Migration from Enscape to D5 - RHINO

[alexandrecollaco]

Hi everyone, happy to join the forum!

I’ve been a long-time Enscape user, but lately I’m seriously considering jumping ship to D5. Honestly, Enscape feels like it’s falling behind in both quality and features—and their recent updates seem to introduce more bugs than improvements.

That said, the one thing keeping me anchored to Enscape is its rock-solid integration with Rhino. My workflow is completely seamless: I model, assign materials and assets, hit render, and I’m good to go. No rework, no friction—just smooth sailing from concept to detail design. That’s a huge quality-of-life factor for me.

I’ve been playing around with D5 a bit, but I still have some questions about how well it connects with Rhino. I’d love to hear from more experienced users—maybe you can help me figure out if this migration makes sense.

Here we go:

1. Materials
Can I use Rhino materials with all the standard texture maps (albedo, normal, roughness, etc.) and have D5 automatically import and assign them correctly?

2. Assets
If I have assets set up in Rhino (as inserted blocks) with materials applied, will D5 import them properly with textures and materials intact?

3. Lights
Is there a way to set up lights in Rhino (like block instances) so that D5 imports them and lets me adjust them? And if I later add more of the same kind, will D5 recognize them and apply the same settings? Can they be organized by layers, instances or something similar?

4. Grass Example
If I create a grass material in Rhino and adjust it in D5 for scatter grass, will D5 automatically apply that material to other objects using the same Rhino material—or do I need to reassign it every time inside D5?

Thanks in advance! Looking forward to your insights—and hopefully a smoother, shinier workflow.

[Clov]

Hi @alexandrecollaco

Welcome to D5 Render~

First and foremost, you may want to download the D5 Livesync Plug-in for Rhino in order to access some import and live-sync features. D5 Render for Rhino Real-time Rendering Workflow
1. Materials

• There are some materials that are not supported by Rhino. For instance, if the material in Rhino is indicated as “Placeholder,” this usually means that the material is not a Rhino built-in material, which D5 Render does not support. D5 only supports Rhino’s built-in materials and imported images as materials.
  
  
• D5 Render can detect texture maps as long as they are under the same category name in Rhino and D5 Render. If the texture has a normal map in Rhino then activating the livesync would also reflect this normal map to D5
  
  
  
  
  

2. Assets

• I think it would be best for you to try it firsthand when it comes to assets and see if the materials reflect in D5 Render. If you’re using alembic files (.abc) format, then the materials that were placed in Rhino will only reflect white in D5 since we have yet to optimize this workflow (will be addressed in a subsequent release).

3. Lights

• Yes, you can sync lights from Rhino. If you’re using the live-sync tool then you may need to click “Sync Light Types and Parameters” for it to reflect in D5 Render.
  
  * These lights will also be in group in D5 Render.
  
  

4. Grass Example

• The scatter tool or the material reading in general, recognizes the surfaces that has the same material name. So basically, if these surfaces have the same material name in Rhino they will be considered as one surface in D5.

Note: I do suggest trying your workflow in D5 Render first, it’s completely free, and even with the Community Version, you are still able to access a seamless workflow. The only difference is the different exclusive assets and features in the PRO Version.