And the winner is......

Still not sure.  I have been experimenting with 3D Studio Max, Showcase, Lumion and Artlantis.
The last two I cannot use as they are demo programs, so the answer so far is Autodesk Cloud.

Artlantis, because I happened to stop by an architect in town who said their man who did renders
used Artlantis.

Then just to add to my confusion, I today saw a Youtube demo of Twinmotion.  This got me so excited, I had to download a copy.

The wonderful demo is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_t3wPVyBHo

Shame it costs NZ3,000.....Looks fantastic.

This is my first paying (well hopefully!) job doing renders, so here are the two that the
customer considered acceptable, done using Autodesk's cloud rendering service.

Just to  make me really depressed, here is a pic done for the same customer, but by someone else other than me:

I suspect he has used Artlantis, but  I am not sure. When I first saw it I thought it was a photograph. Sure makes my ones look amatuerish. (I am not good looking, but I am cheap!)

There is a man who has a good take on the thirteen deadly sins of architectural rendering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQM7FNjGAHA.

This one was using Showcase. I had a thin white line come up in the brick texture, I do not
know why- there is no equivalent one vertically.  It was a home made material, downloaded off
the brickmaker's site.

This one is using 3DSudio Max, which came out a bit over exposed.

This one is using Artlantis.  I found that spotlights come into Artlantis as cones....grr!

An interior shot using 3DStudio Max.  Note the tiny pillows.  I have Paint.exe, a free
photo editor, and try as I might, I cannot make those cushions bigger!

An Interior shot using Artlantis.  The windows in the side of the house decided not to show up.

Also evident is my  problems of having a wall on top of another wall, over the said windows.
The top is weatherboard, the bottom is brick. I modified the brick wall to have a notch in it to
accomodate the weatherboard one, but once they got in place they all stuck together!

I tried trimming, splitting and unjoining, but no use, so it is off to Youtube to find the
answer.

I did end up with a video that has a title, Logo and music, which can be seen at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy4iPscLGSo

Now I have used up all my cloud credits, I will have to turn up the settings on 3D Studio Max....that is if I can bring myself to go through all this again.