I am in somewhat of a predicament I would love to learn 3ds Max and do some game design as well as my architecture but I fear it may be to slow. Here is the situation 1 week to create a presentation so I usually set aside 2 days for perspective renders following a process of Model-Render-Photoshop. My question is in such a small timeframe could you model as fast in 3ds max as you could in sketchup (with plugins if needed) thank you.
you wont learn 3ds max to anywhere near the same capacity as sketchup in a week! sketchup+kerkythea may be your best bet
It's an apples to oranges comparison. Like comparing a pencil/ruler combination to a paintbrush/paint combination. Sketchup is great for quickly prototyping things according to real-world measurements, 3DS Max is great for producing game/movie-quality models for use in rendering of one kind or another. If you insist on making the comparison using hypothesis I'd say that Sketchup is faster for getting something mechanical/non-organic like a desk or computer case modelled in a short space of time according to measurements, but you'd be working for hours upon hours to do anything organic/natural/high-detail or anything with textures/shaders that don't look like muck. You'd generally take a little bit longer to produce the same basic shape in Max, but you'd have a model that is as low/high-poly as you want it with configurable surfaces, fine-grain groupings and a wealth of options geared towards the artistic side of 3D modelling. The learning curve of Max is far, far steeper than Sketchup so you can't really just wave your hands and hypothesise about a similar level of skill in both apps. Max is far deeper and has many more options. Sketchup is simpler, but that simplicity will limit what you can do with it in the longterm; so it depends on how detailed/high-quality you want the produced meshes to be.
