Just out of curiosity, what do you all think is the best one out there, or perhaps the one you prefer the most, and why? Lightscape, Mental Ray, Brazil, etc.
renderman is a renderer devoloped by pixar animation studios and is being used for their flics. Wouldn't care to learn it, to get pixar film quality an average 3d workstation would have to render about 6 months to get their quality (read it in an interview with a pixar hotshot).
VRay is really good. check evermotion or the chaoticdimension forums for massive support and tutorials.
Remember Vray, Brazil, FinalRender and MentalRay are all excellent render plug-ins. They are by no means easy and none of them have a magic one-click-great-rendering-button. Takes quite some time to master them but once you discover the power....
Here's a challenge to test a renderer. Make a simple 12'x12' room with a 9' ceiling. Make the materials just a simple flat white for walls, floor, and ceiling. Put one 3'x3' window on on wall. Use no interior lights. No furniture. If anyone can find a renderer that can do a good job on this let me know, because I've tried out several on this example and all have failed miserably, just awful. I know you can't just press a button, I tried everything in the book to get it right but they just aren't meant for interiors it seems. Lightscape is the only one that has been successful for me for interiors, too bad it's a dead program.
Why the test w/ no lights? I was browsing through the gallery on the vray site and the interior images looked really good - that's probably w/ all the functions used, though.
anatomical gift,
All in all C4D seems to be a fantastic renderer from a lot of things, like exteriors and characters and the like. (I used it for more than a year and knew it quite well) I've seen good interiors with it, but they must be mainly by the touch of the artist because the software sure isn't bouncing the light around very well. If you have time, try out my test, you will see what I mean. The reason I propose such a challenge (without interior lights) is because it is such a common scenario that no renderer can seem to handle, which is very frustrating to me.
I can't believe you've used Cinema for a year and you can't get a decent interior of a simple room!! ANY 3D program can make exceptional images in the hands of a knowledgeable user. It's simply knowing what is going to look good, knowing the program, and having the experience (read: practice and patience).
You don't need Vray, Final Render, or Mental Ray (Renderman, to my knowledge, does not do GI) to make a great interior, but they do produce next to perfect physical represenations of global illumination, making it easier to get things 'right'. But using standard lighting can create fantastic images in the hands of a skilled artist (how do you think movies have done it?).
I've seen colleagues create exceptional images and animations for architecture using Cinema - images rivaling the best in the world. To say that it can't is simply wrong, you just don't know how to do it.
Find some good tutorials, take the time to go through them, and you'll see that almost any competent 3D app will make great images. Which one you like the best will depend on you.
As for you test, I am confident any half talented 3D person (like me - at least the 'half' part ;-) ! ) could make a convincing image of your scenario in a any 3D app in a few hours.
oh, and your scenario, there obviously has to be some light source or it will be all lit with ambient light (which will vary depending on the app), which you should know will result in bad lighting. In the 'real' world, there has to be a source or it will be pitch black. For GI or radiosity to work and bounce light, you MUST create a source.
blind pew...its just that i prefer to save my time for actual designing, and get the desired effects using photoshop and the like.
i really wish i had the time for recreating actual lighting in the 3d/rendering program, but wel..
Trace, take the time to read my post before you go off. I said INTERIOR lights! like fill lights or from lamps, etc. Of course you have to put a sun in the scene and light from the sky. I'm not an idiot. That's a good attempt anatomical given what the program has to offer; that's basically what my results were too. But as you can see, not even close to reality. It just shows what the raw software can do. I'm sure it could be made to look great with the skill of the artist by adding additional lights, materials, etc. But this is my argument, the software itself is just doing awful. Trace, you try it and post your image, let's see how well you do. As I say, none of mine turned out any better than Anatomical's above.
If anyone with Vray, Brazil, FR, MR, Max Radiosity, etc.. would like to try this and post their results, I would love to see them (as would many other people I suspect). Although I like Lightscape, it will not be deveoped any further and will one day probably not even run on future Windows versions, so I'd like to start thinking about other software to use. To me this is a true test of the software because it shows how the software really bounces the light around without artistic skill clouding the result. If there is software out there that can do this well, then time and money is saved because you don't have to put all the effort into setting up fancy light rigs and do a bunch of trial and error settings, and mess with how many stochastic samples, or how many photons to emit, or cleaning up nasty artifacts, etc. Isn't there a software out there that can do what old timer Lightscape can do. That rendering I did above took a matter of 2 minutes to model, set materials and lights, set parameters, and render.
Blind Pew - sorry, I missed the 'interior' part and was going off of sanofiSYN 's post.
I went and dug up this test that a bunch of us 3D guys posted over the last 2 years. You'll find almost every renderer represented there, including C4D, Lightscape, Final Render, VRay, Brazil, Max Radiosity, and a few others. There is a standard scene that you can download to test with.
Keep in mind, though, that it is still up to the user to make a great image. There are bunch of tests that people did being relatively new to the programs and the results would be better with practice.
As a side note, the scene that is posted on that link would probably do better to test renderings as it allows for multiple light bouncing, indirect sources, and secondary areas lit only by bounced light.
You'll find that people love/loved Lightscape and many still use it, but I know of at least one person that switched to Cinema for the reasons you stated and his results are fantastic (he's easily one of the best in the 3D arch viz biz).
I like Max and Final Render because I know them, they are compatible with everything out there (fR is a discreet certified plugin, so it will work with all the other plugins, which MR and others do not). But that's my personal preference.
Hope this helps. Oh, and you'll also learn that adding 'fake' lights on the interiors will speed the renderings up, especially when you fill it with furniture (you can get near exact renderings with standard lights, but when scenes get complex is when the GI engines really shine).
Trace,
Thanks for the good response. Yes, that thread over at cgarchitect is very helpful. I remember watching it's progress a while back. That model they used would definately show more what the program is capable of. The thing I like about my test though, is that light must be bounced around accurately to make the image look acceptable. In the model at cgarchitect, there is much more light coming in from more spots around the building. It is much much easier to get a good render like that. I believe my test is much harder to get a good looking image, with only one light source in a small space. And a lot of times you are not going to have the luxury of rendering a large open space with lots of windows and interior partitions, objects, etc. to give it more interest. If you can make my test look good, I would be impressed. I guess my real interest is in the raw GI/Radiosity/Final Gather of the software. If it is good, all the rest is gravy. Then you can start adding all the fill lights and whatever else to really make it look good. I'm still not impressed with much that I saw on that cgarchitect thread, although it was very informative.
how about GTKRadiant? It is super versatile in terms of adjusting ambient light levels and detail through radiosity bounces. Also I'd like to point out that the purpose of a rendering is not to make it look real. It's never going to look real. You should be trying to make it look HOT. Or at the very least, "right." I start all my presentations with "stick around if you don't mind some cream in your jeans."
Blind Pew - I understand what you would like to see, but keep in mind the room, in reality, would be pretty dark. On tiny window with no indirect light will not light a room. That said, I sympathize with you and was frutrated when I started using Final Render. I thought that because it was close to physically accurate, that one light would do everything. Nope, and none of the other programs will either (I've never used Lightscape, though, and your image isn't showing up).
As I sure you've been told a million times 'there is no magic make-cool-rendering-button'. The reasons for this are that scenes change dramatically and require different settings. There is also the issues of speed - GI calculations take a long time and it can be crucial to optimize your scenes via the million settings.
The largest benefit to all this, though, is that it puts those of that are doing this professionally into a distinct group.
tony - there are numerous ways to approach the rendering. I've got a client now that wants abstract, something artsy, but most want photoreal. And you are generally incorrect about renderings not looking like a photo. I could show you some of the better ones that are indistinguishable from a real photograph. That takes great skill and endless patience, but it's possible.
Those images are the most valuable because they can sell the public, and for many, that's the most important sale.
woops, I should have tested the image in multiple browsers. I hope this works...
If you can see the image above.... I would argue that in reality a room could easily be lit by a small window with direct sunlight. My own bedroom does this. Lightscape does this. Why can't other renderers do this. Come on people, match my result. I challenge you. For now I will go with the assumption that all others are inferior until shown otherwise. (I hope that image is showing or I'm looking like a real idiot)
I don't know what's going on, it seems to work in IE, Netscape, Mozilla, but not Opera. Who knows if it's working on Macintoshes. I don't know. It's just a simple jpg.
All of this SO depends on your final end use! If you have expressed here, sorry, guess I got bored and overlooked that conveyance - WHO is your target audience - then that should help to shape and define your goal - how you're trying to convey your concept, design, theory, whatever...so many ways to do this....... who's the viewer who's making the decisions?
Just my opinion, but I wouldn't try running Lightscape under VPC. VPC is notoriously slow, and with an intensive program like Lightscape, I'd think it would be waaay too slow.
You'd be better going with Maya/Mental Ray, Cinema, or Lightwave, all of which can produce images as nice as Lightscape (although the work to do it may vary).
Sep 4, 04 5:14 pm ·
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Renderers
Just out of curiosity, what do you all think is the best one out there, or perhaps the one you prefer the most, and why? Lightscape, Mental Ray, Brazil, etc.
VRay Don't waste your money on anything else.
I'VE tried Them All Son
They all have their strengths, and all are very good.
You'd have to try them all for a while to know which is best for you.
Final Render is my personal choice. It's fast, reliable, and has good support.
Really, though, you can't go wrong with any of them.
Renderman?
what's renderman?
renderman is a renderer devoloped by pixar animation studios and is being used for their flics. Wouldn't care to learn it, to get pixar film quality an average 3d workstation would have to render about 6 months to get their quality (read it in an interview with a pixar hotshot).
VRay is really good. check evermotion or the chaoticdimension forums for massive support and tutorials.
Remember Vray, Brazil, FinalRender and MentalRay are all excellent render plug-ins. They are by no means easy and none of them have a magic one-click-great-rendering-button. Takes quite some time to master them but once you discover the power....
Here's a challenge to test a renderer. Make a simple 12'x12' room with a 9' ceiling. Make the materials just a simple flat white for walls, floor, and ceiling. Put one 3'x3' window on on wall. Use no interior lights. No furniture. If anyone can find a renderer that can do a good job on this let me know, because I've tried out several on this example and all have failed miserably, just awful. I know you can't just press a button, I tried everything in the book to get it right but they just aren't meant for interiors it seems. Lightscape is the only one that has been successful for me for interiors, too bad it's a dead program.
fake it
Cinema 4d.
So you're willing to settle for second rate sameolddoctor, ok. C4D was one of the big stinkers in my test BTW.
How skilled are you at using it?
Blind Pew-
Why the test w/ no lights? I was browsing through the gallery on the vray site and the interior images looked really good - that's probably w/ all the functions used, though.
anatomical gift,
All in all C4D seems to be a fantastic renderer from a lot of things, like exteriors and characters and the like. (I used it for more than a year and knew it quite well) I've seen good interiors with it, but they must be mainly by the touch of the artist because the software sure isn't bouncing the light around very well. If you have time, try out my test, you will see what I mean. The reason I propose such a challenge (without interior lights) is because it is such a common scenario that no renderer can seem to handle, which is very frustrating to me.
Blind Pew -
I can't believe you've used Cinema for a year and you can't get a decent interior of a simple room!! ANY 3D program can make exceptional images in the hands of a knowledgeable user. It's simply knowing what is going to look good, knowing the program, and having the experience (read: practice and patience).
You don't need Vray, Final Render, or Mental Ray (Renderman, to my knowledge, does not do GI) to make a great interior, but they do produce next to perfect physical represenations of global illumination, making it easier to get things 'right'. But using standard lighting can create fantastic images in the hands of a skilled artist (how do you think movies have done it?).
I've seen colleagues create exceptional images and animations for architecture using Cinema - images rivaling the best in the world. To say that it can't is simply wrong, you just don't know how to do it.
Find some good tutorials, take the time to go through them, and you'll see that almost any competent 3D app will make great images. Which one you like the best will depend on you.
As for you test, I am confident any half talented 3D person (like me - at least the 'half' part ;-) ! ) could make a convincing image of your scenario in a any 3D app in a few hours.
oh, and your scenario, there obviously has to be some light source or it will be all lit with ambient light (which will vary depending on the app), which you should know will result in bad lighting. In the 'real' world, there has to be a source or it will be pitch black. For GI or radiosity to work and bounce light, you MUST create a source.
blind pew...its just that i prefer to save my time for actual designing, and get the desired effects using photoshop and the like.
i really wish i had the time for recreating actual lighting in the 3d/rendering program, but wel..
Here's my low res, quick version from C4D:
Trace, take the time to read my post before you go off. I said INTERIOR lights! like fill lights or from lamps, etc. Of course you have to put a sun in the scene and light from the sky. I'm not an idiot. That's a good attempt anatomical given what the program has to offer; that's basically what my results were too. But as you can see, not even close to reality. It just shows what the raw software can do. I'm sure it could be made to look great with the skill of the artist by adding additional lights, materials, etc. But this is my argument, the software itself is just doing awful. Trace, you try it and post your image, let's see how well you do. As I say, none of mine turned out any better than Anatomical's above.
BTW, thanks to Anatomical for taking the time to do this.
here's my attempt with Lightscape. It was basically just "press a buttom." no skill involved.
If anyone with Vray, Brazil, FR, MR, Max Radiosity, etc.. would like to try this and post their results, I would love to see them (as would many other people I suspect). Although I like Lightscape, it will not be deveoped any further and will one day probably not even run on future Windows versions, so I'd like to start thinking about other software to use. To me this is a true test of the software because it shows how the software really bounces the light around without artistic skill clouding the result. If there is software out there that can do this well, then time and money is saved because you don't have to put all the effort into setting up fancy light rigs and do a bunch of trial and error settings, and mess with how many stochastic samples, or how many photons to emit, or cleaning up nasty artifacts, etc. Isn't there a software out there that can do what old timer Lightscape can do. That rendering I did above took a matter of 2 minutes to model, set materials and lights, set parameters, and render.
Blind Pew - sorry, I missed the 'interior' part and was going off of sanofiSYN 's post.
I went and dug up this test that a bunch of us 3D guys posted over the last 2 years. You'll find almost every renderer represented there, including C4D, Lightscape, Final Render, VRay, Brazil, Max Radiosity, and a few others. There is a standard scene that you can download to test with.
Keep in mind, though, that it is still up to the user to make a great image. There are bunch of tests that people did being relatively new to the programs and the results would be better with practice.
As a side note, the scene that is posted on that link would probably do better to test renderings as it allows for multiple light bouncing, indirect sources, and secondary areas lit only by bounced light.
You'll find that people love/loved Lightscape and many still use it, but I know of at least one person that switched to Cinema for the reasons you stated and his results are fantastic (he's easily one of the best in the 3D arch viz biz).
I like Max and Final Render because I know them, they are compatible with everything out there (fR is a discreet certified plugin, so it will work with all the other plugins, which MR and others do not). But that's my personal preference.
Hope this helps. Oh, and you'll also learn that adding 'fake' lights on the interiors will speed the renderings up, especially when you fill it with furniture (you can get near exact renderings with standard lights, but when scenes get complex is when the GI engines really shine).
http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/showthread.php?t=4708&page=1&pp=10&highlight=light+test
Trace,
Thanks for the good response. Yes, that thread over at cgarchitect is very helpful. I remember watching it's progress a while back. That model they used would definately show more what the program is capable of. The thing I like about my test though, is that light must be bounced around accurately to make the image look acceptable. In the model at cgarchitect, there is much more light coming in from more spots around the building. It is much much easier to get a good render like that. I believe my test is much harder to get a good looking image, with only one light source in a small space. And a lot of times you are not going to have the luxury of rendering a large open space with lots of windows and interior partitions, objects, etc. to give it more interest. If you can make my test look good, I would be impressed. I guess my real interest is in the raw GI/Radiosity/Final Gather of the software. If it is good, all the rest is gravy. Then you can start adding all the fill lights and whatever else to really make it look good. I'm still not impressed with much that I saw on that cgarchitect thread, although it was very informative.
how about GTKRadiant? It is super versatile in terms of adjusting ambient light levels and detail through radiosity bounces. Also I'd like to point out that the purpose of a rendering is not to make it look real. It's never going to look real. You should be trying to make it look HOT. Or at the very least, "right." I start all my presentations with "stick around if you don't mind some cream in your jeans."
Blind Pew - I understand what you would like to see, but keep in mind the room, in reality, would be pretty dark. On tiny window with no indirect light will not light a room. That said, I sympathize with you and was frutrated when I started using Final Render. I thought that because it was close to physically accurate, that one light would do everything. Nope, and none of the other programs will either (I've never used Lightscape, though, and your image isn't showing up).
As I sure you've been told a million times 'there is no magic make-cool-rendering-button'. The reasons for this are that scenes change dramatically and require different settings. There is also the issues of speed - GI calculations take a long time and it can be crucial to optimize your scenes via the million settings.
The largest benefit to all this, though, is that it puts those of that are doing this professionally into a distinct group.
tony - there are numerous ways to approach the rendering. I've got a client now that wants abstract, something artsy, but most want photoreal. And you are generally incorrect about renderings not looking like a photo. I could show you some of the better ones that are indistinguishable from a real photograph. That takes great skill and endless patience, but it's possible.
Those images are the most valuable because they can sell the public, and for many, that's the most important sale.
woops, I should have tested the image in multiple browsers. I hope this works...
If you can see the image above.... I would argue that in reality a room could easily be lit by a small window with direct sunlight. My own bedroom does this. Lightscape does this. Why can't other renderers do this. Come on people, match my result. I challenge you. For now I will go with the assumption that all others are inferior until shown otherwise. (I hope that image is showing or I'm looking like a real idiot)
I don't know what's going on, it seems to work in IE, Netscape, Mozilla, but not Opera. Who knows if it's working on Macintoshes. I don't know. It's just a simple jpg.
All of this SO depends on your final end use! If you have expressed here, sorry, guess I got bored and overlooked that conveyance - WHO is your target audience - then that should help to shape and define your goal - how you're trying to convey your concept, design, theory, whatever...so many ways to do this....... who's the viewer who's making the decisions?
Buy a Airbrush That's all you need
I realisethat Lightscape is a dead programme, two questions however
- Does anybody know if you can still buy this anywhere - 2nd hand, unsupported etc, eg ebay
- has anybody ever tried to run lightscape on a Mac under virtual PC?
Just my opinion, but I wouldn't try running Lightscape under VPC. VPC is notoriously slow, and with an intensive program like Lightscape, I'd think it would be waaay too slow.
You'd be better going with Maya/Mental Ray, Cinema, or Lightwave, all of which can produce images as nice as Lightscape (although the work to do it may vary).
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