I think you overreact and didnt understand me 
time is money, money make world go aroundā¦ I didnt chose that, it is just like that. If I have more time I would sharp my skill and draw 3D by hand, but if I do that I will stay poor for the rest of my life and it sucks 
Yes vray have better render at the moment, but it consume time, I just rendered 3000x6000 360 picture took about 2 hoursā¦ and find out that i fā¦ up displace map in photoshop, too much black, now do it again and wait 2 more hours, imagine what happen when you create 24fps 10 seconds that is 240 frames x 5-15min frame so average 10 minutes (after hours spent on twitching) that is 2400 minutes that is 40 hours, day and a half for 10sec and then I find out that i dont like reflection on my glass because it is unaturalā¦ imagine now 60 seconds video, took me 17 full days with prepas and final render I7 3930K overclocked. Did I had joy after finishing that project YES, but I would also had joy if i had 3-5 projects done in UE in that time, not as vray but almost realistic. Belive me people finish architecture 2of3 doesnt have clue about visionā¦ same is with clients, they want to see how it looks. I had one client OMG he was pain in the aā¦ nothing could pass, but when I bring him midium quality(almost basic model with color no texture) render he automatically approve everything, imagine I done animation in UE he would **** himself 
in couple more years real time render will pass other renders, and I think at the moment UE is on great way, maybe better engine is FOX engine but it is closed for community, and Chaos group and Autodesk need to improve their programs like stingray and vray for real time. In 2 -3 years new technology will bring up new cards and RT to another level, and I want to be on that train, not to run for him
Itās probably all based on what your background and experience is. I love setting up unreal scenes and then looking at it from all angles. I find that much more rewarding than a super realistic static picture. I love exploring the space and I think the architecture world could benefit from exploring the space more than having photorealistic static images.
However most archviz artists come from the vray pipeline background and to make a good unreal scene requires a different skill and probably also a different mind set. In unreal everything is a compromise between quality and performance. Also quantity doesnāt mean as much quality as in vray renders. I can make a chair with 1000 verts that looks better than a 20.000 verts turbo smoothed 3dsmax asset.
It is a very different pipeline and the architecture world has just started using it. Long way to go for most. But itās worth it and eventually real time will win in my opinion.
I cant upvote your post maybe I need bigger rank
UE all the way!
I agree with you on every point but unreal has some serious limitations that makes it difficult to use for commercial work imo.
-Making a high-res image without any artifacts is impossible. Itās not possible to render 6k, 8k with tempAA and have a super clean look. Youāll never see an unreal rendering in a magazine for that matter.
-Playable demos are hard to show to a client if he doesnāt have a powerful pc. Itās even worse for Vr.
I believe unreal is going to be more valuable during the design phase because itās very good for that.(especially VR)
But for final, marketing imagesā¦ itās risky to use right now imo.
Iād be curious to see your commercial work made with unreal, if you have done some? Personally Iāve only used ue4 for personal projects. When I do a commercial job, I go with Corona because itās safer. Maybe my clients would be down for an unreal viz but Iāve never bothered to ask. They just want a nice image!
And since Iām not working in an architecture office, I have no say in the design phase. I just make marketing images!
ps : and yes iād like to have access to the fox engine too! Too bad itās in the hands of the devil Konami.
We do commercial work with unreal 4 but we only just reached a quality which is sort of ok to give to some clients. check this out.
watch?v=KkgrN-t6EkI
It is not super good and I see a lot of little problems. But it is used commercially. It is a side product of a real time walkthrough which runs on oculus rift on a decent framerate with a 980 video card. It runs on an average laptop on 20 fps without oculus.
I agree with what you are saying: it will never be as good as a corona or vray render but it is getting closer. If your client doesnāt need 8k output then you might be ok. There is room for both in the arch viz world. But primarily unreal is made for real time. Static images are better done in corona or vray.
Vray for still pictures UE for animation, if you have good renderfarm use vray for realistic animation. Renderfarms are expensive, UE isnt
If you need it to be perfect, use vray and the renderfarm it requires. Or maybe Octane or Corona depending on your hardware. Octane (with 12 GPUs to render on) has been my go to for the last couple years for animations.
If you want to spend more time converting all your objects over to UE, and take a hit on some details, you can then enjoy near real time rendering and all the interactive (+VR) features. Considering how much photoshoping usually goes into still images for marketing materials, I think UE stills are typically fineā¦you will just spend a few more minutes cleaning up stuff you donāt have to clean up from vray.
I have a renderfarm with hundreds of xeon cores. I choose UE as the only option for the future. Offline rendering will go away, and the lines will continue to blur until then. Even with the farm getting low noise, realistic animation of complex scenes in 3DS+Vray took some time. 360 frames (12 seconds) could very well cook overnite or better.
Thereās too many options with UE4 to not explore it in full as an early adopter and reap the benefits that this experience will provide as the engine improves. As someone who invested in a bit of tech, and took a couple of months to look into the ArchViz, I came to the conclusion that thereās not much reason to play with what already has been played out, and saturated as a market. Better to stick to the emerging and forge it on your own.
Just out of curiosity. Why do find rendering time such a burden? With your farm it shouldnāt be a problem, even for making offline animations.
Lightmass build time arenāt much faster than rendering an offline image. Plus with offline progressive renderer at least you get an accurate preview of your lighting within 10 seconds, when with unreal, you canāt really see how itās gonna look until the build time is finished (major bummer for me).
Where I think unreal is a clear winner tho, is in the software itself, The editor feels very good to use. Itās smooth, itās well designed, itās convenient. I spent almost 2 years focusing my energies on Unreal Engine architecture viz but iām starting to wonder if it was a good idea. It was for my portfolio building, but now that commercial work is the next step, Iām not sure if ue4 is reliable enough. Look at where offline arch-viz is right now. Photorealism is everywhere. High res renderings (6k-8k) is common. VR is easier than ever with offline renderer. (not the same VR as ue4 can do, but 1000 times easier to share with clients, and photoreal, for example : http://xoio.de/reel/vr/sln/vtour/tour.html).
I guess you gotta find the right clients. Those who are willing to sacrifice visual fidelity for an āāexperienceāā. My problem is I prefer to use unreal to make stills than interactive stuff hehe!
The whole āāchange furniture/colorsāā on the fly is boring to me. Itās not art, itās a gimmick imo. I prefer a well crafted cinematic movie with good fitting music to set the mood.
Itās absolutely a problem, but maybe in a different way than youāre thinking. We can provide standard services without an issue on the farm. The problem is that standard services are being outsourced to China & India. We not only have local competition, but global. Iām not playing that game.
So we looked into the first step out, which was using Vray to produce 360 animation. Do you know how long it takes the farm to produce 360 frames of low-noise 4K by 2K in Vray? Way too long. We can stretch out a single image and upload that to youtube, but that just feels like a hack that Iād not be okay with asking monies for.
The only solution I can come up with is to go not necessarily VR off the bat, but interactive at the least. Iām still coming up with the final gameplan to follow through with, but itās choices like ā to VR or not to VR & ā To market the very high-end clients or to create the technology to enable ordinary players to compete once again. Thereās a lot of potential, and itās not gonna come from trying to jump in to an already saturated market of services which have existed and have played out their role in usefulness.
I can see how a true artist might not like it, but if youāre trying to run a business, you have to see practical applications. Thatās where you have to realize this isnāt a gimmick, itās an enabling technological advancement.