Experience and new pipeline Questions

Good afternoon, I have recently learned about this site and absolutely love the work people do on here. I was curious if anyone had a good workflow for producing high end renders with a 3 day turn around from start to 3d model to post-processing. I feel like my pipeline is a little more tedious than it should be. For instance, I just learned about proxies which now saves my scene from getting too overpopulated. I Use mainly SketchUp for speed. I render out a video in Lumion. Then I end up doing 5 or six really good shots in V-Ray. then export the scene to 3ds max to get a realistic fire using phoenix. I work for a high-end deck company and fire features are our bread and butter. If you had any suggestions please let me know or critiques on improving my renders I would love that?

Well, I know this one was long time posted… but I’d love to know how you ended up doing your work since then - considering the new Lumion, new Twinmotion and improvements for render engine support for SketchUp?