I use VW + Sketchup ... and in sketchup there are a lot of rendering solutions, you can chose Vray, Podim, indigo, Kerkythea.
Well now you have Thea renderer, from Kerkythea developers. I've downloaded the beta demo and I can say it's fantastic.
Like Kerkythea you have both bias and unbias renderign engines, but rendering times are very fast now, and exporting time its like a flash of light.
The quality its completely different from Kerkythea, much much better.
The attached image is an exported model from VW to SU and without any adjustments inside thea renderer. I know it's now a WOW image, but again, its an image without any adjustments.
The rendering time was 2 minutes and 56 seconds, and the exporting time was less than a minute long.
For portifolio images you can use unbiased renderings settings.
Well as a Vray user I can say that with few settings of lights and materials you can have in thea an equal image in term of quality and speed. The attached file is just the starting point. The best part its the price!
For further informations and tests...