quality improvements ;). Also right is that you mention the effort of the Enscape team doing a good and hard work and practicing an excellent communication culture:thumbup:. I don't agree however on what concerns the 2D representations, which still are the most important proofs of work (at least for us as these form the only basis to raise fee claims here) besides digital BIM contents of course. Anyway - of course we also feel the positive potential of this tool and also know that our world of work will continue to change...

  • Micha -- of course, shouting is sometime necessary when something basic is not functioning, and especially when it's something that brings your workflow to a screeching halt. I don't know that this distinguishes Enscape from any other product, unfortunately every rendering software seems to have its share of development catastrophes.

  • Micha -- of course, shouting is sometime necessary when something basic is not functioning, and especially when it's something that brings your workflow to a screeching halt. I don't know that this distinguishes Enscape from any other product, unfortunately every rendering software seems to have its share of development catastrophes.

    :thumbsup: this is true and wisely formulated ;)

  • Thank you all for your feedback. The challenging part of "listening" is the objectification of how many users would be affected by improving a certain feature or adding a new one. We increase our manpower very fast to satisfy the increasing divergence of requirements, while trying to stay focused on the goal of "design reviews and client presentation for architecture".


    andybot : This applies to all kind of software products that allow users to use them in a flexible and individual way, which leads to unpredictability. We test Enscape on many different projects before bundling release, but it may still be possible that a user uses Enscape in a way that we have not encountered so far. Of course technical limitations etc also play a role.

  • it may still be possible that a user uses Enscape in a way that we have not encountered so far

    Thomas, of course I understand sometimes you all run into technical issues, but I'm speaking of things like mp4 textures - i.e. items that imo are basic to "client presentation for architecture." There have been a number of things I've seen that are well within an expected use of 3D rendering software that are not working as expected, and worse are then dismissed as peripheral usage. Just because other software packages also have issues like that doesn't mean we will give up asking. :)

  • Just because other software packages also have issues like that doesn't mean we will give up asking. :)

    I hope so! We appreciate your feedback and it motivates us to reach to quality and feature goals! We will continue to push hard to incorporate your wishes.