Final Render.....Finally!

[Frosty]

In case you havent seen the front page,

http://www.cebas.com/news/read.php?UD=10-7888-33-788&NID=112

 

Anyone have a test with it? Opinions?

[Brian Cassil]

I'll be interested to see how all you c4d-ers like it.

[STRAT]

testing on and off due to time.

 

also suffering a few teething problems, configuration wise, and a couple 'o crashes.

 

but very promissing. the best thing - distributed rendering.

 

i work in a practice with over 100 pc's on the netwrok here. all i need to do is pick out the fastest 10 pc's in the office and hey presto, an instant render farm.

 

that's 10 pc's all rendering the same 1 frame at once. watching all the buckets on screen is complete madness. magic.

 

EBIII is on the test run more than me at the moment. i'm sure he'll soon be around.

[3dworks]

In case you havent seen the front page,

http://www.cebas.com/news/read.php?UD=10-7888-33-788&NID=112

Anyone have a test with it? Opinions?

 

yes, anyone with hands-on experience appreciated... i'm not a big C4D fan, but this seems to be a very good solution for fast high quality rendering, at least on the paper

 

it's the year of the big renderer innovations: maxwell, final render, the upcoming new lightwave 9 engine and modo's 201 renderer, and last but not least, the new electric image 6.5 GI solution...

 

markus

[William Alexander]

Nice Avatar Marcus....seems I've seen it before

 

WDA aka Wax

[Ernest Burden III]

So far, pretty kick-ass.

 

I'm trying stuff out, but also setting up an on-going project for rendering. I'm hoping to render it with FR2, but I'm taking the time have the fallback of the regular renderer.

 

Despite some awful 'protection' stuff, this product is well worth the money if you have deadlines. Of course, Maxwell will probably be worth the money if you don't. We'll know in a few days/months on that one.

[3dworks]

Nice Avatar Marcus....seems I've seen it before

 

WDA aka Wax

 

hi wax so... did you have a chance to test it?

 

markus

[William Alexander]

Marcus,

 

Not yet! Sure does look promising though....Hmmm maybe worth talking to the powers that be and see if we can get a run at or should I say run it through the 'Mill' LOL. Would really like to see it perform 1 on 1 with MR.

Like the shader tree.. just like XSI LOL

 

Very interested to see what Strat and Ernest have to say after using for thier work

 

WDA

[Ernest Burden III]

Very interested to see what Strat and Ernest have to say after using for thier work

 

At it's most simple you just load an existing project, turn on FR2 and hit render. The product is so well integrated in C4D that it doesn't feel like a seperate product.

 

However, there are some shaders that FR2 does not support, so if they are in your existing materials, you need to change them. Area lights have a very different level of brightness, but other lights are about the same. FR2 uses its own method of light falloff, so all of those settings are meaningless. But as I said, I'm setting up my file as if I will render it in AR just in case. I'm copying the area lights to make a FR2 version. Otherwise, all native C4D shaders/materials so far. I will have to learn to use the new shader factory in FR2.

 

The file I'm working with likes to crash the Distributed Rendering slaves, which is causing me headaches, though I think its something about this file. But this is my next deadline, so I'm stuck with what I've got.

[AJLynn]

Okay, so two questions:

 

Is the GI fast? The only thing I really don't like about the C4D AR engine is how slow radiosity can be.

 

Is there cheap student pricing? I can't find mention of it anywhere.

[Ernest Burden III]

Is the GI fast? The only thing I really don't like about the C4D AR engine is how slow radiosity can be.

 

Is there cheap student pricing? I can't find mention of it anywhere.

 

I don't think there is special pricing for cheap students. (Sorry, you can't let one like that get by you without the joke. What a great language)! I think the price is the price. But email Cebas to ask.

 

fR2's GI can be faster. A lot faster. Some situations I have tested are actually slower, so you have to learn to drive the thing. But fR2 allows for good looking results with lower settings. Maybe they cut corners to get there, but they get there.

 

Also, the Distributed Rendering is a big step forward. Whenever you render something, whether it's in the GUI or out to the 'external render window', it will use up to 10 (does that 10 include the host, or is it the host plus 10?) other machines to bucket the image. You watch these squares chase each other around like a PacMan game. So that's faster.

 

There are methods to store GI solutions, three methods of doing GI, a number of other things to help you out.

[AJLynn]

Ooh, I like distributed buckets. Used that with VRay before, made the work fly. And I've got the hardware to do that. But I'll have to ask them about the student pricing - I'm cheap.

[Ariel]

taken from the link above:"The only difference the user will see is the increased image quality and render time when using finalRender Stage-2."

 

Am I reading this right?

[Ernest Burden III]

taken from the link above:"The only difference the user will see is the increased image quality and render time when using finalRender Stage-2."

Am I reading this right?

 

No.

 

But that's close to true. I'm finding lowered stability. So far I haven't tracked down what's going wrong. C4D never crashes, but now it does since I'm using fR2. Overall it's great.

 

I have not yet dived into the shader system, but it will simply render your existing C mats, with a few exceptions.

 

The integration is very good. It feels like a part of Cinema.

[AJLynn]

Asked about student pricing and got a reply quickly - they don't have it but they're planning to and working on the details.

[STRAT]

C4D never crashes, but now it does since I'm using fR2. Overall it's great.

 

i'd agree so far.

 

i've had VERY limited use of it to date as my work load is just too damn busy to let me free on it, but those times i have tested it i've had more than the normal rate of crashes. specially when trying to use fr2 and the normal AR in the same session.

[Ernest Burden III]

I was testing the basic skylight system, and produced this image, thought I'ld post it. This is lit only by skylight with a color gradient. With fairly low settings but AA on, it rendered in 7mins/20sec on two machines:

 

 

Overall, I'm finding the FinalRender engine to be a joy to work with (when it isn't crashing my extra render slaves). Its abilty to re-use GI samples is much better than that of AR, so day-to-day use is much faster, though AR still renders some stuff faster since FR2 goes through a number of prep steps that frankly take too long for a quick screen check. There are still some migration issues that are slowing me down. But if the idea is that using FR2 can cut your render times to a fraction of what they were before--it does. And they look better, too.

[William Alexander]

Ernest,

 

What size/aspect did you render the image?

 

The "splotchiness", albiet suited to your 'style' ....I'm assuming it's a matter of samples and or sampling size for the GI?

 

WDA

[Ernest Burden III]

Ernest,

What size/aspect did you render the image?

The "splotchiness", albiet suited to your 'style' ....I'm assuming it's a matter of samples and or sampling size for the GI?

WDA

The times are misleading--a fresh render might be the 7 minutes, but once you've rendered any part of it, the next time its quicker. That same image was rendering after I posted that in about 1 minute. Size--as posted, its a screengrab.

 

The mottling is part of my material setup, its something I add. I should render something without it just to show. My samples were very low, since I was just testing the effects of different lights. Here is the scene with that stuff turned off, and basic skylight from the image above plus one SUN light. I sometimes use a color pattern to be cast onto the scene to vary the color temperatures across space. This rendering will be from the ground. With GI, render time 1 minute/15 seconds:

 

 

.

[Sindala]

As far as i have tried it, final render looks great.

there is something about their client service a bit off though.

 

here are some mails sent between me and cebas.:

(i removed the guys name for his privacy)

 

Dear sir / madam,

 

i was about to purchase final render stage 2 for cinema4d, on this page it

say's that the price is US$ 695

http://www.cebas.de/products/feature.php?UD=10-7888-35-788&PID=53&FID=495

 

if you convert the price to euro's you would come out at €590.84.

while i was processing the creditcard order i saw that the price in euro's

was the same as in dollars, see screengrab.

Could you tell me what the real price is? and how to purchase it?

 

With kind regards,

 

Dick Floris

 

 

their reply:

 

The price in Euro is 695 plus VAT.

####

 

 

well, that's a short awnser.

Why is it more expensive for people living in the EU?

Dick

 

Hello,

 

no, it is not more expensive you pay 695 plus vat and the US people also pay 695 plus VAT!

The price is identical, we are not responsible for any tricks Brokers and Banks are playing world wide. Or would you like to pay more when the dollar rises against the Euro?

 

####

 

 

 

Dear ####,

 

Your reasoning is very strange to me. Exchange rates are a very normal thing. One euro is just not the same as one dollar. Therefore i have payed more than the price listed on the cebas website. If you really don't stand behind the system of exchange rates you would also accept 695 Dalasi from a client in Gambia. .......

you understand that i feel wrongly treated by your compagny as i did pay 695 euro ($818.60 today) for the plugin. And that's considerably more. Either you just don't care about a mistake being made, or your compagny charges for clients in the EU than for clients in the US. Which one is it?

 

Dick

 

 

I think you do not understand the concept of exchange rates and the REAL value money has. Banks and the news are tricking the People by publishing irrelevant multipliers between currencies. The multiplier is not the value of your money!! When you visit USA especially in LA you will soon learn that your 695 Euro do not have any more value than here in Europe. In USA you would spend the same amount of money for your everyday live. So 695 is 695 and not 800 as you think.

 

The only problem is not that you pay the same amount of money, the real problem is that we as a European company do not get the same amount in Euro!! The Banks and Brokers are eating the so called extra value of the currency!!

 

We are not living in CHINA! Also we do not squeeze out peoples hard work nor do we torture people to get things done. We are a fair European company that pays their employees to enable them to make a living. There is nothing wrong with our 695 Euro plus VAT.

 

####

 

Is it me or is this really strange?

[Frosty]

Well, I'd be pissed if I were you. I understand the logic of both sides (strangely). From what I have heard this has been a common complaint of people who switched to the euro. Prices were not translated as per currency value (as you rightly suggest it should be). In many places, proces simply changed units - the units however had differing values.

 

The argument is like comparing miles and kilometers. The salesmans argument would have held more water if every 3D artist in every copuntry earned the same rate (where you make 50,000 euros and I make $50,000). But that isnt the case and that salesman is way out of line.

[STRAT]

it's always the same when ordering software from the States if living in the UK -

 

if the online price is say $499 american dollars, i'd end up paying £499 uk pounds for it.

[Ernest Burden III]

it's always the same when ordering software from the States if living in the UK -

 

if the online price is say $499 american dollars, i'd end up paying £499 uk pounds for it.

 

Excet Cebas isn't a US company, it in the EU. Shouldn't we Americans be the ones grumbling?

[Sindala]

Shouldn't we Americans be the ones grumbling?

well you are cheaper off than us in this case.

 

how much did you pay?

 

anyway, i decided it's a useless discussing with this guy.

 

final render does render really fast and smoother.

only on heavy files (already set up for AR with textures and all) it always seems to crash for some reason.

I'm trying to find what it is that makes it crash, have you found anything that can be pinpointed?

[Ernest Burden III]

how much did you pay?

 

I'm trying to find what it is that makes it crash, have you found anything that can be pinpointed?

 

I don't remember what I paid...whatever the pre-order amount was in dollars.

 

No, we have not nailed down the crashes yet. I suspect its area lights, but cannot get to what it is about them. If you have any, turn them off or make them omni's and re-render to test my theory.