Brett Posted July 22, 2003 Share Posted July 22, 2003 I’m not one to usually complain but I am not too happy with Viz. I am a Max and Maya user and I find the price to value on Viz to be ridiculous. The feature set is small, the render engine sucks – even radiosity – it has all the glitches of Max and never properly returns memory to the system after a hard render. In the future I will be investing in Maya despite Discreets in with AutoCAD. Just needed to vent after the third crash today on a 100,000 poly model. Thanks for listening:) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nuno Posted July 22, 2003 Share Posted July 22, 2003 ...the render engine sucks – even radiosity –... i know there are probably better renderers than viz, but i cant agree with your statement... http://www.cgarchitect.com/gallery/image_spotlight.asp?galleryID=13575 http://www.cgarchitect.com/gallery/image_spotlight.asp?galleryID=12777 http://www.cgarchitect.com/gallery/image_spotlight.asp?galleryID=14762 http://www.cgarchitect.com/gallery/image_spotlight.asp?galleryID=14729 http://www.cgarchitect.com/gallery/image_spotlight.asp?galleryID=13969 http://www.cgarchitect.com/gallery/image_spotlight.asp?galleryID=13596 http://www.cgarchitect.com/gallery/image_spotlight.asp?galleryID=13390 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brett Posted July 22, 2003 Author Share Posted July 22, 2003 Nice looking work but my complaint has more to do with render speed more so than image quality. If you know how to use Viz lights properly you can imitate radiosity to the point that it makes no sense to use it - but compare these renderings with what you can get from Mental Ray which is included in Maya for the same price as Viz. I also have to say that Maya has NEVER dumped me out with loss of data and I always get my memory back instead of having to restart my machine after every render (I have 1.5 gig) because there isn’t enough memory left for shadows. What I am saying is why spend $2,000 for an underpowered program when you can spend the same for Maya Complete. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lightning Posted July 23, 2003 Share Posted July 23, 2003 You are absolutely right about the instability of viz. It happens to me always after calculation of the radiosity. I can't get to do more than 5 or 6 operations on it (like adjusting the camera angle) before it crashes. I didn't notice any RAM problems though, so maybe it’s a problem with your system? About the speed of rendering with radiosity I absolutely don't agree. It maybe takes some time to make all the adjustment and even the calculation itself, but once you have it right you can create high quality GI renderings at the speed of a regular one, and it would always look better than fake radiosity that takes more time to render since you are using more light sources. You said you are also a MAX user. Apart from the many extra features, what is the difference for you in terms of stability and rendering quality and speed? As a heavy duty AutoCAD user (I'm an architect) I always prefer using the Viz .dwg link mechanism than just importing it. I'm going to give MAYA a check through in the near future, but I don't think it is more convenient for architectural work. Lighting Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nuno Posted July 23, 2003 Share Posted July 23, 2003 If you know how to use Viz lights properly you can imitate radiosity to the point that it makes no sense to use it at least untill today i didnt see a fakeosity methodology that can be compared with well done radiosity, mostly in the details. of course IMO. nuno Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brett Posted July 23, 2003 Author Share Posted July 23, 2003 I have had the memory problem on several machines including a high end Dell and my current dual XI – a very highly rated machine in Cadalyst. I also had a problem with Viz not shutting down on the Dell and I have seen that same problem with Max and Viz on at least one or two other machines – it just seems to be a trend. You have to go into Program Manager to shut it down. Max seems to be more stable than Viz in terms of handling memory and shutting down. I wouldn’t mind paying $500 -$800 for Viz but the asking price seems ridicules when you compare to comparably priced software such as Lightwave (you have to TRY to get a bad rendering out of Lightwave - just look at the renderings on CGArch) Maya, and C4D. Hands down these are arguably better programs than Max let alone Viz - except for maybe C4D. I believe the Max 5 Radiosity engine is much faster than the Viz engine. I have not had a chance to test that but that is what I have heard from reliable sources. As a production artist with deadlines I have to ask myself on every job is it worth it to have my machine out of action for 8 hours for an initial radiosity pass for a slightly better rendering or spend one hour rendering with a well done standard lighting system that I can tweek eight times ? In many cases the answer is no way. Other render engines such as Final Render, Mental Ray, or Brasil are much faster but you have to pay to play. If you buy Maya for example you already have the standard engine and a somewhat weakened version of Mental Ray – but the features are very impressive compared to Viz. Again this is just my opinion – my review of Viz – my assessment is don’t buy it for the asking price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abicalho Posted July 23, 2003 Share Posted July 23, 2003 "I believe the Max 5 Radiosity engine is much faster than the Viz engine. I have not had a chance to test that but that is what I have heard from reliable sources." MAX 5 Radiosity engine is exactly the same as VIZ 4's. There's no difference in speed at all. MAX 5 adds Adaptive Sampling to Regather and that will make it faster, but that's the only difference. Alexander Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lightning Posted July 23, 2003 Share Posted July 23, 2003 Hey Brett, As I said I didn't have any problem shutting down Viz. It just crashes after I start playing around with the radiosity solution… :ngelaugh: I guess that being an architect and not a production artist makes a difference in terms of requirements and deadlines. My office purchased Viz2 several years ago, which was a lot cheaper than Max, but with even less features (no animation). For the Viz4 we paid only for the upgrade so it wasn't bad. In the office I work on a mighty IBM intelistation but at home I work on an old but trustworthy p3 800mhz with 512mb ram. Either way I have no memory problems (apart from the crashes). On what operating system do you run the Viz4? BTW in the subject of Fake vs. real radiosity, there is do doubt in my mind that the real is excellent for animations in terms of quality and speed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brett Posted July 23, 2003 Author Share Posted July 23, 2003 I’m running Windows XP Pro. The radiosity issue could be low memory. Have Task Manager and Performance open when you are messing around with radiosity. It could be how your computer is handling virtual memory. It would be pretty intense to run a radiosity animation for more than a few seconds – that’s render farm territory. We had eight computers in our farm and never even tried to do that. We had a hard enough time with standard lighting and hitting our deadlines with 5 min animations that take a week to render one end to the other. We used those stations in daylight so they only ran animations at night. If we were at 5 min per frame we had to figure out a way to cut render time so radiosity was not much of an option. You can use a set solution and then just run the frames but it was still taking a little to long on our older computers. I’m an architect as well but make my living doing renderings and animation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nuno Posted July 23, 2003 Share Posted July 23, 2003 ... It would be pretty intense to run a radiosity animation for more than a few seconds ...since architectural animation is mostly based on animating the cameras, you can always store the radiosity solution into texture maps and render the entire animation with ease, i guess nuno Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moshenko Posted July 23, 2003 Share Posted July 23, 2003 It sounds as if you've had a hard time with Viz, which is unfortunate. We've found it to be extremely stable in our production environment (Win2000). We've also found the standard Viz/Max scanline renderer to be quite powerful over the years. I can't really say how it "compares" to Maya/Lightwave/etc., but it's really a moot point, and one that I'm sure has been debated to death: a renderer does what an artist tells it to. Each has their strength and weaknesses, and the artist gets to know these intimately throughout the course of useage. Exploiting the strenghts and avoiding the weaknesses is what makes a good artist. Originally posted by Brett: As a production artist with deadlines I have to ask myself on every job is it worth it to have my machine out of action for 8 hours for an initial radiosity pass for a slightly better rendering or spend one hour rendering with a well done standard lighting system that I can tweek eight times ? In many cases the answer is no way.This seems to be more of an argument for or against radiosity or some other form of GI, not a Viz-specific one (either that or an argument for a render farm ). This is the reality of physical-based lighting: it takes a long time. It's getting faster all the time, but I agree with you that that type of decision still (and probably will always) need to be made. Originally posted by Brett: Other render engines such as Final Render, Mental Ray, or Brasil are much faster but you have to pay to play. If you buy Maya for example you already have the standard engine and a somewhat weakened version of Mental Ray – but the features are very impressive compared to Viz. How do you define "much faster"? For instance, as a pure raytracer, Brazil probably is faster than Viz. As a GI renderer, you're comparing apples to oranges: Radiosity in Viz, and Photon/QMC in Brazil. And don't get me started about the "pay to play" angle: ever priced out a Mental Ray farm? Talk about value... I would say that if you are not happy with Viz...don't use it! Just make sure your decision is based on thorough analysis and usage rather than software gallery shopping. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brett Posted July 23, 2003 Author Share Posted July 23, 2003 My experience is purely personal experience and making a living in this industry. Again most of what I'm saying is based on value to performance - and Viz and Max aint got it. You can get some great looking renderings out of Max or Viz – don’t get me wrong some of the best work I've seen doesn’t even touch radiosity or GI. I also have more respect for that work because its more difficult to get it there in many cases. Mental Ray the full version is maddeningly expensive – especially in a farm because you pay per seat (I believe) where with Viz you don’t have to pay per render cpu. In the end it’s the artist and not the tool that makes the art – but a good artist will also search out the best tool for the job. (Or maybe I should make a paintbrush from the hair I’ve pulled out every time Viz crashes.) Admittedly my work looks very 1999 so I am seeking a way to integrate GI or radiosity into my process without blowing my deadlines or pissing of the clients. I’m sure a lot of it is learning curve. I’ll start a new project with plans to use radiosity and then get 50% there and then I’ll pull back to standard lights in order to finish the job. I’m also a one man band so I got no one to look up to;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moshenko Posted July 23, 2003 Share Posted July 23, 2003 Originally posted by Brett: I’ll start a new project with plans to use radiosity and then get 50% there and then I’ll pull back to standard lights in order to finish the job. I’m also a one man band so I got no one to look up to;) I'm sure many feel your pain, myself included. I must say, though, that the good ole' Viz scanline renderer has saved my butt in many such occasions... Best of luck to you - Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brett Posted July 23, 2003 Author Share Posted July 23, 2003 It does feel good after a bunch of long heart pounding hours sweating over a radiosity solution to just throw in some key and fill lights and hit the render button and get something good back in a matter of two minutes. But I get a little farther each time I try it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tcorbett Posted August 8, 2003 Share Posted August 8, 2003 I found that most of my problems with VIZ (crashing, needing to restart my computer after using radiosity solutions, slow performance) were fixed when I installed the update to the license manager. http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=2524942&linkID=2377704 Now the only thing that seems to bring my system to a screeching halt is foliage. Hope this helps! Tom... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brett Posted August 8, 2003 Author Share Posted August 8, 2003 Thanks for the tip. I have managed to mostly stabilize my system. I am very upset with Autodesk because the problem they sort of claim is only in Windows 2000 is also a problem in XP. They make it sound like the problem only exists in 2000 but if you have installed that Hotfix in XP you will experience the same problem, right? So why were they so ambiguous about the problem being an XP problem as well? They should have come right out and stated that the problem was an XP and 2000 problem not just a 2000 problem. I installed XP on my system thinking this would solve all of my problems but the same exact problems existed because I didn’t know that that patch would also cause a problem in XP. orangemad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abicalho Posted August 8, 2003 Share Posted August 8, 2003 Brett, Autodesk announced the Win2K issue first because that's what caused the problem. Then the WinXP issue came up, AND Autodesk announced it also. And now there's a fix for both. If you go to support.autodesk.com, choose Autodesk VIZ, you'll see this article mentioned as the first link in the page: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/item?siteID=123112&id=3431487&linkID=982821 I hope this allows you to fix it. Alexander Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard McCarthy Posted August 9, 2003 Share Posted August 9, 2003 NOT USING Radiosity?!! you mean hand-placing every light? wow, that's very old-school method of lighting, and personally, I think it's going to get phase out as it gets unrealistic to do it that method while GI-Radiosity renderer become more optimised/faster. Also I think you can never get the same level of subtle detail by just using your eyes to judge where the light is going to "bounce" and place light there compare to scientific method of hard-calculation. Then again, a lot of ppl in this forum might not agree with me... (sorry Arnold hehe) -RM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brett Posted August 11, 2003 Author Share Posted August 11, 2003 I missed that they updated to include XP - I must have been focused on loosing billable hours on trying to fix driver problems after installing XP If you have done standard lighting a few times setting up a standard lighting scheme is easy. The method is well established in the film industry (key,fill,back) and if you use inverse square decay it looks great-almost like radiosity. We did gigantic scenes with 1,000,000+ faces this way that I'm not sure we could have used radiosity on especially since it was animated. The advantage is you dont have to tweak the heck out of maps for color problems and it dosnt take all day to render your final image - you can keep working up to an hour or so before you render that 6000 wide board. I am doing my first project with radiosity from the start and it seems to be going well so far. I found that the main problem was too much color saturation in the light and too much reflected color from bitmaps. Also to keep the image from looking fuzzy you need some crisp anti-aliasing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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