Software Recommends

[kmwhitt]

I have seen many beautiful photorealistic renderings on this site done with 3DS Max. I am curious as to what radiosity engine was used in the majority of them. Mental Ray or Brazil plug-in? What are people on this forum recommending? Does the new Max 5 have the radiosity already built-in without the need for plug-ins? Is this new radiosity the Lightscape technology? If so, has it been improved to handle a larger polygon count?

 

I need to make a purchase very soon - animation will never be one of my requirements and I model everything in FormZ - Would VIZ be adequate for what I need?

 

I appreciate any guidance from this forum....

 

Sincerely,

 

Kevin McCall Whitt

[ingo]

Hi Kevin and welcome to cg architect,

 

i use FormZ too and have used Electric Image for years. Two years ago i switched over to Lightwave, which might be an option for you too. Or another good software is Cinema 4D, both cost less than Max (actually you get bot for the price of Max) and have great raydiosity engines too.

If you have enough time test the demoversions and see if they fit your needs.

 

cheers

 

ingo

 

You can see my architectural LW renderings at www.im-graphics.com

[kmwhitt]

Ingo:

 

Thanks for the reply! I have tried Cinema 4D and have gotten some pretty decent results, however, I am not pleased with their image-based lighting - way too long render times with lots of artifacts. I wouldn't mind the render times that much if they weren't view dependent. Some other programs (such as Lightscape) calculate radiosity for the entire scene just one time. Is this how Lightwave works? Is it true radiosity or photon-mapping? How's its speed?

 

I tried Lightwave years ago and couldn't get used to its interface.... I do like the fact that Darktree supports a plug-in for Lightwave as it is my favorite texture generator.

 

BTW - your renderings are beautiful!

 

Thanks,

 

Kevin McCall Whitt

[ingo]

Hi Kevin,

 

for Cinema4D i think STRAT is the right guy to give you an answer (hey STRAT where are you ??), but as far as i know C4D can save a raydiosity solution.

Lightwave on the other hand is more a 3D animation software, so it recalculates raydiosity every frame. Overall the speed is ok, i'm on an old G4 450 PowerMac and get decent rendertimes and good overnight renderings. I have choosen LW because of its easy texturing (And yes, i hope i can have Darktree in the near future on the Mac too.) and its render quality.

But the problem with raydiosity in every program is to get used to it and to find a good balance between rendertime and quality.

 

HTH

 

ingo

[STRAT]

C4D has a wonderfully fast radiosity engine, and it's image based lighting is superb, but in both instances (as with other software too) the higher the samples/settings the better the image.

 

Pure accurate radiosity rendering in C4D does take a fair bit of time, but it's worth it imho.

 

it's all a case of learning and knowing your chosen tool.

[proces2]

Max 5 does have a radiosity engine built into the program. Same engine that was built for Viz 4, which came from the same group that developed Lightscape (not the same technology, just some of the same gearheads).

 

I use Viz4 exclusively without any of the other renderer plug-ins. The overall sentiment that i have seen from the people who frequent this forum is that they are not too fond of the results that can be achieved with Viz. i would consider myself an exception to that. i have gotten good and fast results using Viz. the quality is better in Lightscape, but for me, the time it takes to translate a file into LS, set up the scene, run the radiosity and render makes it not an option for my design process.

 

to get the highest quality in Viz or Max, you have to use 'regathering' (the default settings are way to high and will cause renderings to take days - adjust the settings and you still get great results) but this will increase rendering time a fairly signifacant amount.

 

Question to others about regathering in Max 5. after viz4 was released i had heard that the regatherer had been improved upon for Max 5. Does anyone know if this is true. in Viz 4, the regatherer is not multithreaded - is it multithreaded in Max 5? there were some other tweaks to the regatherer that i had heard about - don't know if they made it in though.

 

sean

[Christopher Nichols]

not that you guys need to know this, but there are several different ways of getting light to bounce around... all of which are called Global Illumination.

 

Radiosity remeshes your model and lights the model with vertex shading. This is what is used in lightscape (a great package), and VIZ4 / MAX 5 (based on the lightscape engine), this is a slow process (for newbies) but the results can be good... in the hands of an expert they are among the best GI renderings out there.

 

Irradiance Maps with QMC (or quasi-monte carlo raytracing) does it by collecting key samples of light that are bounced around... This is image depended so the solution for rendering 1 will not work for rendering 2. It is VERY fast and can give incredible results. This is used by finalRender (which I believe is the same as c4d), Brazil, and Vray... This is one of the newest types, but may end up being the future of GI.

 

Photon Mapping, sends out rays from a light from each light source and bounces them around. As opposed to Irradiance Maps where the rays go "back" from the camera. This is also very fast but can be tricky to look good. This can be used in Vray, and I believe Brazil. This can work WITH Irradiance maps and look really good because 30 bounces of lights can easily be acheived.

 

Ambient Occlusion, was presented at Siggrpah by ILM this year... they use a special method to "cheat" renderman into getting the soft shadows around areas... apparently it is very fast... plus it works with renderman which doesn't raytrace... yet.

[proces2]

Are you saying that with Brazil, there is no lighting mesh or maps that are saved for the whole scene - each time you render a new camera it has to recalculate the lighting each time?

 

That would seem much more time intensive than using Viz/Max.

 

just curious ... I used the Insight plug-in prior to radiosity being in Viz. do you know which of your categories it would fall in? it did save a lighting solution mesh with the file (for the whole scene) and once calculated, switching views did not involve any recalculation.

 

sean

[dannyc]

Hello all

"I use FormZ too and have used Electric Image for years. Two years ago i switched over to Lightwave, which might be an option for you too."

I've been doing mainly regular CAD in Microstation, but have started now doing some visualisation & rendering stuff, also mainly in Microstation. I've been wanting to progress a bit on from that so I got Electric Image. Overall I'm very pleased with it.

http://www.universe3d.com/

Do any of you know of the latest version 5 (EI)? How do you feel it matches up to say lightwave or C4D? I've been Mac based (at home) until now , though I'm just about to put together an Athlon 2400+, so will soon be able to dabble in the PC stuff a bit more. I'm thinking of getting Form Z as I understand it worked well with EI and I was never too sure about the surface/solids aspect of Microstation. Though that was up to "J". Haven't used V8 yet. Anyone used it for visualisation?. Is it an improvment of "J"? How does it match up to Form Z for purely modelling purposes?

Max is well out of my price range for the time being so I think I'll have to pass on that. The Gmax thing looks very interesting though. Is this useable for architectural visualisation?

Hhmmmm! Opinions much appreciated

[ingo]

Hi Danny,

 

i was an Microstation supporter and service man for Microstation on the Mac for a few years before they stopped developing the Mac and the Unix versions. I've seen great pictures from Microstation J but i still prefer "real" 3D software to make my pictures, IMHO. And FormZ has the accuracy of a CAD software and all the nice 3D modelling tools, and it is a solid modeller.

I have seen Universe 5 Beta and was not very impressed, raydiosity is far from beeing usable, and still not even a version 1. But if you use the "old" Phong renderer you still get great results with the fastest rendering on a PC/Mac. Sometimes i use it (V 2.92) when there is a need for high polygon counts (more than 5000000 for example), and since EIU and Lightwave both support Camera mapping this is a great combination.

 

HTH

 

ingo

[dannyc]

Hi,..thanks

Well that sort of confirms a bit more that Form Z is worth a look. Kinda sorry to hear you weren't too keen on EI 5. I'm pretty happy with it so far. though I've only had it a couple of weeks or so. it's more than sufficient for my level of skill at the moment. I've got the hang of it overall but still need to learn a few bits and pieces to get the full quality coming through. Should hopefully be starting to produce some "finished" pieces in the next few weeks. Pity they dropped Microstation for the Mac. I've had to go and get another computer to run it. Not really a problem, I guess as you can now get some pretty tasty PC set ups for a very reasonable price. Gave me a good excuse. Interesting that you refered to microstation as not being "real" 3D. I've found it more that capable for polygon stuff. Though ..yeah..for surface/solid things I didn't get good results. I though at the time that it was mainly due to it being on the Mac (Version SE) and only a G3. I'll have to see how it copes on my new PC (2400+) over the next few days. Did you feel that Form Z made it possible to do things that wouldn't really be possible in Microstation? or was it just mainly easier and faster, to do the same things?.

Cheers

[ingo]

Hi Danny,

 

i think that FormZ does things in an easier but different way than MStation, and the export to other programs is easier from FormZ than from MStation in my experience.

 

>>Should hopefully be starting to produce some "finished" pieces in the >>next few weeks.

 

Great, i'm lookingforward for some exiting EIU pictures.

 

regards

 

ingo

[dannyc]

hi again

I'll have to give form Z a go then at some point. though not for a little while me thinks! Got enough software too be getting on with really.

I've noticed there's a thread just started up relating to Microstation, so I guess I ought to jump in there. I'm going to have to stick with EI (as that's what I've gone for). From what little bits I've seen/read about Brazil, now that the full release (at least I think) is out, it's pretty damn fast and the results look quite superb.

Cheers for now

[KiboOst]

C4d radiosity engine got some stuff from finalRender. Personnaly I use finalRender on 3dsmax, and am very happy with it And Stage1 will be more easy to use and still faster.

 

Kib