Rhino3D Flamingo renderer

[STRAT]

Hi Guys

 

Does anyone use Rhino's renderer Flamingo?

 

if so, whats ur opinion on it? especially with regards to render speed?

 

radiosity and GI isn't important here, we're more interested in the normal raytracing capabilities.

[STRAT]

or put it another way, one of my collegues in work here uses Rhino to model in, but he needs to render his models.

 

he needs something which has a basic raytracer which allows materials, lights, shadows, reflections etc etc etc. something similar to Viz's.

Nothing complicated like radiosity or GI. We need a stand alone renderer. cheap as chips or free if possible.

 

Any ideas?

[myron]

yeap, i use accurender, which is basicly the same render engine as flamingo, it is a stanalone software and cheap. u can use radiosity or only raytracing and works in autocad enviroment.

[STRAT]

yeap, i use accurender, which is basicly the same render engine as flamingo, it is a stanalone software and cheap. u can use radiosity or only raytracing and works in autocad enviroment.

and speed wise?

 

[edit]

and also im looking at the accurender website now. it seams to be integral with autocad. i cant find anywhere where it says it's stand alone :?

[edit]

[Fran]

Hi Stephen,

 

I think Flamingo is available as a demo.

[bwilson]

Hey Strat,

 

I modeled a forward shower mold plug in rhino for a yacht manufacturer that I used to work for and did some basic renderings in flamingo a few years ago. The shower constisted of some high gloss gel coat and glass. The render and raytrace results were pretty decent. I'll post some images tonight when I get home.

[Ernest Burden III]

and also im looking at the accurender website now. it seams to be integral with autocad.

 

I think AccuRender is used with other programs, so I would think it is stand-alone. But here's what's interesting--both AccuRender and Flamingo are from McNeel and Co. Why would they need both if they were the same? One supposes they would not. So I would think that the newer Flamingo would work better with Rhino. The main question is, does AR import Rhino files native and render from the nurbs objects? I think Flamino must do this, although it may mesh them internally. And since Rhino is such a superior product to AutoCAD, I would suggest Flamingo.

 

They also have a sketch renderer called Penguin, I think, and a network client called Wildebeast (OK, I made that last bit up).

[Fran]

Accurender is not stand-alone at this point, it is an AutoCAD plug-in. Flamingo was made as a plug-in for Rhino. It doesn't render nurbs directly, it converts them to meshes first.

[STRAT]

cheers guys.

 

Fran - we d/l the flamingo demo, but weren't overly impressed with the results and speed.

 

Also, it's a shame you cant yet use AR as stand alone, as my collegue is a rhino user and cant use acad. AR does look allot faster and better than flamingo.

 

As i mentioned somewhere else, we're looking into the ADT viz renderer as the solution, as you dont need to use ADT for this, only have it installed.

[Fran]

cheers guys.

 

Fran - we d/l the flamingo demo, but weren't overly impressed with the results and speed.

 

 

Sounds like you've answered your questions about Flamingo, at least. Your friend might want to visit the AR3 newsgroup at news.mcneel.com to ask questions about Accurender compared to Flamingo. There is also a newsgroup for Flamingo.

[STRAT]

Sounds like you've answered your questions about Flamingo, at least. Your friend might want to visit the AR3 newsgroup at news.mcneel.com to ask questions about Accurender compared to Flamingo. There is also a newsgroup for Flamingo.

thank you Fran, we surely will. we're intregued about AR

[bwilson]

hey strat,

 

here are those images I told you about yesterday... Looks like you are going with AR, but still thought you'd like to have a look.

 

These were modeled in rhino v2 and rendered with flamingo 1.0 over 2 years ago.

[STRAT]

nice images brian

 

can you give me a quick review on how you find flamingo? only i dont think my collegue is very open minded.

[bwilson]

Honestly Steven, I have not used Flamingo since I did those renderings. All my rendering now is done with 3DS Max. But I still use Rhino on a daily basis for modeling.

 

I can tell you that for what it is, Flamingo is a nice tool. I used the Flamingo Car Paint materials to simulate the Gel Coat of the shower which was very easy to use and setup, and just used a couple of materials that I had for the Teak and Holly floor and the Corian counter. I also used the Flamingo High Reflective Glass material for the shower doors. To summarize, I just used standard Flamingo materials and about a half a dozen photometric lights. No GI in that scene. But, Flamingo can calculate Radiosity solutions. Also has a Plant creation tool, can calculate DOF, has a Sunlight system and some other basic features.

 

Another benefit of flamingo, is that since it is a plug-in for Rhino, it makes everything nice and seamless working with the two programs. It's a nice simple still rendering solution for the cost IMO.

[STRAT]

cheers m8, and how did you find it's speed?

 

only we're testing it out with reletively simple models, with low render settings on a single processing xeon, and it's slow as hell. not a patch on viz scan line speed.

[Fran]

Hi Stephen,

 

I doubt that your friend will find Accurender any faster. Something he may want to investigate is the RhinoMan plug-in (for Renderman and related renderers). Air seems to be a reasonably priced and all-around good renderer. I don't know much about it, just what I've read on the Rhino newsgroup. There is a significant amount of discussion about it over there if you want to ask more questions.

[bwilson]

I rendered both of those images at only 1024x768 resolution because we were just using them inhouse... I think it was around 45 minutes to render both on a 1.6 gig P3 with 256 Megs Ram. Were going back in time over two years though.