I've been leeching these forums a while following the excellent NA input. This thread is of particular interest to me, I've been fortunate to have a hands-on background mostly in the fields of Architecture, Industrial, Mechanical, and Automotive design, a lot of ergonomics, and graphic software development (I wrote a architectural renderer for PC's in the days rendering was only done on mainframes). Throughout my years, I have used a multitude of modeling and rendering tools, and I'd say the ones that stick out to me as good tools are Autodesk's 3D Studio and Cinema4D.
However, I'd like to throw a different methodology in the pot - and hopefully not heat it up till it boils over
While blingy photo-realistic renderings are great for media prints etc, I've been swinging towards interactive design tools over the years - maybe because of my strong ergonomic roots and needing the man-machine interaction to be optimal. While there are many out there, and certainly the top modeling apps have/will have their offerings available, I have found that a great (free) tool for this is the online 'game'/platform known as Second Life (SL).
I'm sure at this point many think I am nuts
... which is true, relatively speaking.
There is another that is not released yet and should be much better for content designers - Mwituni (which yours faithfully is involved in).
The 'renderings' in these tools are obviously lower quality than high-end renderer's, but they are still pretty good. Added to that they have the advantage of rendering in real-time, and being interactive.
The interactive part is a huge bonus, and I've found once you are used to it its great during design phase - working with the rendered product in real-time. But more importantly offers something very special for your client ... they can login and 'explore' your product in real-time - like a turbo-charged interactive walk-through. Not only that, but they can interact with it (assuming you add the functionality) - eg open doors, walk through the hulls to check headroom and space, sit in a seat and check their viewing angles etc.
Added to that, they can do this at anytime whether or not you are on-line (should you so wish), so they can become more involved in the design process and thereby start taking design ownership earlier (again should you wish).
For the customer, this is a great and fun tool : they can have meetings where they have this up on a big screen and can interact with it showing off and discussing certain features etc. It also has the advantage that the content doesn't have to 'die' ... normally a design house puts a lot of effort into renderings and thats it - the content (3d model) dies. This way the content can still be used even after the product is released - eg. customers can keep it hosted in SL as a marketing tool (there are around 10 million SL users). If not for marketing, the customer may keep it simply to 'play' if they are so inclined which may sound crazy but considering most people spend a small part of their year onboard it may not be such a bad idea them sailing about on a virtual replica of their RL pride in winter months (SL objects can be scripted pretty well to drive / sail etc). It simplifies design over global boundaries too.
If anyone is interested (NA's, Designers etc), I do this for my own projects, as well as take on interactive modeling projects. So if you think this could work in one of your projects I'll be happy to discuss it. Most likely it'll be quite a bit cheaper than using a design house for renderings, and give the added benefits and flexibility. Most of my projects are done on private virtual property (hosted space) which I own with limited access - so that will probably be ideal for most projects unless they want it all open to the public which is fine too.
While I don't have many yachts in SL to show, I include snaps of 2 i do have : one was just me messing abt and the other a POC based on 38ft Woods hulls. I also include a snap of a fully drive-able car to show what is possible.
Enjoy
