Questions about rendering applications for SketchUp
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Thea license is cross-platform. No need for a different license if you happen to change form a mac to a pc or to a linux. Just download suitable installer and activate. Also like said earlier, Thea studio application may be installed on up to three machines without being used simultaneously. The node application can be installed on one machine and can be used only in conjunction with the master application during network rendering. The Studio and the node (different licenses) can now be installed on a same machine.
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I would also add: It's worth considering (it factored into my decision) is the availability to use the renderer with other software without needing to purchase additional licenses/plugins.
Maxwell (my render software) has no restriction as to which operating system you use (Mac, PC or Linux) the license is floating and travels with you to any machine you are working on in any operating system. Also they have free plugins for almost all the major modelling/animation software packages so you could use a different package(s) and still render in a familiar environment with no penalty whatsoever.
Also worth noting, I would heavily recommend that you consider a package with stand-alone scene editing capabilities to get around some of the high-poly limitations of Sketchup -- which can be a real issue when dealing with things like trees.
There's alot of good stuff to choose from out there -- good luck!
Best,
Jason. -
IMO, ideally, a license should be portable, and not connected to anything. If I go anywhere, I would like my license to work. However I understand the developers position.
Perhaps there is no easy way to make licenses portable, secure, and not connected to the Internet. I believe that eventually all serious users will purchase as many licenses as they require. I would like to think that only non serious users, and those who want to try it out for some time (the average would have difficulty evaluating a app. in 30 days) use unlicensed software. However, pirated applications have serve to spread a applications use throughout the world. Perhaps superior support to licensed users is the way to go. To that extent, SketchUcation should be subsidized in part by Google.
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Regarding licensing and Maxwell render...
"Standard licenses are floating and work per concurrent user: a license can be installed on as many machines as you like, but it can only be used by one person at the same time"
http://www.maxwellrender.com/mw2_licensing.phpIt also doesn't need to be connected to the internet or anything like that to use it.
Maxwell is typically considered slow (it is an unbiased renderer after all), but I think it's a matter of perspective. I think it has a much shorter learning curve than a biased engine like Vray and there are typically less settings to tweak on the front end. That combined with Maxwell's interactive preview evens the playing field quite a bit.
One thing you didn't bring up that I personally think is important since we're talking about a render for SU is whether or not the renderer has a stand-alone "studio" software. Without such a studio, you'll have to make do without high-poly trees, cars, and furniture. Maxwell and a few other renderers do have such studios.
-Brodie
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This function of Twilight has saved my @ss couple of times!
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@unknownuser said:
One thing you didn't bring up that I personally think is important since we're talking about a render for SU is whether or not the renderer has a stand-alone "studio" software. Without such a studio, you'll have to make do without high-poly trees, cars, and furniture. Maxwell and a few other renderers do have such studios.
Good point, Brodie...
Twilight Render have it all...
It works directly in SU, but if you need a studio, you can set everything up in TWR (materials, lights etc.) and export to a XML-file, which you can import in Kerkythea or Thea, where you can work further with advanced lightning, advanced materials, instancing of high-poly trees, grass etc...Not sure how it works in Maxwell, but if you want to add or change something to your model/scene, you can select only these amendments/changes, export them and in KT as well as in Thea, you can use the merge option to add the amendments/changes to your scene, without the need to re-set and start all over with materials, lights etc...
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@chippwalters said:
I would've thought these developers would've have thought through this a bit more-- especially in such a competitive space as SU rendering. For instance, my 3D apps including SketchUp Pro, Thea, Vue 9 Infinite, KeyShot, Modo, Lightwave all allow you to install on more than one computer, as long as it's the ONLY one being used at a time. Funny how 'restrictive' and somewhat 'proud' the SU plugin renderers are-- especially when it's clear they're not even the best ones out there.
Ouch... Not even the best ones out there... 
Sorry... To me you seem to compare apples with oranges...
The price for TWR is far lower compared to the price of any of the other applications you've mentioned...Nevertheless... I'll see what I can do to get the developers of TWR to re-view the license policy...
I'm not saying that there will be any changes, cause as others already have pointed out...@d12dozr said:
...that at such a low price ($99), purchasing two licenses for two work machines is reasonable investment.
Perhaps there's room for license policy improvements with upcomming release of TWR ver. 2...!?
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@frederik said:
Not sure how it works in Maxwell, but if you want to add or change something to your model/scene, you can select only these amendments/changes, export them and in KT as well as in Thea, you can use the merge option to add the amendments/changes to your scene, without the need to re-set and start all over with materials, lights etc...
I'm not sure I fully understand your explanation of the workflow but I'll explain how it works with maxwell. Within the SU plugin you setup all your materials, lighting, etc. Then you can export portions of the scene or the whole scene to an .mxs file (or you can just render directly from SU). The .mxs file is your studio file where you can further tweak materials, settings etc. I'll import my high poly objects into this scene, place them, clone them, etc. If part of my SU model changes you could just delete that part within studio, export that part from SU, and then merge that into the studio file. I personally find it easier to just delete the whole SU portion and merge the whole thing back in. The SU export doesn't take more than a minute or so even on a very large model so it's no big deal.
Regarding the licensing, just in case Twilight wanted to take a look at how Maxwell works. You can open maxwell on as many computers as you want but if you hit render it searches the local network to see if there are any other renders running. The loophole would be if you had two computers that weren't on the same network but I think it's still a good convenient system.
-Brodie
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@unknownuser said:
I'm not sure I fully understand your explanation of the workflow...
It's similar to your description...
I'm sure you'll see some nice changes to the TWR license policy in the future...
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Will there ever be a Mac version of Twilight?
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@dale said:
Will there ever be a Mac version of Twilight?
I'd say yes...
Can't say when, but I'd assume it to be together with release of ver. 2.0...Chris have bee struggeling with a Mac version ever since TWR ver. 1.0 was released, but I believe he has a solution for ver. 2.0...
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So when is v2 out
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A couple key thing developers need to remember about licensing, is
- It should not get in the way of legitimate users.
- It should not allow casual users to be able to easily give it to their friends "to try."
- It should NEVER prevent a sale.
Keeping hard core pirates from being able to hack copy protection is for the most part useless, especially if it conflicts with number one above. We know that most, if not all true pirates will never pay for legitimate software-- so no sales revenue is lost One of the best things you can do to protect your product is to continually update it, with a notification in your app of new update available.
It's now very popular to consider licensing to individuals and not machines, just as Maxwell does. Good conversation.
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I just wanted to post an update on the licensing situation in Shaderlight.
For Shaderlight 1.2 we incorporated a new licensing system which has made the installation process much more straight forward for our community. However, we discovered that a limitation of this new system was that we were unable to allow multiple activations on a license code or have the ability to transfer the license to another machine. We have been working to resolve this and importantly maintain the straight forward licensing.
Our development team concentrated on allowing multiple activations on a single code, new commercial Shaderlight activation codes can be used twice so you will be ok to activate your Shaderlight license on your office and home computer. The licensing of Shaderlight allows you to have Shaderlight installed on 2 machines, but only use 1 at a time.
Customers that have an existing Shaderlight license will need to contact support@artvps.com and their license code will be modified.
Martin
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@martin-art said:
I just wanted to post an update on the licensing situation in Shaderlight.
For Shaderlight 1.2 we incorporated a new licensing system which has made the installation process much more straight forward for our community. However, we discovered that a limitation of this new system was that we were unable to allow multiple activations on a license code or have the ability to transfer the license to another machine. We have been working to resolve this and importantly maintain the straight forward licensing.
Our development team concentrated on allowing multiple activations on a single code, new commercial Shaderlight activation codes can be used twice so you will be ok to activate your Shaderlight license on your office and home computer. The licensing of Shaderlight allows you to have Shaderlight installed on 2 machines, but only use 1 at a time.
Customers that have an existing Shaderlight license will need to contact support@artvps.com and their license code will be modified.
Martin
That sounds great Martin. Thanks very much!
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