Will pay for rendering help

hellnbak

I'd suggest Thea personally.

I can't find the price anywhere on their site, and that scares me. Seems if it was a good price they would display it prominently, or at least make it easy to find.

massimo

Steve, click on e-Shop button on upper right of the home page.

massimo

Pilou, those are € and not $.

hellnbak

@massimo said:

Pilou, those are € and not $.

Yeah, and we're talking almost 400 of those dollars . Way too much for someone who doesn't even know if he will ever be able to use it.

pilou

http://thearender.com/cms/index.php/plugins/thea-for-sketchup.html 320€
Standalone 295€

but have also a challenger Octane 199 €
http://render.otoy.com/index.php they have a gallery Vehicles
but Octane Render requires a CUDA enabled NVIDIA video card.

pbacot

Where do you get the "standalone" price for Thea ?(site confuses me-as do their offerings)

massimo

@massimo said:

Steve, click on e-Shop button on upper right of the home page.

pilou

Click the red Button E-SHOP up right corner page
on you arrive here
http://www.thearender.com/cms/index.php?page=shop.browse&category_id=1&vmcchk=1&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=53

and aaaaaaaah

@unknownuser said:

VAT (23%) will be added only for EU private customers during checkout.

And Massimo was more speedy

pilou

Corrected but don't know
if price is with or without VAT !

320 $ = 424 $
295 $ = 390 $

199$ = 264 $

edit for Thea

@unknownuser said:

VAT (23%) will be added only for EU private customers during checkout.

pbacot

Thanks Pilou

Ouch "VAT". I hope you people are getting what you want from this EU business.
Still confused. I don't see a standalone there. I DL the demo and it seemed I needed to get the (32 bit) studio demo to operate. But I will go to Thea for my queries. I tried registering there but couldn't get on the forum, then got busy with other things.

Oh but let's get back to the topic!

Steve are you getting anywhere with this?

hellnbak

@pbacot said:

[offtopic] Steve are you getting anywhere with this?

I'm trying very hard to make a halfway intelligent decision, and right now I'm leaning towards Kerkythea. In a large part this is based on the following numbers --

A program's forums are very important to me. If the forums here were diminished by two-thirds I can't imagine them being nearly as helpful as they are now.

Maybe there's a flaw in my logic, or maybe there are factors that outweigh the importance I place on forums, if so please let me know.

Rich O Brien

With both Twilight and Thea there is an unlimited trial so no need to spend cash while learning both.

When you decide which to go with you'll be making the best investment ever.

As regards post counts.....

If SU was not Free I imagine there'd be 6 people here having a natter and not thousands.

As regards learning this dark art....

Did you get anyone to help you out yet?

derei

@hellnbak said:

@pbacot said:

[offtopic] Steve are you getting anywhere with this?

I'm trying very hard to make a halfway intelligent decision, and right now I'm leaning towards Kerkythea. In a large part this is based on the following numbers --

[attachment=0:vs9xpzk9]a.png[/attachment:vs9xpzk9]

A program's forums are very important to me. If the forums here were diminished by two-thirds I can't imagine them being nearly as helpful as they are now.

Maybe there's a flaw in my logic, or maybe there are factors that outweigh the importance I place on forums, if so please let me know.

As you may probably know, Kerkythea and Twilight share same rendering engine... the main difference is the User Interface and the complexity of settings.
Kerkythea allows you to more complex settings, material properties, but its interface is nothing but friendly and the material editor is even worse, on the other hand it can handle x64 CPU's and last version has a great rendering speed improvement in comparison with Twilight.
Twilight's interface is less complex, but can make competitive materials for common use. The main advantage of twilight is its ease and the speed of use. Also, if you have a paid license, you can export as XML and benefit of Kerkythea's rendering speed.

If you don't need really complex materials, Twilight will serve you well (especially if you make the final render using KT)... but in the end, the decision must be all yours.

Also, statistics don't get always the best results... you will not need answers from 8000 members, but only one... if it's the answer you seek. So, in theory, a forum with one member will be as good as one with 8000

Good Luck!

hellnbak

@rich o brien said:

With both Twilight and Thea there is an unlimited trial so no need to spend cash while learning both.

When you decide which to go with you'll be making the best investment ever.

As regards post counts.....

If SU was not Free I imagine there'd be 6 people here having a natter and not thousands.

As regards learning this dark art....

Did you get anyone to help you out yet?

Thanks Rich,

I have pretty much narrowed it down to either Kerkythea or Twilight. Thea is just a bit too pricey for a program that I'm not even sure I could learn to use properly. Maybe later on.

As far as the posts, yes I agree that there are probably numerous reasons why Twilight has less than a third compared to Kerkythea - the fact that one costs and the other is free, maybe one has been around longer that the other, whatever.
But, the bottom line is that my goal is to use one of these programs to learn rendering, and logic tells me that the one with the greatest number of posts, topics and members is the one more likely to be a good source of information when I have a question. And I am definitely going to have questions. Maybe half a dozen or so

@unknownuser said:

As you may probably know, Kerkythea and Twilight share same rendering engine... the main difference is the User Interface and the complexity of settings.
Kerkythea allows you to more complex settings, material properties, but its interface is nothing but friendly and the material editor is even worse, on the other hand it can handle x64 CPU's and last version has a great rendering speed improvement in comparison with Twilight.
Twilight's interface is less complex, but can make competitive materials for common use. The main advantage of twilight is its ease and the speed of use. Also, if you have a paid license, you can export as XML and benefit of Kerkythea's rendering speed.

If you don't need really complex materials, Twilight will serve you well (especially if you make the final render using KT)... but in the end, the decision must be all yours.

Also, statistics don't get always the best results... you will not need answers from 8000 members, but only one... if it's the answer you seek. So, in theory, a forum with one member will be as good as one with 8000

Good Luck!

Thanks for the input,

I assume when you say "its interface is nothing but friendly and the material editor is even worse", you meant to say "its interface is anything but friendly and the material editor is even worse". Right?

Anyhow, yes, you will only need one answer if it's the right one. But, wouldn't you agree that your chances of finding that right answer increases greatly when you are asking it of 8,830 people vs 2,259 people?

Having said that, I have had Kerkythea installed for quite a while now, and I also just purchased and installed Twilight. This is my last effort at learning this "black art", and I wanted to maximize my chances. Also wanted to maximize my chances of bleeding ulcers.

Again, thanks to everyone for their help, suggestions and input.

And I'll try not to be too much of a royal pain in the arse while I go thru this learning process. (too much )

AquaTarkus999

Hello Hellnbak,

I've just had a quick look through your thread on your Kerkythea offer and your problems.

If you still haven't a clue where to start I am willing to help you. I assume you have downloaded and installed the sketchup to Kerkythea export plugin? Once you have used it a few times you will find it quite easy ... Honest!

Aquatarkus

notareal

@carrozza said:

@unknownuser said:

[...]Kerkythea can handle x64 CPU's and last version has a great rendering speed improvement in comparison with Twilight.[...]

Does it means that the current 1.5 Twilight release is based on Kerkythea 2008 Echo (2.0.19) and NOT 2008 Echo Boost (2.5.2)?

yes, but cannot recall if there where some additional bugfixes.

Carrozza

@unknownuser said:

[...]Kerkythea can handle x64 CPU's and last version has a great rendering speed improvement in comparison with Twilight.[...]

Does it mean that the current 1.5 Twilight release is based on Kerkythea 2008 Echo (2.0.19) and NOT 2008 Echo Boost (2.5.2)?

sonder

I use Kerkythea quite a bit. I'm swamped right now though. Maybe post some specific questions, or are you completely lost on how to start?

It's actually a very simple program.

Carrozza

Thanks, Notareal, I was not aware of this.
Given the average 33% rendering speed increase of Kerkythea 2008 Echo Boost that's enough for me to give up on Twilight and refresh Kerky libraries and my muscle memory.
In the end what was attracting me to Twilight was the handy rendering preset system, but I see that Kerkythea has a very similar approach, if not exactly the same.

notareal

@carrozza said:

Thanks, Notareal, I was not aware of this.
Given the average 33% rendering speed increase of Kerkythea 2008 Echo Boost that's enough for me to give up on Twilight and refresh Kerky libraries and my muscle memory.
In the end what was attracting me to Twilight was the handy rendering preset system, but I see that Kerkythea has a very similar approach, if not exactly the same.

You can always use Twilight as a exporter to Kerkythea, after all TWL has a nice UI. Meny cases the speed difference is not that critical, specially if you let work render over night.