more Fprime tests

[dwright]

Hi guys, I did use Fprime for a few days. It is very impressive however find it very limiting in many ways. This is what I wrote:

 

 

 

The good things:

• For no radiosity images, it is by far, much faster than regular LW
  
• Aerial lights look much better and are much faster
  
• Radiosity is "faster", at least faster than LW
  
• Great to use as a viper replacement
  
• Great for large resolution renderings
  
• better memory management than native rendering
  
• May be a fit for exterior architecture
  
• Better DOF
  
• Better AA
  
• Better and faster blurred reflections
  
• Refraction are faster however needs more tests
  
• Pause rendering and continue later
  

More tests needed:

• Interior rendering with fake help tests
  
• Shadow maps?
  
• Motion Blur test
  
• Field rendering support (?)
  
• Refractions
  

The bad things:

• No shader support
  
• No shadow maps (?)
  
• No Fresnel, or alike reflections
  
• No post-processing image effects
  
• GRAIN, yes way to grainy in MonteCarlo mode
  
• For some "steps" images are useless, even when they are 5+, they look bad then they look good, then bad again and so forth.
  
• No MT support
  
• No SNet version
  
• No Outline effects
  
• No exposure control for HDR output
  

I will recommend the LW community and Worley to check Max's Vray, still that impresses me the most as a usable tool, I wish we had something like that in LW.

 

I will post some images of my test soon.

[Allen Bussell]

You're right on with your comments, David.

 

Hopefully, with Worley's work, FPrime will improve ... At the very least perhaps NewTek has had it's eyes openned to the need for a better, faster, render engine.

 

I do wish we had a tool like VRay for LW...Very impressive.

 

Thanks for the quick review, David.

[Lewis]

David you are right in many things but you forgot soem other !

 

1. You can get fresnel reflections by using Gradinets and "incidence angle" - that's they way i always use in LW with my car windshields and car paint. It's better than fresnel shaders (IMHO) and give you lot more control.

 

2. Worley clearly stated that FRPIME still don't support shaders so i don't see any surprises there (due SDK limitations but NewTek announced that after Lw8 get out the'll workout on SDK to help steve to improve FPRIME)

 

3. Mcarlo looks pretty fine in FPRIME but be sure you use RENDERER and not preview window 'coz renderer have better quality than preview/save (also explained on worley web page)

 

4. You forgot to mention BIGGEST advantage of FPRIME - You can STOP rendering and continue later (tommorow or any other day) even after shuting down computer. Does Vray support that ?

 

5. You are right about no MT support but that will be changed soon since Steve said he have MT version but he's testing it more before release. BUT you can use both CPUs if you start 2 or more FPRIME windows at once and CPUs will be used 100% . Set 2-3 cameras in scene and start 2 FPRIME windows and then switch camera in each one so you can see your object from multy angles at once which sure does help in scene setup.

[dwright]

Thanks for your comments; I just tested the plug for 2 days. I am going to test more, however VRAY is still by far superior in usable output (IMHO). I will also like to test it over animation to check flickering artifacts (if any)

 

 

Regarding VRAY supporting pause and continue, you can save radiosity solutions in VRAY and rendering them later is VERY VERY fast, however different.

 

 

Thanks about the gradient tip, good idea to use that for Fprime. I am not a fan of anything in particular I simply like to carefully study how usable tools are for production, so far I am still not convinced about FPRIME for projects other than as a VIPER replacement IMHO is more a "Wow thing" at the beginning for later see flaws that affect production or requires extensive workarounds. I am still much exited about it but careful and realistic.

 

 

Regarding SDK modifications to future versions, I honestly feel negative about it. Newtek LW8 version is by far so “Due” and has not really any significant changes. Rendering speed and quality hasn’t been touched, something that I find alarming. Modifying LW core SDK will require modifying the framework something that may be very difficult to do in a short term.

[Lewis]

I'm not sure about Rendering speed not touched 'coz LW8 features page says "rendering Enhancments" and also OpenGL has many new things highly anticipated . But let's wait few more days and see how it works on real machines .

 

BTW I know abut saving radiosity solution but FPRIME can pause and resume ANY rendering/image and not just radiosity. BTW ther eis no flickering in FPRIMES radiosity renderings (i saw few animations) so it could be highly usable for architecture renders.

[Jeff Mottle]

Silverlw,

 

You have been banned from the forums as this is a professional site and your blatent disregard for filling in your profile properly AND filling it in with profanity it not aceptable, nor tolerated. Had you simply not filled in the profile we would ask you to do so, but posting profanity within your profile is unacceptable.

[Allen]

Looks good - no flicker at all.

 

Here's a couple of Fprime renders I did recently. Very quick turn-around (2 days)

 

Also included a logo rendered in FPrime - wish FPrime would render caustics.

[ingemar]

Nice images Allen! What rendertimes did you have? My experience is that FPrime is fast, but not with all scenes.

 

ingemar

[Allen]

Thank you, Ingemar.

 

Render times for the manufacturing facility: 5-1024x768 images - 20 passes, approx. 6 hours. For the logo, I rendered while I worked in AutoCAD during the day - so the image likely would render faster if I devoted all my processing power to it - took about an hour.

 

Rendered on a Dell 360, 2.4 GHz (HT on), 1GB RAM