ingemar Posted March 6, 2004 Share Posted March 6, 2004 it looks like www.worley.com have answered the question of a faster renderer - with radiosity. (also check this for an interesting comparison of the "six best renderers in the world", if you haven't seen it already). ingemar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ras Posted March 6, 2004 Share Posted March 6, 2004 Whew! I really feel like I know more now after reading that Zaon article. Awesome! What a great article. Thank you! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ingemar Posted March 6, 2004 Author Share Posted March 6, 2004 it's nice to see LW there with the best ones even though it's showing it's age. ingemar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IC Posted March 11, 2004 Share Posted March 11, 2004 I think this is going to change everything. There isn't really an argument against using LightWave now as it models as well as anything out there, if not better, has features galore and can now render in realtime!(almost) In that article as in most articles which refer to lightwave, the phrase "great quality rendering but too slow nowadays" is used. Not with this plug in. All for 1/4 the price of Max with its default renderer (albeit the slightly out of date but still impressive Mental Ray.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ingemar Posted March 11, 2004 Author Share Posted March 11, 2004 I wonder if network rendering will be supported later on? That will probably be necessary if FPrime wants to be a really serious renderer. Hopefully with unlimited nodes, as LW. ingemar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwright Posted March 12, 2004 Share Posted March 12, 2004 I wonder if network rendering will be supported later on? That will probably be necessary if FPrime wants to be a really serious renderer. Hopefully with unlimited nodes, as LW. ingemar Agreed, since G2 is also impressive however highly limiting, I wonder if FPrime has hidden limitations as G2, more than already mentioned on their site, however it is VERY impressive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andymcnair Posted March 15, 2004 Share Posted March 15, 2004 Has anybody here used this product? If so I am very interested in some feedback. If its as good as they say then it looks like a necessary purchase. Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwright Posted March 15, 2004 Share Posted March 15, 2004 I will have it soon... will let you all know. David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renderama Posted March 16, 2004 Share Posted March 16, 2004 I have had it for a couple of weeks. I have also rendered quite a few scenes, and really like the previewer. The renderer is a big disapointment. I tried to render a basic interior lobby with radiosity and gave up after 72 hrs. It was basically un-useable because the grain was so bad. Lightwave's native renderer was faster on the same scene. My experience has been, the smaller the scene, the more competitive FPrime is. Unfortunately for me, most of my scenes have 1.5-3.5 mil. polys. I do think the previewer alone is worth the money. Another nice feature is the ability to stop/save/improve/resume the rendering process once started. Has anybody here used this product? If so I am very interested in some feedback. If its as good as they say then it looks like a necessary purchase. Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yog Posted March 17, 2004 Share Posted March 17, 2004 My experience has been, the smaller the scene, the more competitive FPrime is. Unfortunately for me, most of my scenes have 1.5-3.5 mil. polys. Funny, my experience is the opposite. If LW will render a (simple) scene in under 5 minutes then there wont be much difference in using F-Prime. On the other hand I've been rendering a 1 million poly scene with radiosity which LW took 7.5 hours to render, whilst F-Prime rendered it to the same quality in just over an hour. Where it really comes into it's own is where you would like to render with more than one GI bounce. The same scene as above took F-Prime 1.5 hours with 2 bounces, LW I aborted after 8.5 hours as it had only managed 2-9 AA passes. There is a situation with area lights in F-Prime giving a lot of grain and taking a long time to clear. The solution I use is to move the light slightly between frames 0 & 1 and render with F-Primes motion blur (a variation on the spinning light trick). It then renders very fast with very little grain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwright Posted March 17, 2004 Share Posted March 17, 2004 hi there, can you guys post images that WILL help! cheers & thanks! David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lewis Posted March 17, 2004 Share Posted March 17, 2004 Yes as YOG said there is some "rules" or bettet to say workarounds in FPRIME but it sure works faster than normal LW BUT you must have enough RAM to have it fast and it EATS lot's of RAM . I'd like to see that scenen form "unnchalange" called "let it be light" or similar. I managed to get very decent Lw renders in 32 - 55 seconds but with interpolated radiosity so if anyone is free to try with montecarlo 2 bounces which should look great and not messy as interpolated one . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ingemar Posted March 18, 2004 Author Share Posted March 18, 2004 ok, here's the interior from the thread "let there be light". I let FPrime render for 30 minutes/15 iterations on a 2 GHz, 640x480, Monte Carlo 2 bounces, 1 distant light and a white backgound. I've only tried FPrime for a day or two so it might be possible to improve on these render times, but as it looks now FPrime is probably not the fast radiosity renderer I was looking for. As a previewer though it's a huge timesaver. What I like most is to have Modeler and FPrime open side by side, and hitting a keyboard shortcut for Synchronize Layout (F9 was actually not already in use in Modeller...). Modelling with instant rendering feedback without switching programs! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
minus Posted March 18, 2004 Share Posted March 18, 2004 Well.... F-prime is certainly much faster than the LW renderer based on the above scene. Concidering that F-Prime does *not* have shading noise reduction.... and it was able to get that clean in 30 minutes.... (2Ghz proc)... with 2 bounces isn't *too* bad. If it had shading noise reduction it could be a lot faster I'm thinking though. Hopefully that is one of the first things opened up in the LW SDK to allow for it. I would adjust the above White / Black values a bit in Floating Point and I think that image would look much better. Very cool that you can keep modeler / F-Prime open at once. =) I like the idea of leaving a render going overnight.... and it only gets better and better. That and you can resume a render from any point is pretty cool too! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lewis Posted March 18, 2004 Share Posted March 18, 2004 looks very good and fast (especialy for MCarlo 2 bounces) but you've render it too dark . can you put more light isidee and make outside little blue liek it was nice clear sunny day ? BTW i also read that FPRIME makes better image quality if you acctualy make it SAVE image than if you save it manaualy form "preview" window ? Dunoo if is real true but some users posted images and saved version sure looks better than saved trought pvw window ? Only thing is as minus said it woiuld benefit form shading noise remover but i think that then it would "flicker" in anaimation like LWs interpolated version which is useles in such case . BTW Worley already made update to version 1.01 or so . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ingemar Posted March 19, 2004 Author Share Posted March 19, 2004 Just to be clear: The rendering is definately too dark! I just tested how much grain would remain after 30 minutes - I wasn't trying to make a pleasing render (therefore no tinting of the sky-/sunlight either). I used FPrime Render, not the preview window. I've also read that this could be faster, though I haven't seen any difference so far myself. There might also be more ways of speeding it up in altering the model and so on. Having a good noise reduction option would be great! As it is now it's a little bit too grainy for my taste. Considering that it's only 640x480 in size I think 30 minutes for this quality is too long - compared to other radiosity engines, not LW's internal renderer. It's a step forward, but not the really fast radiosity solution that LW needs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwright Posted March 19, 2004 Share Posted March 19, 2004 Anyway, 30min just for that is very slow and disappointing, compared to other engines such as vray, finalrender, and other, this is because LW SDK does not really include any aid to write a rendering engine, Worley’s G2 and Fprime are smart in-between hacks. I will like to test it using luxigons. Can someone create a hemispheric luxigon light and illuminate something and compare native vs. FPrime? thanks! David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lewis Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 Yeah 30 min for that resolution is too slow, it must be faster even if CPU is "only" 2GHz . Do you maybe have some N-gons ? There is several things that are know to FPRIME render optimizations. 1. don't use N-gons 'coz it will slow down render (use Quads and Triangles) and one of most important things is 2. PROPER layering - if you have low poly object (plane gorund or sky spehere for instance) put them in next layer 'coz if you put hi-poly and low poly object in same layer it'll slow down FPIME very much (some users reported 10-15x time difference). FPrime likes layerys . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allen Bussell Posted March 23, 2004 Share Posted March 23, 2004 Here's a sample of a simple room built to test render some furniture I'm making (By the way, furniture making hobby magazines are a GREAT resourse) Back on track - I let this render overnight. 27 passes. Monte Carlo at 350% with 4 bounces. One area light. Original size: 1024 x768 As you can see, still grainy - but it's really shaping up - and I can start rendering from where it let off - to better the quality. What I really enjoyed was the setup - moving the light in the window and seeing the result almost immediately. As said before, shading noise reduction would really make the renderer top notch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lewis Posted March 26, 2004 Share Posted March 26, 2004 Hi Allen This render definately looks great , i'd even say it's good little grainy in this situation . One question for guys who render wiht FPRIME (i'm still not sure should i buy or not ). How do you know how much minutes/seconds passed ? In FPRIME demos by Steve Worley i didn't see any timer or clock ??? Is there other options where you see time while it renders like in LW's render window ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ingemar Posted March 27, 2004 Author Share Posted March 27, 2004 I'm using a stop-watch :-) This is only for comparisons though, otherwise it's more interesting to check how many iterations FPrime have run. I try to identify the lowest acceptable level when the preview window is open during the setup of the scene. When doing a final render with FPrime Render I know it must reach at least that level - then I can stop the render, do other things like setting up an InDesign document for the presentation - and if there's time left I just continue rendering a few more iterations. Rendering time gets more flexible and less of an issue actually (IMO). I find renders have better quality with FPrime, not because it's a better or faster renderer (it probably is though) but because quality can be improved as soon as the computer is idle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwright Posted March 28, 2004 Share Posted March 28, 2004 does it use both cpu's? cheers, David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ingemar Posted March 29, 2004 Author Share Posted March 29, 2004 I've only got a one processor machine, but from what I understand FPrime does not support dual processors in ver 1.01. Worley has stated that they have a solution ready though and will realease it soon as a free upgrade. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renderama Posted March 29, 2004 Share Posted March 29, 2004 does it use both cpu's? cheers, David No, only one. That may be why FPrime renders (large scenes) more slowly than LW on my machine. I am using dual Xeon 2.4s. I noticed that FPrime doesn't even max out the one processor it uses, while LW will utilize all the CPUs you can throw at it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwright Posted March 30, 2004 Share Posted March 30, 2004 OMG..great just one cpu. ok... I will WAIT. thank guys. David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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