Rhino anyone?

[markiemark]

I'm curious to know if anyone has any experience using McNeel’s Rhinoceros & Flamingo software. I’ve seen some nice examples on their website (http://www.rhino3d.com/) and wonder how it might work for architectural renderings. How does it compare to other programs in terms of: ease of use, modeling functions, rendering speed, etc.?

I’m just starting out in 3D and I’d like to invest in a good program (under $1,000) to learn with. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

[STRAT]

i use it for certain modelling aspects, but i certainly wouldnt render with it. rhino rendering is slow and lacks features

 

look into Cinema 4D. thats not a million miles off the $1K mark and is a high end 3d app. to boot too

[Mario Pende]

Rhino for modelling _ great!! ...if you come from AutoCad area...

Dont render in Rhino, get some other software for that but before you do I would suggest that you look into inport/export......Rhino can export almost any format..but... really...you must do some tweaking to do it right...(dxf,dwg,3ds,obj...)

 

Great Modeler!!!

[joseph alexander]

I use Rhino extensively. I feel that it offers the fastest modeling solutions compared to Form-Z, Autocad, 3D max. The problem has been that it's geometry is Nurbs based which makes bringing it into 3d studio or other progams a pain. However, there are good plugins, N-power offers a great plugin.

MOREOVER, Mcneel/splutterfish will be releasing a version of Brazil r/s for Rhino. Considering how Mcneel uses user feedback to meld their products I'm possitive that the user interface will be superior (more intuitive) then Brazil's interface in Max. Hopefully, if Mcneel uses it's head, they'll integrate the HUGE tree library that Flamingo has. If they do that for around $2,000 (with Brazil), buying the two will be a no brainer.

In my opinion Rhino/Brazil will offer the best modeling rendering solution for architecture. (slightly worried about not having a good car plugin) I love both programs, and the tech support both companies have offered me is second to none.

 

 

joe

[Antisthenes]

i am going to have to disagree

 

Rhinoceros is fine to do rendering in and Brazil well they kicked me off the beta team for that so i am now bias against sputterfish. BUT maxwell and Vray are out and working great within rhinoceros. try them

 

i hear you about the trees flamingo has some real nice trees

the new version of accurender (witch is flamingo) now supports RPC's i hope the new version of Flamingo (2?) will figure out how to use RPC's HDRI and that the other renderers could make use of the Flamingo tree library..

[Mario Pende]

i am going to have to disagree

 

Rhinoceros is fine to do rendering in and Brazil well they kicked me off the beta team for that so i am now bias against sputterfish. BUT maxwell and Vray are out and working great within rhinoceros. try them

 

i hear you about the trees flamingo has some real nice trees

the new version of accurender (witch is flamingo) now supports RPC's i hope the new version of Flamingo (2?) will figure out how to use RPC's HDRI and that the other renderers could make use of the Flamingo tree library..

 

Lets not forget Vray4Rhino

[Antisthenes]

noted .

 

 

lets not forget about Rhino2Indigo Exporter

 

http://indigorenderer.com/

 

 

and what about treefrog??

 

What is Indigo ?

 

 

 

Indigo is a new unbiased photorealistic render engine, and is able to reproduce very realistic

lightning scenarios and accurate renders by employing MLT (metropolis Light Transport) on top of path-tracing.

 

Path tracing is a form of ray tracing whereby each ray is recursively traced along a path until it

reaches a light emitting source where the light contribution along the path is calculated.

This recursive tracing helps for solving the lighting equation more accurately than conventional ray tracing.

 

Indigo has experimental support for Bidirectional Path tracing,

which traces rays in the opposite direction aswell, from light sources to the camera.

 

Indigo's unbiased nature guarantees that the render result always converges to the correct result, given enough time, without the need for render time options.

 

Images render progressiveley, you can get a good picture of what the final render will be like after a couple of minutes (altough very noisy), and simply let indigo render until you are satisfied with the result. (eg noise is gone).

[Mario Pende]

Lets not forget the FryRender plugin that will come;)

 

...as for Indigo, Its slower then Maxwell and yes its free...your choice

[1eo]

Maxwell also works with Rhino

 

 

BTW... there so many options out there, and the best part is that most of them you can test them for free.

 

rhino-Maxwell =

rhino-Maxwell

 

I love rhino, but the type of arch work that I do daily would not be my best option.

 

I use sketchUp-Maxwell, for daily work =

example 1

example 2

example 3

[Antisthenes]

I've never used Sketchup.

 

but Rhinoceros doesn't have to be used for curved surfaces, Love your modeling there thou. that's some fun creative work.

 

I use Rhinoceros 4 for all aspects now even the CD's (construction documents) well i have to go back to 3 to render still of course till 4 is final.

 

what advantages does Sketchup bring over Rhinoceros for you? i've heard of Sketchup users converting to Rhinoceros to be able to get a curve, but not the other way around.

[AJLynn]

Sketchup is pretty limited for stuff with curves, but I've never worked on anything actually being built that couldn't be done in Sketchup, so I use it a lot. Main advantages are that it's fast, it's compatible with a lot of file formats and it can make graphics you can use for preliminaries and design without lighting or rendering.

[1eo]

where should I start...

 

 

In Rhino you can make extreamly difficult models very fast

I made it in a week using pictures that I from my trips + drawing that I found on books.

 

 

But for simple shapes, sketchUp is way faster. take a look those videos

http://download.sketchup.com/downloads/training/tutorials50/Sketchup%20Video%20Tutorials.html

 

Sketchup has something call components (instances, blocks... whatever you want to call it). The coolest thing about it... is that you can select a few and make them "unique", when you edit them.. only those few will change.

 

You can have infinite combinations of groups / components (one inside another).

You can edit them in place (Last time I check you can't do it on rhino... ouch!)

 

You can make them to glue to planes, so if you're placing windows.... you don't need to rotate them... or create an opening, you can make your compenents so they make their own openings when you place them

 

I have a library of components that match my autocad blocks... so all my offcie's windows, doors, balconies, are a simple click and drag (My bosses can't figure out how I can make any of their projects in 3d in less than an hour )

 

leo

 

try it out, it's limited, but for the type of work that I do at my office is more than enough

[Antisthenes]

Lets not forget the FryRender plugin that will come;)

 

...as for Indigo, Its slower then Maxwell and yes its free...your choice

 

ya some algorythms are faster than others. i think the price makes the difference FREE

 

where did you read about FryRender being available for software other than MAX?

 

yes Leo about blocks i have requested for v4 to have updateable blocks. so if i had 2 with the same name it would ask to replace like autocad does. if we get that and it is able to work for doorhandel block inside a door block(for instance) that would be sweet, or any other referenced blocks for that matter and able to target blocks for replacement with different names even. some people are asking for the ability to edit a block inside a file i would think that launching a new instance to edit it would work. good think about Beta is that these ideas are considered and under active development so if you have any feature requests get them into the mcneel newsgroup is my sugestion.

http://news2.mcneel.com/scripts/dnewsweb.exe?cmd=xover&group=rhino

 

how much time have you devoted to building your library, and do your use any models made in Rhinoceros to use as components?

[1eo]

Right now, I'm not using any rhino model imported to sketchUp, right now things like furniture/trees I import them to maxwell studio instead of Skecthup and I do my final composition there