Blender

Blender material for architects, currently focused on interior architectural visualisation — modelling, lighting and material work taken through to a finished image.

Blender's appeal is that it is free and complete: modelling, rendering with Cycles or Eevee, compositing and animation in one application, with no licence to renew. For a student that removes the main barrier to learning high-end visualisation.

The cost is that its conventions come from film and product work rather than architecture, so units, scale and import behaviour need attention before anything else. Set real-world units first, check that your imported plan is the size you think it is, and the rest of the workflow behaves.

See free architecture software, rendering software for students and what archviz involves.