The 'grain' in Spain falls mainly on the plain?

[bricklyne]

Check out these render times... this is getting interesting:

http://www.fryrender.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=93&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

 

 

Holy crap, those are fast rendertimes ( for an unbiased renderer, that is). The noise resolution for those given rendertimes is also pretty impressive. I wonder how Maxwell would handle the same scene?

 

The only thing I noticed is that there is a lack of metallic surfaces and glossy reflections/refractions in that scene. Whether or not those would drive up rendertimes would remain to be seen, but I know it Maxwell, it would drive them up through the roof; not to mention the effect of dielectrics and glass ( which are present in this scene).

 

Do you know if Fry does caustics? The Maxwell apologists over at the NL forums seem to be of the opinion that the reason Fry seems to produce relatively cleaner ( and faster?) renders, it because it has caustics turned off or disabled unlike Maxwell which always has them on.

 

I will say this, though. If the final versions rendertimes are anywhere comparable to what they show there, I can easily see it being a practical and feasible option in a production renders set up. IT already seems to have the leg up on Maxwell on the features department ( especially with Texture baking and VR) and the pace of development.

[Fran]

Holy crap, those are fast rendertimes ( for an unbiased renderer, that is). The noise resolution for those given rendertimes is also pretty impressive....

 

Looks impressive, especially for the render times. I realize that the textures are camoflaging a lot of the noise though. Didn't someone do the Osmosis scene in Maxwell a long time ago (alpha maybe)? I'll go have a look. It is debateable as to whether that would be a fair comparison anyway.

 

...IT already seems to have the leg up on Maxwell on the features department ( especially with Texture baking and VR) and the pace of development.

 

It is supposedly fully integrated with the Max material editor too. But the texture baking and VR are propriatary to RC4 if I understand correctly.

[Adehus]

Do you know if Fry does caustics? The Maxwell apologists over at the NL forums seem to be of the opinion that the reason Fry seems to produce relatively cleaner ( and faster?) renders, it because it has caustics turned off or disabled unlike Maxwell which always has them on.

 

It can do caustics, but I don't know if they're turned on or off in this scene. In my personal experience with turning off caustics on Maxwell scenes, I didn't see speed reductions that would come anywhere near matching what the Fry scene shows. The interior render times are really something.

 

It's probably too early to draw any concrete conclusions from it all, but Fry definitely has my attention.

[bricklyne]

..... It is debateable as to whether that would be a fair comparison anyway.

 

IMHO a fair comparison would be between Fry's current beta (version 1.4, I believe) and Maxwell's beta version 1.22. Only based on the consideration that in Maxwell's case, it was the version (of all the Betas, RCs or final candidate) most responsible for all their homepage money-shot images in their gallery that sold them the bulk of their licences (prior to and probably even after the RC fiasco) and also because in the opinion of most users, it was the engine with the best light diffusion and lighting quality. Also the feature-set in Maxwell b. 1.22 would be comparable to what they have working for Fry b 1.4 ( sans the VR and Texture baking, although I can't remember if that is already integrated or is just planned for the final release).

 

In any case, even considering the rendertimes alone ( if those figures in that post are what they truly claim to be), then, in terms of production potential, Fry beta 1.4 kicks Maxwell version 1.1's butt all the way down the curb and straight into next week, while stealing its lunch money. Fry's 40-50 min rendertimes to Maxwell's 20-60hour rendertimes is no contest!

 

 

It is supposedly fully integrated with the Max material editor too. But the texture baking and VR are propriatary to RC4 if I understand correctly.

 

The Max material editor thing would be huge or the Fry guys if that's true. They seem to be avoiding the NL methodology of spreading themselves too thin, in terms of plugins and developing an unnecessary stand-alone app., particularly this early in the development process and instead seem to be following Chaosgroup's route with Vray's development by focusing on the Max intergration first (which makes sense from a economics and userbase standpoint) before considering other applications; although I understand that their (Fry's) stand-alone is way more intuitive and seemingly more fluid to use that Maxwell's studio.

 

It's really quite uncanny: it's almost like they've been taking notes during this whole Maxwell development fiasco or debacle, and are now going in the opposite direction.

[Fran]

Here is a link to the thread about the Osmosis Study Hall:

 

http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3100

 

I guess it was rendered with alpha. And about Feversoft taking notes - one would hope.

[manta]

Well those rendertimes are impressive, however they really weren't done cooking, the vray version took 65 min as compared to 50 min, but the vray one was done, so how much longer till the fryrender one was ALL DONE ??

[Adehus]

Well those rendertimes are impressive, however they really weren't done cooking, the vray version took 65 min as compared to 50 min, but the vray one was done, so how much longer till the fryrender one was ALL DONE ??

 

Yeah, the vray comparison isn't appropriate there, at least with respect to speed. And renderings for this type of app are only done when the user decides they're done... they can go on forever.

 

What was really interesting was that, as anyone who has used Maxwell can tell you, Maxwell wouldn't produce results anywhere near that clear in that amount of time.

[Devin Johnston]

Guy's I wouldn’t get to excited about Fry, from what I've heard there are some serious legal issues between themselves and Next Limit. It's too bad to because I think they had the potential to push NL to try harder and probably for the first time start playing the ketchup game.

[Adehus]

Guy's I wouldn’t get to excited about Fry, from what I've heard there are some serious legal issues between themselves and Next Limit. It's too bad to because I think they had the potential to push NL to try harder and probably for the first time start playing the ketchup game.

 

I've heard about that as well. It is a shame- apparently NL thinks it's easier to stifle innovation than it is for them to elevate their own game.

 

So much for the 'new' NL.

[Devin Johnston]

Are you sure that's what their intentions are; this is more about them protecting their property than it is about them wanting to stop innovation from other companies.

[bricklyne]

Are you sure that's what their intentions are; this is more about them protecting their property than it is about them wanting to stop innovation from other companies.

 

 

What property? The MLT algorithms that both renderers are presumably based upon, is general domain knowledge. Why not just sue Chaosgroup for introducing Progressive Path Tracing into Vray while they're at it? Or the Indigo maker? Or maybe Indigo just isn't big enough yet.

 

As much as this reeks to high heaven, I can't entirely say I'm surprised at all. I did after all say that a legal battle was on the horizon. Especially seeing as how much progress and innovation that the Feversoft guys have been able to achieve in much less time than NL was wth greater resources.

 

NL have completely squandered whatever goodwill and capital they may have had, as far as I'm concerned and I truly hope Feversoft win and come out of this relatively unscathed. At a minimum, these NextLimit guys need a direct competitor to remind them that you can't just treat your clients like crap and expect to get away with it when there are other more viable options out there.

[Adehus]

Bricklyne's point is spot on. Regardless of the details of the squabble, nobody has any reason to believe that NL is on the level with their accusations. That's just their history- they're lying (pun intended) in the bed they made.

 

If NL wants to impress us, then they need to show us that they can compete. If they thought they could compete, they certainly wouldn't be hassling a small upstart.

[Devin Johnston]

I'm all for competition, however the speed at which Fry has progressed would lead one to believe that they had help from somewhere or someone. If it turns out they used Next Limits research to create their engine without legally attaining it then their toast. I hope this isn't the case and they do have a legitimate product, if that's true then NL is in for a very big fight and it may be what they need to get their act together.

[Adehus]

The other option would be that this isn't the rocket science that NL makes it out to be, and it really isn't that hard to develop this stuff so quickly. Or that feversoft has some real talent. Or some combination of the two. Look at how far one person got with developing Indigo in his spare time.

 

Doesn't matter really- Even if, for sake of argument, feversoft totally ripped off NL, they're still doing things that NL hasn't been able to. In other words, fever is doing things that NL promised they'd do (speed improvements), and NL can't do!

 

The courts will do what they'll do... all anyone can do is sit back and watch. But this isn't going to endear anyone to NL. Feversoft is playing it perfectly- underpromise and overdeliver. They're striking at the heart of everything that's wrong with NL.

[Devin Johnston]

That's true, but I can't believe that anyone would preorder anything from them, and if they do I'd say it's a stupid mistake. They can make all the promises and claims they like but the proof is a fully functional V1, if they don't deliver they won't even get as far as Maxwell has.

[Adehus]

That's true, but I can't believe that anyone would preorder anything from them, and if they do I'd say it's a stupid mistake.

 

Totally agree, and Feversoft has basically told potential users the same thing- they're actively de-incentivizing the preorder program.

 

If fry is less than it seems, we'll find out shortly. But if it is less than it seems, why would NL be in such a tizzy?

[bricklyne]

.....

If fry is less than it seems, we'll find out shortly. But if it is less than it seems, why would NL be in such a tizzy?

 

 

My guess ( and this is strictly a guess and purely speculative), would be that NL pre-ordered a copy of Fry, (obviously as a proxy user) and then had their softawre coders take it apart to see what was underneath the hood, and chances are they didn't like what they saw under there. As in, they probably saw too many familiar lines of code that they felt justified enough to take this to court.

 

There's no other way you could possibly justify suing a competitor on the superficial reasons of the perception that their product simply does the exact same thing as yours ( which is what the Fry brochure essentially said it does; i.e that it pretty much does what Maxwell does with a few extras). And NL's argument is then likely to be that Feversoft peeps bought an eaerly copy of Maxwell took it apart and then based their program on Maxwell's source code. A hard enough claim to prove, even with the benefit of faimilar lines of code present in both programs. I'm not entirely certain how the legal system parses through cases involving supposedly guarded and patented technology, but I would imagine a familar analogy would be Coke suing Pepsico over the release of brand new flavour of Cola that just happens to taste far too similar to Coke's latest flavour of the month. Since both companies gaurd their "recipes", chances are that the court proceedings would require both to reveal not only the secret recipes but also how they each arrived at them or concoted them.

 

In any case, I'm unwilling to believe that the Feversoft guys would be so dimwitted as to introduce a renderer largely based on the reasearch of a rival company situated in, not just the same city as they are, but a few mere blocks away from them, literally. And without the expectation that their rivals would a) suspect foul play at the least, and b)take apart their product as a minimum, and not to mention c)the inevitable litigation that we are probably now witnessing. I just don't believe that anyone capable of writing a complex peice of software would then turn around and be so stupid on such a basic level.

 

And with their recent sordid history and well-recorded questionable business ethics, NL on the other hand..........

[Guest imanobody]

Competition is a thing of the past. The new way of doing business is to sue first and then buyout, if the law suites don’t kill them, later. This goes on all the time with the most stupid things. Netflix (a company which I happen to really like) is suing Blockbuster over the internet renting idea…[?] is just one example, of many, were companies will sue just because they can. Even if the competitor is totally innocent, they will have to fork out tons of money just to prove it in court. It would be nice if we had a ‘loser pay’ system, but I doubt that’s ever going to happen.

 

I don’t think that the Fry guys are that much more ethical then the NL guys (if they are, in fact, not the same, or associated closely in some way). They say that you shouldn’t buy the renderer, but then they dangle the carrots out in front of you with claims of super fast render times and the like, but you can never test these claims until you buy it, so you buy it with the same lame promises that you got from NL. The difference is that nobody can go after them when they don’t deliver because they told them not to buy it. It’s the same model as NL, but they just added a little line at the beginning to keep themselves from getting sued. I’m beginning to think that ‘bait and switch 101’ is a major course taught in the Madrid colleges.

 

The Fry guys talk like they just got out of college, so maybe they were interns for NL. This seems pretty likely considering how cheap NL is (they won’t even pay for a programmer for their plug-ins). So NL is taking the Pixar route – if you worked for us and then make another product similar to ours, we’ll sue you into the ground.

[Fran]

Guy's I wouldn’t get to excited about Fry, from what I've heard there are some serious legal issues between themselves and Next Limit. It's too bad to because I think they had the potential to push NL to try harder and probably for the first time start playing the ketchup game.

 

How can this be confirmed? Where did you hear of this? Before you warn people off of a product, be prepared to back up your statements.

[Devin Johnston]

How can this be confirmed? Where did you hear of this? Before you warn people off of a product, be prepared to back up your statements.

 

If you’re looking for an official statement there isn't one, I had a private conversation with someone who knows what's going on. I can't prove it without breaking the trust of the person, and I won't do that. All I can say is wait and see but I wouldn’t buy anything right now.

[Ernest Burden III]

Of course, NextLimit is known to have sued a former employee who quit and went on to write his own fluids dynamics program. I think I know this because he posted about it (which is self-serving) but as I recall it was backed up. And NextLimit lost. He had started from scratch and not stolen any of their code or property.

 

I guess when someone competes, they sue. Maybe there are merits to it, I certainly don't know either way.

 

Of course we were all already saying 'wait and see' on buying a beta.

[bricklyne]

.......

 

The Fry guys talk like they just got out of college, so maybe they were interns for NL. This seems pretty likely considering how cheap NL is (they won’t even pay for a programmer for their plug-ins). So NL is taking the Pixar route – if you worked for us and then make another product similar to ours, we’ll sue you into the ground.

 

The Feversoft (Fry render developers) guys have repeatedly stated that there's no connection between them and NextLimit other than the fact that they are located in the same city and are also developing an unbiased renderer. And as suspicious as that may sound, it has pretty much been confirmed from the other side as well. So while allowing that we only have their word ( both their words, in fact) that this is the case and are free to speculate otherwise, it isn't particularly productive nor logical, for that matter, to presume they're cut from the same cloth as NL and are mutually working some underhanded scheme to skim more money out of clueless customers.

 

If anything, IMHO they seem to be trying to be more on the level than the NL guys ever did without the benefit of public pressure and excruciating embarrassment. They were clear that you should only go for the pre-order deal, if and only if you like to experiment with Beta software and essentially do not recommend it, in any case even going to on to advise that you wait for the final product. NextLimit never did this; on the contrary they kept pushing the whole pre-order deal even when it was clear that they had a turkey on their hands, such as during the RC's fiasco.

 

So far they've done nothing to the degree of stuff that NL has done to warrant anyone questioning their ethics. I mean, one really has to screw up really really badly to earn NL's rep points, in my book.

[Fran]

If you’re looking for an official statement there isn't one, I had a private conversation with someone who knows what's going on. I can't prove it without breaking the trust of the person, and I won't do that. ...

 

Seems to me like you've already broken a trust. Speculation like this, backed up by secret sources, shouldn't be posted on a professional forum, IMHO.

[Devin Johnston]

I haven't said anything that wasn't already posted on the Maxwell forum, there are many more details which were told to me in trust that I won't divulge. You aren't obligated to believe me Fran that's your right, but saying that speculation has no place on CGA is just plane crazy, 90% of what is said here about Maxwell and NL is pure speculation.

[Fran]

I haven't said anything that wasn't already posted on the Maxwell forum, there are many more details which were told to me in trust that I won't divulge. You aren't obligated to believe me Fran that's your right, but saying that speculation has no place on CGA is just plane crazy, 90% of what is said here about Maxwell and NL is pure speculation.

 

Speculate away then. You've crossed an ethical line that I wouldn't have, that's all.