Thank you for sharing your thoughts. The only thing that stops me from devoting more time to ArchViz is a fast growing competition. But like @RI3DVIZ said “you don’t have to be the best you have to be the only”.
Hopefully we’ll see some work from you soon 
Working on it as we speak 
Well archVis is only one small element under the visual media umbrella and is generally a word to describe the genre that limits it’s scope to purpose and need of the client or individual. It’s a shallow market for such skills as to what’s realism verse realistic as compared to the market place (massive) where the need is for visuals that are interesting, pull focus, and the majority will accept processed visual as being real than a photograph as that is how the industry has taught them to think.
All things targeted under the mass market place is “always” posted process to make the imagery more interesting, to catch your attention, even though such images reject the ideals of single point lighting typical of archVis and favors the techniques used in film, stage, and even magazines that goes beyond the boring of pointing a camera at a subject and going click.
So as a frame of mind there is the question. Why would anyone hire you as a 3d graphics artist if you can only produce imagery that is equal to stepping outside with a camera and it’s scope is limited to a select few individuals?
Sounds confusing hu? 
Well to sell my frame of mind Eric Curry is one of many individual who inspires me as to the ideals I want to achieve in 3D imagery.
If you can pull of hyper imagery in 3D space then your sills would be in demand in all markets where the result “has” to be more than something that can not be captured with a camera and stepping out side.
P.S. check out his other videos as well as anything involving the painting with light technique as it’s use can translate to 3D space.
Just saying.
FrankieV - great post.
In terms of Archviz you could step outside the box and do images such as the train and some Archviz firms do successfully, unfortunately most work is client driven and they want a basic but nice realistic image like a camera would take.
OH for sure and that’s the market it serves so there is no real difference it pro grade photography and hyper imagery and the gap between the two is not that great. The train example is good, even though YouTube chews up image quality, as it is a good example between a 30-40 thousand commission or a million dollar shot sold to a movie production company.
So as to my answer to the original Hell yah it’s worth the effort if you first figure out your market, your audience so to speak, and the so called competition is the WallMart crowd out to make a quick buck selling cheap push button assets. If you can get Eric Curry good then people will come to you.
Yes Arch-Viz is a small part of 3D industry and the scope is limited but again its all come to what you really want to achieve from a Software which is designed to implement your imagination. So its an open field. But I think the concern that bugs everybody is the time required to learn software as tool to produce desired results. Many constraints present themselves in the way to achieve this like - Traditional art training. software training, time required and hardware availability and so on. If one is not clear of the end results and interest its easy to get lost in this vast world.
What I would say is - become a specialist rather then a generalist. Not - “Jack of all trades, master of none”
Unreal Engine, 3ds Max, Photoshop, Substance Painter all are monumental targets to learn and master, but we can pick the parts we like and start building from there.
FrankieV your post made me think of the guys at Mir.no. They do arch-viz only but their picture add a little something that would be impossible to capture on camera (unbilt architecture). Their work is incredible.
I also agree with . Anyway it takes too much energy/time to even try to master everything. I’d prefer to specialize and it’s apparently going toward immersive arch-viz as we speak. I use immersive to describe anything that isn’t a still image. Video, RT, VR is what I want to explore.
Yah with the benefit of hindsight I see this a lot. It seems to be human nature in general to create artificial obstacles in an effort to talk themselves out of doing something. Sure it’s easy to say it’s worth it but 3D is just one of those things that’s hard until it becomes easy that demands the mind set of a 4 year old.
Hey RI3DVIZ, I got all inspired with all that ArchViz talk and made a quick random image:
Since you liked Labtop so much I used them as a reference to make something generic to test the waters sort of speak:
Thoughts??
P.S. 3DS Max + Photoshop
would be proud! Very cool. So much can be done in the post processing to make interesting work, good job.
tnx and is amazing!
Indeed, I haven’t seen even a singe 3d render where there were no post processing.
Just saw an ad for a house to be animated in Unreal, the client will provide a Revit model of the house. They’re offering $10.00 to $15.00 an hour, the client is in Australia. In the US they are raising the minimum wage in places to $15.00 an hour which means the person at McDonald’s will be making just as much. The op asked is it worth it? 
15$ per hour…I would not even have a look at his revit file.
The jobs I have seen from Australia are ridiculous because they use a lot of vendors from Asia. Unfortunately these people will devalue UE4 people just like they did with 3DS and Vray.
A very sad sigh…
Super nice podcast from chaosgroup (vray) with 2 guys from Gensler. In the 2nd half they speak about game engine arch-viz and VR and it’s super encouraging!!! let’s roll!
Great stuff, downloading it right now.
Thanks for the link! Interesting talk.
Be very careful, big studious have budgets to make promotional materials for themselves. This doesn’t mean that there are actual clients for this kind of projects. Our company and our partners and our competitors did the same. The reason why we would invest time and money into building a VR archiviz is because we can 
We had a “no-glasses needed” stereo screen demos running on prototype screen from Philips, when there were no consumer stereo except anaglyph glasses. It doesn’t mean that there are actual clients for this projects! We do it to attract clients for our regular set of products and services. There were instances here and there were we could go nuts and put every piece of technology we had experience working with into a single project, but these are exceptions.
, in my honest opinion, you are approaching it from the wrong end. Sad truth is this business is not about passion in architecture, it’s about highly efficient pipeline. Which means that the most viable approach is building your own specialized engine or heavily modifying existing one. I’ve never worked with RTT’s software but if I ever get back into real-time archiviz business, that would be first place to look for solutions. I don’t see any archiviz projects on their website http://www.rtt.ag/en but there are still videos in youtube of their technology used for architecture.
Cheap labor can’t beat a technology. The moment when you can run architect’s model in real-time with good raytracer, without spending weeks to remodel everything, is the moment where labor cost becomes irrelevant. Look at RTT Deltagen, people buy it because it allows you to have a standard pipeline across your whole business divisions, you don’t have to deal with outsourcing every render or movie and your cost are flat.