Accurate control of the sun angles? That's built in to Rhino, and Rhino plug ins all use it. So you are safe there.

As for photorealism, I recommend V-Ray for Rhino.

seconded

Maxwell I think is a more accurate light simulator.

^ seconded

...although i am always lured by vray

Maxwell Render...Totally

www.maxwellrender.com

Vray...is very nice...Feel the same as MArch06

i will also say that i bought maxwell [also RF4] for $95 [edu disc], which is hella cheap and gets you all of the service updates. next limit is a fantastic company, not only do they put out top rate products [come on, who's excited for XFlow?] but their customer support is top notch...you just have to wait a day, they're in spain. and their online material library has some gems.

for those of us to lazy/cheap to upgrade to 4.0, what is avail. for 3.0 (other than flamingo...)

a agree to use Maxwell- for single-pictures , but for animations I would use VRAY.

holz-
for 3 there may still be a version of Vray out there, not sure.

And Next Limit having good customer service?!?! Times have changed, I guess.

While we're at it I'll through Fry in to the mix even though I haven't actually played around with it yet.

Brazil

waiting to try nXt

seconded or thirded on preferring maxwell, (esp. with student pricing!) but yeah, i wouldn't dare try to render an animation with it. waaaay too slow. i've seen a few (animations), but they all seem to involve render farms... ($$$$)

fry render looks very interesting but is still in beta, and i can't get any response from them about student pricing. wish they'd do an open beta where anyone could dl and try it out.

i've tried vray for rhino (and i've seen some awesome renders from it) but i'll be damned if i'm going to spend all day tweaking settings to get a decent render out.

one huge caveat for rhino/maxwell combo is texture mapping... rhino 4 has uv mapping but it's buggy. combine that with maxwells confusing "real scale" = good luck getting your bricks to render at a real size.

sigh... sometimes i miss using flamingo. the renders were weak but it was easy to use.

Ah, so someone else has issues with it too.

I've been searching the stars for a good way around that issue

Thanks for the response everyone. Sounds like Maxwell is the way to go.

apurimac: best suggestion is to use maxwell studio. it is a pain in the ass, but it works. you have to reset the projectors for every object... pm me if you want details, it's too long and boring to get into here.

I've played around in studio, but it looks most daunting. I may have to take you up on that offer.

"one huge caveat for rhino/maxwell combo is texture mapping"


agree I usually have the viewport I am working on in "Render"ed mode...and change the uv mapping according to the previewed render in the viewport...Its not accurate...but Gets me out of jams....

One aspect of Maxwell that hasn't been mentioned by anyone on this thread is the long render time. Vray, while having more setting to tweak, is significantly faster than Maxwell. For a high resolution rendering at say 11x17, its not uncommon to have to let it render for 24 hours+ in Maxwell, while the same rendering in Vray would only take a couple hours. I tend to use both Maxwell and Vray for studio, Vray primarily, but Maxwell for final high quality renderings when I have the time. Once you get a few good settings down for Vray, it really doesn't take long to set up.
As for mapping materials, have you used the mapping widgets in Rhino? I find them pretty easy to use, and if you play with them while in the rendered view mode it is pretty accurate to what the final result will look like.

Maxwell does take an age to render, but I've gotten some high quality 2000x1000 res exterior images overnight.

Time is always a concern. Producing a rendering in a couple of hours is about the most I have time for unless I can afford to have a computer for rendering purposes alone.

Thanks for the additional input.

Brazil is free now..

Smash Lab episoide using a kind of "Rhino add on"

..that "Rhino"-liner paint...

This seems like a fairly basic question, but I cannot find anyone who can answer it. I have been using vray (for rhino) for a couple of years and it is great, but I cannot figure out how to get lights to render (or emissive materials). I think this is probably some very simple thing that needs to be turned on, but have as of yet been unsuccessful. Thanks to anyone who can explain this to me!

check out the vray website...register and you can download the manual for free...it goes in depth on lights and emissivity of materials.